Welcome to On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. magazine. As you know, we are a show that reports, rebels, and we tell it just like it is. On this show, we center your concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality. Join me as we tackle the most compelling issues of our times.

On our show, history matters. We examine the past as we think about the future. And now in this special episode, we are thinking about back to school as families prepare to send their kids back to school this year, and many are facing a new worry: Will their children, or the parents themselves, be able to make it home safely at the end of the day?

We’re talking about the ICE crackdowns and raids, the arrests of people outside of schools, outside of churches, teachers having to shield and protect children.

Now, in the past, we have covered issues in back to school, addressing gun violence, addressing whether parents can even afford to send their kids to school. In the time between when we recorded this episode and airing it, we didn’t think that we’d have to confront more school shootings, and we now have to—in Colorado, in Minnesota. So we took a pause on this episode because we wanted to think about that. We took a pause after the brutal, horrific, horrific shooting in Minnesota, which killed children and injured so many others.

It’s a shame that it’s become so normalized that as children go back to school, it’s a Russian roulette of some sort, which school, which state, which county might be next, as lawmakers offer thoughts and prayers, shuffle papers, but do very little to stem what has become an annual phenomenon in the United States.

In this episode, we don’t cover that, we didn’t think that we needed to, but I’m re-recording this introduction because we want to acknowledge the families, the lives that have been lost, the teachers, the staff, the people who try to keep them safe and love them and to our nation that has been gripped in the epidemic of gun violence, and this gun violence that traps and harms our children, leading this to be the leading cause of death of children in the United States.

Let’s all take a pause and think about that and about the nation that we want and how we want children to be able to go back to school each year in this country.

In this episode, I’m joined by Kevin R. Johnson, the former dean at UC Davis Law School. He is a professor of law and a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies, and the director of the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies at UC Davis. Sit back and take a listen.

Michele Goodwin:

Dean Johnson, it is such a pleasure to be with you. Thank you, so much, for coming back on our show. In recent news, you’ve been quoted or written about how history suggests that the GOP will pay a political price for its immigration tactics in California. You’ve also been in Conversation about deportation tactics from four US presidents have done little to reduce undocumented immigrant populations. That’s been in The Conversation. The other was in California Matters.

I want to start off by centering our conversation about back to school and what that means for so many families, including what that means for Latino families in the United States, Latino families where folks are Americans, are documented, are residents, and then also for what it means for those that are not documented.

And we’ve seen a noted escalation in Trump’s immigration crackdowns in recent months, from raids in Home Depot parking lots, to expedited deportation timelines, and more. So, when it comes to the legality of what’s taking place, can you give us some sense of how we’re to understand what’s taking shape in America, right now?

Dean Johnson:

That’s a lot. I think that President Trump has embarked on a mass deportation campaign, as he puts it, that is unprecedented in modern United States history, and whether or not he is able to accomplish his goals of removing millions of people from the United States, he will have terrorized a community and set of communities that will have generations of impacts.

We see from past episodes in our history, whether it’s Chinese Exclusion in the 1800s to Japanese Internment during World War II to the Mexican Repatriation during the Great Depression, we see generations of families and their loved ones who carry forward the stigma of past discriminatory episodes. We have people today who still feel the impacts of the repatriation of the ’30s.

We have, today, people who still feel guilty, in some respects, about the Japanese Internment, and I think that what we are seeing now is a concerted effort to terrorize immigrant families and mixed-status families, that is families with citizens as well as immigrants, and that this impact will stay with us for generations. It will affect the sense of belonging of various communities to the national community. It will, in some ways, drive underground certain immigrant communities that feel under threat, currently.

And I think that it is unconscionable, what we’re seeing happening on the streets of America today. In my hometown of Los Angeles, which I miss dearly, it is the epicenter of a Latino deportation campaign. There’s nothing else that can be said that’s better explanatory than the simple statement that this is racial profiling on a mass scale. It affects families. It affects the whole concept of going back to school, going into public and possibly being separated from your children, possibly being deported, and it is a sad period of our history.

Michele Goodwin:

In NPR, recently, there was a headline, Trump Administration strips schools, churches of immigration enforcement protections, and in that story, it was mentioned that, and I quote, “immigration authorities can now enter schools, healthcare facilities, and places of worship to conduct arrests, according to a new policy from the Department of Homeland Security.” People are wondering, is this legal and what’s taking shape in our courts, right now?

