An Immigrant or a Terrorist?

Media Clip: …And we begin with breaking news from downtown Los Angeles. Agents have arrested an illegal immigrant who has been fighting to stay here in the United States with her American born son. CBS two. David Malcolm, in

Dr. Sergio M. González: In the early 2000s, Americans had perhaps become accustomed to nightly news reports on undocumented immigration, immigration raids and deportations.

Media Clip (Speaker 1): They come from Central and South America. If there's a fence, as sometimes there is, they cut through it.

Media Clip (Speaker 2): Tonight are millions of immigrants endangering America the Beautiful.

Media Clip (Speaker 3): Deputies descending on a valley company suspected of hiring undocumented workers. More than a dozen people were arrested on charges of ID theft.

Media Clip (Speaker 4): Federal immigration officials are touting the arrest of 50 people as the biggest human smuggling bust ever. Operators with five Arizona shuttle services in custody for allegedly using vans to transport 1000s of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and

Media Clip (Speaker 3): The debate over illegal immigration has taken a religious turn, with a growing number of Christian conservative groups telling Congress and the president to reach a compromise on this divisive issue.

Media Clip (Speaker 5): We need to resolve the status of the illegal immigrants who are already in our country without animosity and without amnesty.

Media Clip (Speaker 6): Real ID is not going to solve all of the nation's problems, but it certainly is going to help in solving some of them. And we absolutely have to do that if we're going to have greater security in this country.

Media Clip (Speaker 7): One town trying to crack down on illegal immigration is being taken to federal court today. Last year, Hazleton, Pennsylvania passed the illegal immigration relief act.

Media Clip (Speaker 8): There's no way that the provisions that they're outlining are going to stop illegal immigration. It's a big fat amnesty bill for people who've been here since January of this year. Which is a highly unethical and immoral approach, which allows people who came into the country expecting to get rewarded for breaking the law, to actually get it, to take advantage of the program.

Media Clip (Speaker 9): Tonight, we're at the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" rally here in Washington, DC. Almost 50 radio talk show hosts are here in Washington, DC, focusing on the federal government's outright failure to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.

Dr. González: Since the mid 1990s immigration, and particularly undocumented immigration, had become a national concern. The country's undocumented population had grown exponentially in those years, as by the turn of the century more than 11 million undocumented residents lived in the United States.

Media Clip (Lou Dobbs - CNN, 'No Amnesty' Calls): This is Lou Dobbs Tonight News, Debate and Opinion for Tuesday, April 24th. And radio hosts from all across the country, in Washington demanding no amnesty for 20 million illegal aliens in this country…

Media Clip (Radio host 1 calling in to talk about 'No Amnesty' with Lou Dobbs): Right now, Rhode Island has a huge, bordering on a $4 million deficit. We cannot pay our bills. And it's because of our schools, it's because of our health care system. There are jobs there for Rhode Islanders that are being taken by illegals.

Media Clip (Radio host 2 calling in to talk about 'No Amnesty' with Lou Dobbs): This is an overt plan to weaken the United States by bringing unknown numbers and unknown identities of people across our border.

Media Clip (Radio host 3 calling in to talk about 'No Amnesty' with Lou Dobbs): This isn't immigration. This is an invasion.

Media Clip (Radio host 4 calling in to talk about 'No Amnesty' with Lou Dobbs): They're using more services than they're paying for.

Media Clip (Radio host 5 calling in to talk about 'No Amnesty' with Lou Dobbs): We can't absorb everybody in the world who wants to come here. It's just not possible. The country's culture and laws and everything are free.

Dr. González: Fueled in large part by a growing anti-immigrant sentiment, presidents from both political parties had made going after this growing population a priority.

Dr. Lloyd Daniel Barba: The arrest of Elvira Arellano in August 2007, however, was different. Arellano was an activist, one with a growing national profile. When federal agents apprehended her in California, they found her organizing for immigrant justice in the space where she most often tried to rally people to her cause: a church.

Media Clip (Dave Malkov): Elvira Arellano was staying here in Los Angeles at several churches, going back and forth, and she was going to do a tour of the country, ending in Washington DC, with a rally on the capitol. But today, as she was going from one church to another, agents surrounded her vehicle. They asked her to get out. She asked those agents if she could just have just a moment with her son to just tell him that everything's okay. Her American-born son. And she told him everything was okay. Then, they took her into custody. Now there's a lot of anger, not only here in Los Angeles, but all around the country. Just a few minutes ago, we wrapped up a press conference right outside the church near where she was arrested...

