“Our Rights Are Trampled Over”: Immigrant Injustice and Implications for Anti-Racist Social Work Practice

Overview: The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the perspectives and lived experiences of undocumented immigrants impacted by federal immigration enforcement. Through their personal narratives, immigrants described being stripped of human rights and dignity. In response to legal violence, participants challenged the normalization of abuse and developed critical consciousness.Proposal text:

Background: Immigrants and their children account for 26% of the United States population (Batalova et al., 2021). Yet, punitive immigration policies threaten the health, liberty, and security of immigrant families (Becerra, 2016; Philbin et al., 2018). The reach of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has drastically increased over the past two decades; in 1994, there was a daily average of 5,532 immigrants in detention, but by 2019 that number grew to 50,165 (Golash‐Boza, 2012; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2019). Immigrants live in pervasive fear of detention and deportation (Becerra, 2016). This fear is not without reason. Individuals arrested by ICE have reported human rights violations, including no due process and verbal and physical abuse (Martínez-Schuldt & Hagan, 2021). The human rights violations that immigrants experience have been normalized, legitimated, and described as "legal violence" (Menjívar & Abrego, 2012). Menjívar and Abrego's (2012) legal violence framework highlights the ways in which physical, structural, and symbolic violence intertwine to create legally-sanctioned social suffering.

Methodology: Applying a legal violence lens, this community-based participatory action qualitative research study sought to better understand and amplify the lived experience of immigrants impacted by federal immigration enforcement. A community advisory board guided study design and recruitment protocols to capture this collective narrative. Using purposive and snowball sampling, we engaged in individual in-depth semi-structured interviews with 14 individuals who had experienced immigration detention directly or through someone close to them. Interviews were conducted in Spanish and lasted 56 minutes, on average. Open-ended questions centered on participants’ experience with ICE, impacts on self and family, and coping strategies and resistance. Employing narrative analysis, we engaged in in vivo and process coding of the transcripts in NVivo, which helped us consolidate the data. Analytic memoing supported identification of themes and interpretation of patterns. Team-based coding, interpretive convergence, and member checks enhanced trustworthiness of findings.

Results: Present across narratives was the juxtaposition of individuals’ self-image with the dehumanizing image perceived to be assigned to them by the immigration system. Narrative analysis revealed that participants universally described feeling stripped of human rights. They perceived treatment as targeted, racist, and traumatizing and described ICE officers as aggressive and deceptive. A prominent finding was that in response to injustices faced, individuals increased in critical consciousness (Freire, 1970). They grew more aware of their rights, collectivized their individual experiences, and became involved in their communities through lateral helping, mutual support groups, and transformational collective action. Participants challenged normalized violence and built new understandings of self and community that defied their devaluation and criminalization and promoted resilience and re-empowerment. In this way, immigration enforcement experiences transformed disadvantaged community members into conscious actors for social change.

Significance: Findings demonstrate with clarity both the traumatizing and material impacts of racialized immigration enforcement on immigrant communities. Findings also elucidate the importance of social work practice that emphasizes self-advocacy, collective action, and critical consciousness-raising (e.g., Know Your Rights training). Implications for social workers educators preparing practitioners for anti-racist engagement with immigrant communities will be discussed.