Self Deportation

This is a short newsletter. Mostly, I want to invite my Bay Area friends to see the latest excerpt of The ICEmen Cometh, a one-woman show in development. Four other performers and I are presenting 15-20 minute excerpts of larger pieces. This will be at The Marsh Theater in Berkeley on Monday, December 8^th @ 7:30 pm.

I've titled this excerpt "Self-Deportation" and share the history of how this concept, which has no legal meaning, entered the national conversation on immigration.

The idea of creating self-deportation centers started as a piece of satire, a political media hoax by Lalo Alcaraz and Esteban Zul of Pocho Magazine, to draw attention to the frenzied immigrant-bashing that accompanied Governor Pete Wilson's promotion of Prop 187 in 1994 to win reelection as Governor. What started as satire became a beloved idea among anti-immigrant groups and the Republican Party.

We are witnessing in real time the degrading and demeaning of groups of people based on their countries of origin. As the Trump Regime welcomes white South Africans with open arms, it has closed its door to most of the rest of the world based on racist assumptions about non-whites. When the President of the United States speaks freely about shit-hole countries and describes groups of people as garbage, we are in very dangerous territory. Since he has been a public figure, and well before he was a political candidate, Trump has fomented racial hostility towards people of color. Following Donald Trump's example, Kristi Noem, ICE Barbie, has called for a “full travel ban,” claiming some countries are “flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

Woven into the fabric of our nation is labeling groups of people as inferior -- undesirables -- and developing policies to make them subordinate castes. Of course the example was set with the institution of slavery. And then we had other explicitly racist laws targeting specific groups: the Indian Removal Act, the Chinese Exclusion laws (state and federal), and Japanese Internment. Just for starters. Our immigration laws have been developed along white supremacy views.

For more than a century, people of Mexican ancestry have been blamed for our nation’s economic woes and have been subjected to massive raids and deportations. Operation Wetback during the 1950s removed at least 700,000 people and shipped them off to Mexico. Other deportation waves had preceded this one. In all instances, a significant number of United States citizens were denied their rights as Americans and shipped to Mexico without due process.

Ethnic-looking US citizens have been and will continue to be collateral damage, as ProPublica laid out in a recent report, which documented that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been caught in the crosshairs of the militarized deportation campaigns. These are some of the themes I tackle in this segment of my play.

As disheartening and infuriating as it is to see the abusive tactics used by ICE and Customs and Border Patrol's masked agents, we also see tens of thousands of people in cities around the country stepping up and protesting ICE actions by creating safety zones around schools and hospitals, accompanying people to immigration appointments, distributing know your rights information, training rapid response teams, and supporting bail funds. Folks have developed many creative ways to protect and support each other. And I am so grateful to all the legal advocacy organizations and independent media that follow and report on these stories.

Sharing two things that caught my eye.

Women’s March WIN, the political arm of Women’s March, has launched a 60-second television and digital campaign titled “Dear ICE Agents: What Will You Say?” has aired in Charlotte, Chicago, and West Palm Beach in TV, cable, and streaming services as well as on social media platforms. Take a look, I was certainly moved by what I saw.

Singer-songwriter Jesse Wells has become a huge sensation with his songs that tackle current events and critical social issues. Take a listen to Join ICE.

There is so much to say about the Trump Regime’s cruel policies targeting immigrants and all those of us who are perceived as NOT real Americans. I'll do that on Monday night at The Marsh Theater in Berkeley. Showtime is 7:30 pm. Hope to see you there.

Get tickets in advance; the last time I performed the show, it sold out. Just saying. Tickets start at $13 (including fees). Scan the QR code below to access the ticket link. I am part of the David Ford Class Show.