Dr. Barba: It wasn't just outside of any church where Arellano had been arrested, either. Officers grabbed her as she stepped outside of Los Angeles' Our Lady Queen of Angels, known by area residents as La Placita. The church was one of the most important houses of worship for Latino Angelenos. It was also once the beating heart of sanctuary activism in 1980s Los Angeles.

Dr. González: Arellano, meanwhile, was not just any immigration activist. She was perhaps the most public, recognizable and perhaps controversial individual in what was quickly becoming a growing aspect of immigration justice advocacy work across the country, a new sanctuary movement.

Media Clip (NPR Reporter): Some are calling her the Rosa Parks of the immigrants' rights movement, others a risk-taking attention seeker. Elvira Arellano spent a year in a Chicago church seeking sanctuary from a deportation order and became active in the movement to reform immigration law.

Dr. González: But how did Arellano, a sanctuary seeker herself, who had been living in a Chicago church in defiance of a deportation order for a year, become one of the country's most prominent immigrant rights activists?

Dr. Barba: Well, to understand this, we need to go back to 2002. Arellano had been working in custodial services at the Chicago O'Hare Airport. She'd been doing so without proper authorization to be in the country, which also meant she lacked proper authorization to hold employment.

Media Clip (Arellano): [Speaking Spanish]

Dr. Barba: In December 2002, Arellano was caught in a workplace immigration raid, a fate all too familiar during this period for many undocumented immigrants doing their best to make ends meet.

Media Clip (NPR Reporter): The case is the byproduct of stepped-up enforcement. Over the last year, in particular, federal immigration officers have increased raids on businesses that employ illegal aliens. And many of the people they're arresting have lived in this country for years, and many have children who are US citizens.

Dr. González: You see, the traumatic events of September 11th had had a dramatic impact on immigration enforcement across the country. Workplace raids such as Operation Chicagoland Skies, the raid in which Arellano was caught, sought to root out so-called "sleeper terrorists" that might be working in locations considered areas of high national security. And that, of course, included airports.

Dr. Barba: Like so many of these sweeps, however, no suspected terrorists were rounded up. Rather, these sweeps became dragnets to catch undocumented immigrants working without proper authorization or under another person's name. And that's how Arellano was caught in the American detention system,one that was increasingly apprehending undocumented people living in the US.

Dr. González: Arellano was eventually released on bail and pleaded guilty to document fraud for holding a fraudulent social security card. But after a series of complicated legal proceedings, she faced removal from the country. She decided to join an immigrant justice group, and together, they fought for a series of stays of deportation. She received help from Senator Dick Durbin, and received some leniency from the courts because she had a US-born son. With no options left, her last resort to remain in the US was to seek sanctuary.

Dr. Barba: When Arellano walked into Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago in the fall of 2006, she kicked off a new iteration of the sanctuary movement, one that would soon be known as The New Sanctuary Movement.

Media Clip (Arellano): He pedido santuario en mi iglesia, que me lo ha dado. Si segura nacional opta por enviar sus agentes a un terreno sagrado para arrestarme, luego voy a saber que Dios me quiere para servir como ejemplo del odio, hipocresía del actual administración. Voy a tener que pasar 10 o 20 años en la cárcel, no me importa. Pero voy a luchar porque mi hijo, porque yo se dar respeto porque el pueblo indocumentado, porque el pueblo ciudadano sea respetado. (Translation: "I have asked my church for sanctuary, and they have given it to me. If National Security decides to send its agents into sacred ground to arrest me, I will know that God wants me to serve as an example of the hatred and hypocrisy of the current administration. I'm going to have to spend 10 or 20 years in jail, I don't care, but I am going to fight to get respect for me and my son, to get respect for the undocumented community and the citizens of this country.")

Dr. González: Now, the original sanctuary movement may have ended in the early 1990s, but the memory of the movement and its tactics remained fresh in the minds of immigration activists. Arellano, for one, was well aware of the 1980s movement before she decided to take refuge herself. What was it about this radical form of hospitality that drew Arellano and her supporters to invoke the ancient biblical tradition?

