On Wednesday, August 7th, 2019, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted the single largest day of raids on undocumented workers in the nation’s history.
Decried as merely the latest act of needless cruelty inflicted upon the communities of Latin American immigrants that call the US home, the event has drawn widespread outrage towards an administration that seemingly revels in its caustic cycle of trauma following trauma inflicted on those most vulnerable.
As the ICE raids targeted Mississippi chicken processing plants, Angela Stuesse, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UNC, Chapel Hill and UC Press author of Scratching Out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South, has been using her experience conducting ethnographic research among these communities to give a voice to those impacted. Collected below is a selection of Professor Stuesse’s recent opinion essays, radio interviews, and citations in works of journalism, in which she describes the conditions that initially drew Latin American immigrants to the Deep South and how to respond going forward.