Dean Johnson:

That’s a good question. Is this legal? Now, to me, all the indications are that the Trump Administration doesn’t necessarily care if it’s legal or not, but there are powers within the executive branch to go to schools and to present a warrant, if they have a warrant for somebody’s arrest, to arrest that person. However, schools do not have any obligation to allow ICE officers to patrol the schools or to provide any information about students, which is protected by various privacy laws.

Now, the Trump Administration, in announcing the policy that churches, hospitals, doctors’ offices, and schools can be subject to immigration enforcement, just the announcement creates fear in immigrant communities. If you go to a know your rights session, people will express worry. They’ll cry. They’ll scream about the possibilities of getting arrested if they take their child to the doctor, if they go to church, if they go to work, if they drop their kids off at schools.

So, the damage is done just by the announcement. Now, the Trump Administration, to this point, has not sought, or not in any concerted program, gone after places of worship, but the statement that places of worship could be subject to immigration operations is enough to frighten people. Many churches, particularly on the West Coast, are holding, you know, masses and the like virtually, not in person, and some schools also are…including the LA School District are receiving increasing numbers of requests for virtual education, even though most would say that’s not as good as in-person education.

Michele Goodwin:

Right, and not in the best interest of children and what this means in terms of fracturing communities. It’s a bit ironic, given the push towards an orthodoxy of Christianity in the United States, not the kind of Christianity that preaches about care for one’s neighbor, respect for the other, but this idea of religion being at the center or coming to the center of American politics, and at the same time, creating an atmosphere where people are actually fearful about showing up to worship in person.

And continuing from that NPR article, it says that the directive, which covers agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, ICE, rescinds the guidance from the Biden Administration that created the protected areas that primarily consisted of places where children gather, disaster or emergency relief sites, and social services establishments. How does one then respond to parents who are worried about their kids going to school, this fall?

Dean Johnson:

Well, there’s a great deal of concern with whether or not children, including immigrant children, but also citizen children of particular backgrounds, will be attending school. A Stanford research study showed that in January and February alone, absences at public schools were up more than 20 percent, and given the enforcement operations and the campaign and the publicity around those operations, there’s a great fear in many school districts around the country that school absenteeism will go up.

Now, the Los Angeles Unified School District is taking some efforts to try to ensure that parents feel comfortable sending their kids to school. The school district is doing a number of things, some of them fairly obvious and some of them fairly innovative. It is increasing the number of people from the school who are interacting with the community in the area around the school to try to give them some sense of support. The police departments in Los Angeles have said that they will notify parents if they’re aware of any ICE operations going on near the schools.

In addition, school districts are going to be providing parents, all parents, with information about their rights if they come up against questioning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The LA school district is also altering its bus routes, trying to make sure that people who are fearful of ICE encounters have as easy an access as possible to a bus to get to school.

So, I think that some steps are being taken to make it clear to students and their parents that the schools are not part of immigration enforcement, basically don’t like what immigration enforcement is doing, and in fact, is requesting the federal government to respect the sanctity of the schools and to allow children to go to schools. The problem is, in my estimation, that parents are going to be scared to death no matter what.

Michele Goodwin:

Well, it’s understandable, and in fact, from Stateline News, here’s a headline, ICE has a new courthouse tactic, get immigrants’ cases tossed and then arrest them outside, and here’s what they say, and I’d love to hear your take on this, and then I want to talk about history and what we can learn from it.

So, in this piece, they say that rather than pursue a deportation case, ICE and its agents are convincing judges to dismiss cases, which would then deprive individuals of protection from arrest and detention, then taking them into custody. Do you see this tactic as actually taking place? I see a lot that’s been reported about it, which then means that people are basically getting arrested when they’re showing up to be, you know, present their cases before judges.

Dean Johnson:

Unfortunately, this is a tactic that’s been pursued and pursued aggressively, not just with respect to immigration court hearings but also with respect to check-ins that are required for various people with certain types of immigration statuses. In Sacramento, recently, somebody came down, drove several hundred miles to check in with their immigration office, and were arrested when they checked in with the immigration office. This tactic, and there’s two distinct tactics I’ll talk about, but arresting people when they dutifully show up at their immigration court hearing is despicable, if you ask me.

These are people who are seeking to comply with the law, who are seeking relief that’s permitted by the law, who are meeting all the conditions placed on them for the court hearing, and they’re being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the courthouse, and to make matters worse, the immigration court judges are part of the immigration enforcement machinery in this circumstance.

They’re dismissing the case, and they’re not notifying the non-citizens in advance they’re dismissing the case, they don’t need to show up. They’re allowing them to show up and then be arrested and then being subject to what’s called expedited removal. That’s removal without due process, and I think that this is a policy that puts immigrants in an impossible position.