Dr. Barba: By now, listeners will understand that this is not at all uncommon. Maybe it's even expected to see what feminist scholar Jane Juffer has referred to as "radical critiques" of the underlying causes of the immigration system that often come from religious progressives. We can see this in the continuation of key sanctuary teachings. It's in the language of welcoming the stranger and not oppressing the immigrant among you. And it's baked into the very language of accompaniment.

Dr. González: From the day she entered Adalberto United Methodist Church in late 2006 until the moment federal agents placed handcuffs on her at La Placita, Arellano was confronting similar questions activists in the 1980 sanctuary movement had faced. What obligations does the US have to offer welcome and belonging to supposed 'newcomers'? How does the US square the circle on its complicated immigration history, one that has seen the country posit itself as a beacon of refuge and a melting pot. But one that also has a long history of nativism, xenophobia and of hardening its borders?

Media Clip (Ed Kennedy): What are they going to do with the 12 and a half million who are undocumented here? Send them back, send them back to countries around the world? More than 250 billion dollars, buses that would go from Los Angeles to New York and back again. Try and find them. Develop a type of Gestapo here to seek out these people that are in the shadows?

Dr. Barba: Some questions, however, were glaringly new. Arellano, unlike the Central American asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico border in the 1980s, had lived in the country for years. For her and her US-born son, America was their home. Arellano and New Sanctuary Movement activists then grappled with an entirely new question: What will the nation do about undocumented residents who have lived in the country for years? Will it keep communities and families together or tear them apart?

Media Clip: I want to talk about your laws, your immigration laws. Your immigration laws are inhumane, your immigration laws are mean-spirited and they're punitive. How can we continue to support the laws that actually tear families apart, that tear apart a mother from a son.

Dr. González: One central question, however, bound the activism of sanctuary workers from the past and the present. Both understood their faith as being inextricably linked with their political priorities and engagements. In the 1980s and the early 2000s, then, sanctuary activists asked this critical question: How would people of faith, especially those whose religion teaches them to 'welcome the stranger,' respond to the needs of undocumented people, especially when those people found themselves in the crosshairs of potential detention and deportation? Welcome to Sanctuary, a limited podcast series about immigration, faith, and the borders between church and state. Sanctuary was created by me, Dr. Sergio González

Dr. Barba: and me, Dr. Lloyd Barba,

Dr. González: in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media and Civic Engagement and Axis Mundi Media.

Dr. Barba: Sanctuary was produced by Dr. Bradley Onishi and engineered by Scott Okamoto. Kari Onishi provided production assistance. Sanctuary was made possible through generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation and with support from the religion department at Amherst College.

Dr. González: Additional support was provided by the American Academy of Religion. And before we get started, we just want to warn listeners that this series contains infrequent depictions of violence and sexual assault that may not be suitable for all listeners. All right, Lloyd, we ended our previous episode in the early 1990s and here we're opening in the mid aughts. I feel like we might need to fill in our listeners with some background information, you know, to help us understand what happened in that interim period between the original Sanctuary Movement and the birth of the new one. Maybe we should do some timeline work. You know, we're both historians, so I'm sure we can do this quickly and succinctly.

Dr. Barba: Oh, absolutely. And this era, let's say the early 1990s through the early 2000s, is a really pivotal one in the history of US immigration and immigration activism. So, let's set some guideposts for our listeners. We've got four key years to remember: 1994, 1996, 2001, and 2005. Alright, so let's get to 1994. The last few decades of the 20th century saw a growing rate of undocumented immigration into the US, mostly from Latin America. In 1986, Congress passed, and President Ronald Reagan signed, the Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA. It was touted as a comprehensive immigration reform bill, one that was supposed to address both the lure for immigration, criminal penalties for employers who hired undocumented workers, and offer some pathway to legalization for those people who were undocumented already living in the country.

Media Clip (Reagan): This bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, that I'll sign in a few minutes, is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952. It's the product of one of the longest and most difficult legislative undertakings in the last three congresses. Further, it's an excellent example of a truly successful bipartisan effort. The administration and the allies of immigration reform on both sides of the Capitol and both sides of the aisle worked together to accomplish these critically important reforms to control illegal immigration.

