Snuffing Latino Immigrants Out of the Deep South

The state of Alabama has recently succeeded in calcifying its boundaries and criminalizing undocumented immigrants, especially those of Latino origin by passing the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizenship Protection Act (HB56). The following narrative draws from ongoing ethnographic research in Alabama and examination of law and media. Latino immigrant life within the Deep South, and in the nation broadly, is being increasingly criminalized and specifically targeted through local and state-level law and policy. Furthermore, the wave of state-level immigration legislation highlights conflicting discourses and practices concerning sovereignty and citizenship between the state and nation-state, as immigration brings to bear the argument of state vs federal rights (a long-standing issue in the South) at the expense of immigrants.

Puzzle building dinámica with immigrant leaders from Alabama and surrounding states. Taken November 2011 in Albertville, AL. Photo courtesy Gwendolyn Ferreti

Authors of HB56 purport its purpose—attrition via enforcement—as a new philosophy of deportation whereby states enforce existent federal immigration law and create state-level law and policy aimed to disrupt the everyday life of an undocumented immigrant. As a result, undocumented immigrants are being pushed out of Alabama through polices that criminalize their existence within state boundaries, thus denying their access to work and negating access to basic necessities such as public utilities, education and housing. The goal is to effectively encourage immigrants to deport themselves or encounter ever more ubiquitous state-sponsored arrests and deportations based on the reasonable suspicion of lack of status. It further criminalizes association to undocumented immigrants by making it a felony crime to smuggle undocumented immigrants, expanding this to mean “the transportation, procurement of transportation, or use of real or personal property” to undocumented persons (AL-HB56, Section 4). Under this law, a young person driving their undocumented parent could be charged with smuggling were she stopped for a routine traffic violation, and the mother could be subject to arrest and held without bond while she is turned in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by local law enforcement.

HB56 defacto targets the Latino population in the state of Alabama because Latin Americans are the fastest growing immigrant population in the state. Furthermore, HB56’s main sponsors continuously pointed to the growing Latino population in passing HB56, claiming that this population illegitimately uses state resources and pointing to areas of Alabama with growing Latino populations as in decay. For example, Senator Beason, the co-sponsor of HB56, was quoted saying: “If you don’t believe illegal immigration will destroy a community go and check out parts of Alabama around Arab and Albertville” (as cited in www.cullmantimes.com/local/x2072622472/Beason-Dems-don-t-want-to-solve-illegal-immigration-problem). At the Alabama state senate legislative hearing on HB56 on April 12, 2011, he further stated that undocumented children and the children of undocumented Latino immigrants were a burden because they required extra expenditures to school systems like translation and interpretation. It is not a coincidence that Arab, AL and Albertville, AL have some of the largest Hispanic populations in the state.

Latino immigrant group and allies travel in caravan to rally in Birmingham, AL. Taken June 2011 in Tuscaloosa, AL. Photo courtesy Gwendolyn Ferreti

Alabama’s HB56 law takes the lead in a wave of xenophobic state legislation across the United States, including AZ SB 1070, GA HB87, and SC Act No 69—all spawning from rigorous lobbying by ant-immigrant think tanks like the Center for Immigration Studies, which has been linked to white supremacist groups (Heidi Beirich, The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2009). In an era where the viability of the future of state entities were once questioned by the rise of neoliberal globalization, today we see that the state has reworked itself, held fast to its power, yet ironically, in the United States at least, now once again faces internal, domestic threats that point to deep questions of national identity and exclusive narratives of belonging. Alabama itself has had a long history of challenging federal state power and participating in White supremacist nationalist projects, having once seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. The adoption of attrition through enforcement falls into this argument as it attacks what is being characterized as a lack of federal action by conservative media and anti-immigrant think tanks. It calls for a prescriptive adoption of policy and state law, whereby mundane aspects of everyday life like driving, employment, acquiring housing, or attending school are made inaccessible to undocumented immigrants with the explicit intent for them to leave the country (see Jessica M Vaughan, Attrition Through Enforcement: A Cost-Effective Strategy to Shrink the Illegal Population, Center for Immigration Studies, 2006). HB56 further targets the children of undocumented persons, creating a categorical distinction between documented and undocumented children enrolled in public school for statistical purposes.

The harshness of the law has prompted fear among undocumented immigrants, and consequently many families have left the state (sometimes overnight) and pulled their children out of school immediately following HB56’s implementation. I have received scores of phone calls and Facebook messages from my research collaborators, all inquiring about the status of HB56 and what it entails. Rumors have been rampant and the Spanish language media (radio, internet and television) has given sometimes flawed and sensationalist coverage, adding to hysteria. People were convinced that students would be denied entry into schools and that the police were going to randomly stop anyone who looked Latino. These rumors illustrate the overall state of mind, where the community felt singled out and exposed. One of my collaborators, Matilde, illustrates the sense of heightened self-consciousness: “A lot of my coworkers left [after HB56 went into effect], so when I went to work I felt like everyone kept staring at me all the time, and it happens in the stores too. People just look at you and then whisper, and it makes me feel like they’re watching me.” Out of those that stayed, undocumented immigrants are now struggling to incorporate the increased threat of deportation into their everyday lives, articulating a collective fear from the fact that a routine, mundane action may lead to incarceration and deportation. “It’s not the same,” said Imelda, another one of my research collaborators. “Every time I see a cop pull up behind me on the road my body shivers and I get so nervous. We’ve cut down on our outings; we can’t even do the things we used to do before…It’s not the same,” she continued.

Yet while many undocumented individuals and mixed status families have left the state, many have made the conscious decision to stay, and consciously resist HB56 through the use of social media, socially interactive technologies and web-based tools (eg, Facebook, Twitter and texting), through extensive personal communication, and by establishing and reinforcing formal and informal social groups. Lastly, there is an increasing involvement in grassroots activism and emergent political campaigns. In this sense, this law has, ironically, brought new opportunities through crisis for fomenting immigrant rights activism and making interracial alliances between the black and brown communities in Alabama and for Latinos to make more public claims of belonging to a growing audience. As an example, although she was once uninvolved in politics, Imelda has now become involved with the Alabama Coalition Immigrant Justice and has spoken out against the law. As part of her growing activism, she spoke at a local rally in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and a large rally attended by over three thousand people at the Sixteenth Baptist Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama, the site of the September 15, 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing where four African American girls were killed during the Civil Rights Movement. Many African American leaders, churches and organizations in Alabama have come out against HB56, and the law is characterized as a new facet in the struggle for Civil Rights—albeit with its distinctions and complications. So then, we see that as the state of Alabama draws out immigrants from its political boundary, we see alongside it an evolution of a different border: the color line, marked despite the colorblind language that HB56 itself employs.

Gwendolyn Ferreti-Manjarrez is a visiting scholar at the University of Alabama and doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently conducting ethnographic research on governmentality, community formation, and Latina immigration in the Deep South. To contact her, email gwenferreti[at]gmail.com.