Should they comply with the law and show up at their immigration court hearing, or should they say, gosh, I can’t even be safe if I go to my immigration court hearing, I’m not going to go, and then be accused of absconding and having Immigration and Customs Enforcement chase them down. To add to this use of the judicial process, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are also operating in state courthouses. They’re going to state courthouses where they think that they can run into some non-citizens, who may be subject to removal.

They’re questioning people in state courthouses and they’re arresting them. What this means is that people who go to the courthouse to do their judicial business, maybe it’s a marriage license, maybe it’s paying off a traffic ticket, maybe it’s being a witness in a criminal or civil proceeding, maybe it’s testifying as a victim of a crime. They are subject to immigration enforcement in taking care of the judicial business, and judges, in many courts, have condemned this.

The Chief Justice of California, in 2017, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, wrote a letter to the attorney general, and the secretary, the Department of Homeland Security, asking Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to interfere with state judicial business. She was attacked as being part of a sanctuary state.

The current Chief Justice of California, Patricia Guerrero, has also registered concerns with immigration operations taking place at state courthouses. It’s having a chilling effect on non-citizens taking care of basic judicial business and making our society, in some ways, less safe than more safe. If victims of crimes don’t want to report them because they fear deportation, they’re not going to report crimes or be witnesses.

Michele Goodwin:

No. So, I want to talk about…and I really appreciate your time here. I could spend so much time with you, and clearly, we’ll need to continue this conversation. I want to talk about history and what we can learn from this moment. Very recently, in CalMatters, you wrote or were quoted as saying the operations in Southern California, in recent weeks, bears an eerie resemblance to the Mexican Repatriation campaign during the Great Depression.

Federal, state, and local governments worked together to remove people of Mexican ancestry, US citizens as well as immigrants, with mass arrests in the heart of Los Angeles, near what is now Olvera Street, which, ironically enough, pays homage to the city’s Mexican roots. Can you tell us a bit about this history? And you also wrote, in the UC Law Journal, a piece called The KKK, Immigration Law and Policies, and Donald Trump. Can you give us a sense about this history that you were referring to?

Dean Johnson:

Well, the United States has a long history of discriminating against people of color, women, LGBTQ-plus people, political minorities, and you know, the disabled, and a whole range of people, sadly enough, and at various times in our history, we’ve done some truly horrible things, and it’s well known, sort of the Chinese Exclusion laws in the late 1800s. What is less well known is that during that period, there also were white vigilantes who hunted down, shot, and killed, burned out, and punished, without any legal punishment, Chinese people.

In fact, most of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in California, which was once the home of many Chinese people, now has about zero Chinese people there. It was an ethnic cleansing, in many ways, but we’ve done this repeatedly in US history. In the 1930s, the state and local governments in the Los Angeles area, but other parts of the country, decided that they would save jobs and public benefits for true Americans during the Great Depression by removing people of Mexican ancestry.

About a million people were removed, and many of them, 2/3rds of them, were US citizen children of immigrants. One of the persons who was repatriated is the late Justice Cruz Reynoso, who grew up in Southern California and was a US citizen, and his family decided to…what they would now say self-deport rather than wait for the repatriation during the Great Depression, and his father came home from work and told him we’re going to Mexico, and Cruz, who had spent his whole life in Orange County, said where’s Mexico?

He had no idea where it was and never been there, and they spent the rest of the Great Depression down in Mexico, but there were close to a million people affected, and this repatriation had a dramatic impact on the growth of Latino identity in Southern California, in Latino political power in Southern California, and the delay of the development of identity and development of political power, you know, took around 30 to 40, 50 years after the Great Repatriation to take root.

And I want to look more optimistically at history, too, because in 1994, California voters voted for Proposition 187. It passed by a landslide. It would’ve denied public benefits and public schooling to all undocumented immigrants, and it began a process in the State of California where there was a naturalization campaign that took place. There’s Latino activism empowerment that occurred after Proposition 187.

Latinos began getting elected to the legislature. Latinos eventually were able to more or less control the legislature. Republicans who backed Proposition 187, including the governor, Pete Wilson, became something of an endangered species in the State of California as Latinos rallied around Democrats, knowing that Republicans had basically voted to punish them with impunity.

So, I think that in the long run, and it is the long run, we may see a political reaction to what we’re seeing today in that there will be an understanding that by picking a fight, more or less, with Latinos, and Asians, and others, as well, in the long run, it will have negative political impacts.

Michele Goodwin:

That’s right, because, as you mentioned, there are people of Asian descent who now are self-deporting, and in fact, very recently, there was an individual of Asian descent who committed suicide in ICE custody, in detention. So, I want to take just one really quick moment to just flash a light on how people understand the narrative of immigration.