Dr. González: Now, we discussed in our last episode how the wars in Central America had come to an end by the early 1990s thanks to a series of Peace Accords. Many Latin American nations, however, continued to suffer from a series of economic recessions and lower standards of living than many people could handle. And then, in 1994, the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, with Mexico and Canada. NAFTA promised to ease trade between nations and corporations, but it also had painful consequences for Mexican farmers. When NAFTA removed trade barriers between the three nations, US companies could export their corn and other grains to Mexico below cost. Rural Mexican farmers couldn't compete with these new heavily subsidized US prices, and were functionally forced to shut down their family farms. The same farms their families had been running for generations.

Dr. Barba: And NAFTA also expanded the number of sweatshop-like factories known as maquiladoras along the US-Mexico border. They promised cheap labor for American companies and cheap products for American consumers, but they were functionally dead end jobs for Mexicans. A Mexican employee in one of these maquiladoras often worked more than 75 hours a week only to earn a sixth of US hourly rates. That was only enough to purchase about a quarter of basic necessities essential for a typical worker's family. Free trade policies like NAFTA exacerbated already rough economic situations in places like Mexico. They supercharged what had already been a rising trend in Latin American migration to the United States, particularly in undocumented immigration.

Dr. González: And a growing segment of Americans became uncomfortable with the rising number of undocumented immigrants residing in the US. Americans were upset that previous legislative efforts to address immigration hadn't, let's say, fixed the problem. People were still coming to the US, and they were doing so without legal documentation.

Media Clip: Immigration, it's being called the issue of the 90s. More and more people each year are coming into this country legally and illegally. Some states just can't afford the cost of medical care, education and welfare. Florida plans to sue the federal government for reimbursement, and other states like Texas and California may follow. Should we limit benefits to illegal immigrants? Do we need a national ID card? And are immigrants being unfairly blamed for many of the country's problems?

Dr. González: In the eyes of some Americans, the rising number of undocumented residents pose a serious problem for the nation. Their fears often manifested in a form of anti-immigrant and, more specifically, anti-Latino immigrant sentiment, fueled by fears of a 'browning of America.' Now, Lloyd, tell us a little bit about this.

Dr. Barba: Okay, so anthropologist Leo Chavez has described this historically deep and widespread phenomenon as the Latino Threat narrative. One example of this was how Latina immigrants were portrayed as being especially fertile, which meant that they had more babies and would have more children that would then need to be supported by social services. This summoned fears of a replacement of white Americans with young Latinos, all of whom might one day become American citizens.

Dr. González: Yeah, that's right, Lloyd. And all this translated into the political realm. During the early 1990s, it became common for legislators to feel political pressure to propose some sort of answer to, in other words, show they were tough on immigration. Legislators at the federal and state level pushed to pass a series of laws that emphasize both internal enforcement and the hardening of external boundaries. For reference, let's listen in to Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole speaking during the 1996 election season:

Media Clip (Dole): If America cannot control its borders, it cannot control its destiny. Legal immigration is an American tradition and a contribution to our society. But illegal immigration is a crime and a drain on scarce public resources. And the White House has done everything it could to blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration by creating more loopholes for those who reach our borders unlawfully.

Dr. Barba: And, just so we're clear, Sergio, this type of thinking was truly bipartisan in the 1990s. Here's Senator Diane Feinstein, the ostensibly Liberal Democratic senator from California:

Media Clip (Feinstein): Mexico must do its share, because the day when America could be the welfare system for Mexico is gone. We simply can't afford it. And I think you've seen the figures to state and local governments of what the cost is. It's over $2 billion in California alone. And I have those figures if you want them in specific, in my purse. And that's why the issue is now joined with 2 million illegal immigrants. It's a competition for space. Whether the space is a job, the space is a home, a place in a classroom, it becomes a competition for space.

Dr. González: And so it's no surprise that Feinstein was using this type of language. The first of these tests came in her state of California in 1994, a state with 1.3 million undocumented residents, approximately 308,000 of whom were children. Lloyd, tell us what went on in your home state in 1994.

Dr. Barba: Sure. So here are some basic facts: a coalition of conservative activists organized a ballot measure which would deny access to most social, health and educational services to undocumented people. That measure was called Proposition 187. Perhaps most dangerous to those residents, the law would require state officials, including everyone from police officers to teachers, to report anyone who is in the country without proper legal documentation to the federal government. Prop 187, and the larger issue of undocumented immigration, played a defining feature in the 1994 California gubernatorial election. And, Sergio, tell us what went on there.

Dr. González: So, incumbent candidate Pete Wilson came out in support of the measure. Ads for his campaign portrayed immigrants as an invading force, one that needed to be halted to preserve the very safety and health of the state.

Media Clip (Pete Wilson Ad,Speaker 1): They keep coming. 2 million illegal immigrants in California, the federal government won't stop them at the border. Yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them. Governor Pete Wilson sent the National Guard to help the Border Patrol. But that's not all.

Media Clip (Pete Wilson Ad, Speaker 2): For California to work hard, pay taxes and obey the laws, I'm suing to force the federal government to control the border. And I'm working to deny state services to illegal immigrants. Enough is enough.

Media Clip (Pete Wilson Ad,Speaker 1): Governor Pete Wilson.

Dr. González: Now, these types of ads, clearly engaging in fear mongering about an incoming horde of immigrants overtaking the state of California, were successful. Nearly 59% of Californians voted in favor of prop 187. The Law never actually went into effect as it was defeated in an immediate court challenge. But it did serve as a national marker for what was to come.

Dr. Barba: All right, so now we get to our second key year: 1996. In that year, just two years after the passage of Prop 187, Congress took their turn against undocumented immigration. Let's tune in to President Bill Clinton before the landmark changes of 1996:

Media Clip (Clinton): All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use imposed burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace, as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.

Dr. Barba: Federal legislators passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law, a series of legislation meant to address undocumented immigration. They included the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, as well as the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act. Sergio, what was the impact of all this?

Dr. González: Well, in all, these laws made more people deportable and few people legalizable. They had the cumulative effect of limiting legalization pathways for those in the country without legal papers, restricting access to state resources, and expanding powers of local police officers and immigration enforcement. They also dramatically expanded the category of who was "illegally" in the country and made more forms of undocumented immigration felonies and violent criminal acts. That's the legal language leading to skyrocketing deportations. So this period was really pivotal. The federal government essentially invented immigration enforcement as we know it today. And by the end of it, for immigrants living in the country without the right documents, deportation became a constant and real threat.

Dr. Barba: And to be clear, it wasn't all that obvious that this would be a major turning point for the invocation of sanctuary exactly 10 years later, but this put into place several key items. First, asylum became harder to attain. If you hadn't applied for asylum within a year of arriving in the US, well, you were out of luck. Second, it put into place the tool of expedited removal. This allowed immigration officers and courts to bypass a formal hearing,

Dr. González: And these laws put at jeopardy those without documentation or people holding a green card by mandating detention deportation for minor offenses. Because this applied retroactively, this meant that the INS would eventually track down thousands for deportation. This legislation also made dramatic changes to the way the United States police its southern border. Lloyd, fill us in on a few examples of that.

Dr. Barba: Sure. So, Congress infused hundreds of millions of dollars into border enforcement. That meant a more militarized border; more Border Patrol Agents, more money for physical walls, and more investment in different enforcement technology. By 2000, Border Patrol Agents would number over 10,000. And concerted efforts by border patrol and the Department of Justice- campaigns like Operation Hold the Line, Operation Gatekeeper, and Operation Desert Safeguard all aim to make it harder for migrants across the border illegally. This was best enunciated in the Border Patrol's policy of Prevention Through Deterrence. Here's anthropologist Jason De León, author of Land of Open Graves, outlining this policy.

Media Clip (De León): It's impossible, virtually, to cross near urban ports of entry. But we've essentially left the back door in southern Arizona open in an attempt to use the desert environment itself as a form of deterrence. The federal policy is called Prevention Through Deterrence. The thinking being that if we funnel migrants through this really inhospitable environment, where they've got to walk 50, 60, 70, miles over rough terrain where temperatures can be 115 degrees. Many people will get hurt, people will die, and eventually, word will spread that it's a dangerous social process, and don't try to do it

Dr. González: With more physical boundaries constructed in Texas and California, the two states with the highest number of illegal crossings, more migrants were pushed into the unforgiving Arizona desert. This directly resulted in a rising number of deaths in the desert, similar to the 1980 Oregon Pipe National Monument that we heard about in episode two. By conservative estimates, the Sonoran Desert has become the final resting spot for more than 8,000 people since 1998. It's an area that border policy has transformed into what De León has referred to as a "land of open graves."