Because there is a narrative that is spoken about, which would suggest that somehow any of the pains and problems in Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Utah, somehow, if drugs are there, they’re because there are Latinos, and somehow, if there’s sexual assaults, it’s because Latinos are there, although there’s not evidence of it, right? So, one doesn’t actually see evidence on the news of the roving gangs, right?

So, it’s just spoken about, that somehow there are the gangs, and the gangs have placed all of the drugs in those communities and have raped a bunch of people up, but we actually never hear the names of people. We never see that that actually happens, and so, I’m wondering about the ways in which narrative takes shape and how the narrative happens to be very brown, and then Asian, and Black, right?

The Haitians are eating cats and dogs. We’ve heard that, but somehow, the narrative never talks about there being immigration that comes from Europe. How do we reconcile that…not that Europeans are doing any of these hateful kinds of things that are being described. It doesn’t really seem that anybody’s really doing them, but there’s a very lopsided way in which there is a narrative about who immigrates to the United States.

Dean Johnson:

I think, and it’s unfortunate, but I think that race is the bottom of a lot of the public discussion of immigration and immigration enforcement and that immigration is thought of as a Latino issue and an Asian issue and not nearly as diverse as immigration is to this country. There are many African immigrants to the United States. There are many Caribbean immigrants to the United States.

There are many European immigrants to the United States. There’s probably 100 thousand undocumented Canadians in the United States, but race is an avenue through which we can inject all of our anxieties about our society and blame it on the other, the different person, the Haitians who aren’t eating our pets.

There’s no evidence of any of that going on, and if you look at the data, you see that, time and again, for many, many years, US citizens have higher rates of crime than non-citizens. You also see that US citizens have a higher rate of public benefit usage than immigrants, even though immigrants are blamed for overconsuming public benefits. So, I fear that, time and again, we see the corruption of race and the blaming of people of color for whatever’s troubling our society.

It’s not drug users who are causing the drug problem. It’s, you know, the immigrants who have, you know, thighs the size of cantaloupes that they’re running these things across the border, and it’s sad to me that the general public doesn’t seem to absorb some of the basic facts about immigrant crime, immigrant benefit receipt. You see the same thing when it comes to the discussion of welfare in the United States. You know, you’ve got the Black welfare mother who’s blamed for overconsuming benefits.

Michele Goodwin:

Welfare queen, right, that Reagan popularized, that term.

Dean Johnson:

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and when there’s a higher percentage of use among whites of welfare and food stamp programs than there are people of color, and immigrants aren’t even eligible for most benefit programs, nowadays. So, you can’t really blame them for overconsuming public benefits, but I fear that our society’s racism infects all of this discussion.

Until we can move away from that and start thinking clearly about what the issues are, we’re not going to really address them, and the truth is most immigrants, white, Black, brown, Asian, come to this country for political freedoms and economic opportunities. The magnet of jobs is the biggest thing attracting immigrants to the United States. It’s not drugs. It’s not selling drugs. It’s not public benefits. It’s jobs and families.

Michele Goodwin:

So, as I wrap up the show, two questions, in tight order, how are people fighting back, and do you see any success, through courts or otherwise, and then, we always end the show with asking about a silver lining. What’s giving hope?

Dean Johnson:

Well, maybe that’s…the court’s are giving me some hope, and so far, the courts, and the Supreme Court, which I’ve been critical of at various times in my career, has made it clear to President Trump that due process protects non-citizens before their removal from the United States. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the Trump Administration’s effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to summarily, without due process, deport non-citizens, cannot hold. There has to be a hearing.

There has to be notice. There has to be an opportunity to be heard, and the court made that very clear, even though it could’ve ducked the issue and waited for it to fully percolate in the lower courts. The Supreme Court, even though it limited the relief that federal courts can give in the birthright citizenship case, the US Supreme Court held that there were avenues for relief, perhaps a class action device that’s being employed in the lower courts now.

And not one justice on the Supreme Court mentioned any support for the idea that birthright citizenship could be eliminated by executive order. So, I don’t think the courts are perfect, but I do think, at this point, the courts are making it clear to the Trump Administration that writing outside the legal lines isn’t going to be permitted.

Michele Goodwin:

I want to thank you, Dean Kevin Johnson, for joining on our Ms. Magazine platform. Our listeners will gain significantly from the conversation that we’ve had. Thank you, so much, for coming back and spending some time with us.

Dean Johnson:

Thanks. It’s an honor.