Dr. Barba: The skyrocketing number of deaths on the border catalyzed a rapid response from Tucson area activists, some, in fact, who had only just a few years earlier been involved in sanctuary activism. Groups such as No More Deaths, Humane Borders, and Ajo Samaritans provided humanitarian aid across the southwestern borderlands, supplying water barrels, food and medical aid for migrants crossing the perilous desert. Here's Reverend Robin Hoover, one of the founders of Humane Borders, describing the organization's charge:

Media Clip (Hoover): Humane Borders is a social welfare organization founded in Arizona and recognized by the IRS as a charity that was created to respond to the needs of the migrants that are coming up in our desert. So many of them were dying, and we wanted to provide some humanitarian assistance to them in a passive way, where they could find water in the desert, in the areas that they get into most trouble. And we also wanted to actively advocate for changes in US migration policies that placed these people in peril in the first place.

Dr. González: These policies, repressive and punitive as they might have been, were ultimately unsuccessful in slowing down the number of people entering the country without documentation. In fact, by hardening the border, in other words, by making it hard to get in and out of the United States, more people decided to stay in the country instead of engaging in circular migration to Mexico. That all meant that by the early 2000s, the country's undocumented population tripled, nearing nearly 12 million people by 2006.

Dr. Barba: This brings us to our third key year: 2001. Following the terrorist attacks in 9/11, matters got even more complicated and perilous for those living in the country without proper documentation. Credible information was scant in those early months after the attacks, but many Americans believed that it had been the country's porous borders that had allowed Al Qaeda terrorists to enter the nation and perpetuate these terrible attacks. This would later prove to be untrue.

Dr. González: Legislators from both political parties worked quickly to assure the country that something like this would never happen again. Here's Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, making that promise.

Media Clip (Hastert): Our goal is to protect our national security and to keep American families safe by securing our borders. The attacks of September 11th were a wake-up call for our nation. Improved border security and enforcing the current law are imperative to keep terrorists from entering this country. Today, America is more vulnerable to terrorists, criminal gang members, and drug runners crossing our borders and increasing in numbers.

Dr. González: Now, in the midst of a newly declared War on Terror, federal legislators, like Hastert, began to connect national security with preventing terrorism, with securing the border, and, finally, with immigration policy. And that had major consequences. Right, Lloyd?

Dr. Barba: Oh, yeah. The result was a fairly significant restructuring of how the country police its borders and immigration. Here's President George W. Bush at his 2008 State of the Union address, calling for an increase in funding for border enforcement.

Media Clip (Bush): America needs to secure our borders, and with your help, my administration is taking steps to do so. We're increasing worksite enforcement, deploying fences and advanced technologies to stop illegal crossings. We've effectively ended the policy of catch and release at the border. And by the end of this year, we will have doubled the number of border patrol agents. Yet we also need to acknowledge that we will never fully secure our border until we create a lawful way for foreign workers to come here and support our economy.

Dr. Barba: Bush and legislators from both parties established a whole new system to make this happen. In 2002, Congress created the Department of Homeland Security. This new executive office assumed the responsibility of immigration, border patrol, and customs enforcement, all of which had originally been under the purview of the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor. Congress also created a new police force, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. It focused on monitoring and policing immigration within the interior of the country, ICE had at its full disposal all the new technologies and surveillance techniques being developed, at that time, to fight this new War on Terror. And Sergio, what was President Bush up to in the meantime?

Dr. González: Well, Bush had also expanded collaboration efforts with local municipalities to expand the federal government's policing potential. These collaborations between federal immigration enforcement and local police and sheriff departments included 287(g) agreements and the Secure Communities Program. It allowed local police officers to detain individuals for immigration related purposes. A broken tail light or running a stop sign could now lead to the beginning of deportation proceedings. Critics called the racial profiling this led to "Driving While Brown" because Latinos became the targets of these stops. From 1998 to 2007, the number of deportations more than doubled, from 179,000 to 359,000 per year. Now, even these enforcement schemes, all of which continue to criminalize immigrants, couldn't abet the growing restrictionist impulse that seemed to define US immigration policy at the turn of the century. That's the end of part one of this episode. Part two is available now.

Dr. Barba: That's it for this episode of sanctuary. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Dr. Lloyd Barba

Dr. González: and I'm Dr. Sergio González.

Dr. Barba: Remember, sanctuary saves lives

Dr. González: and strangers are neighbors you just haven't met yet.