A panel discussion titled “U.S. Immigration and Xenophobia, Past and Present” was held at Fresno City College on the evening of March 13. About 30 people came to Forum Hall (FH)-101 to hear from the five panelists, including three FCC faculty members and two advocates for immigrant rights.

Paul Gilmore – A Historical Perspective

Paul Gilmore, on behalf of the FCC Social Justice Center, organized this panel and began the discussion. As a history professor of over 20 years, Gilmore encouraged the audience to remember the repeating and exclusionary nature of nativism – a concept that protects the interest of established inhabitants against immigrants – within U.S. history.

“I don’t want to treat the current moment as unimportant, but I do think that taking a historical look at the issue can help peel away the concerns of the immediate moment, especially the latest news cycle,” Gilmore said. 

As Gilmore pointed out, even President Franklin was just as concerned about immigration as President Donald Trump. The question of what a “true American” looks like has dominated American conversation for centuries, and Gilmore highlighted a select few examples of xenophobia with a slideshow.

California, which has remained left-leaning for years, is not exempt from this prejudice. In May of 1913, California enacted the Alien Land Law, which denied Japanese families the ability to own American land. This was not the first of its kind. More recently, in 1994, California voters passed Prop 187 to restrict undocumented immigrants from public services.

“The U.S. has a split personality on immigration,” Gilmore said. “On the one hand, we’ve got this whole story of nativism that constantly crops up time after time every generation, but we’ve got this other one, a welcoming country, a country that welcomes not just the rich and well born, but the least of these.”

The New Colossus is a poem from 1883 that was cast onto a bronze plate and mounted underneath the Statue of Liberty. It can be read as a poem of hope, of empathy. Gilmore argues that its sentiment does not mirror those of many Americans.

“‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe.’ I mean, my goodness, what a great statement of welcome. Yet at the exact same time and sometimes in the exact same mind of the exact same people, you have this other notion of, ‘well, not you,’” Gilmore said.

As Gilmore describes, the Klu Klux Klan embodies an extreme version of this exclusionary attitude. The KKK thrived under an administration focused on building an “America for Americans.” Gilmore argued that not much has changed in the political beliefs of many Americans since then, citing the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally in 2017.

“There’s not much of a break between this world that I’m showing you in the 1920s and this world of eight years ago…different sorts of costumes, but basically that same story,” Gilmore said. “[Trump] is our latest iteration of 250 years of this stuff, 350 years of this stuff.”

Lupita Garcia – How the Dream Center makes a Difference

Lupita Garcia is a Counselor/Coordinator for the FCC Dream Center, a campus organization that offers support to students and families of undocumented and mixed status.

“We provide free immigration services for everyone at Fresno City, we also provide information with nonprofit organizations that would give assistance to them and to their family members, as well as a step-by-step family preparedness guide,” Lupita said.

The Dream Center works with the UFW Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for workers’ rights and protections across the United States. The foundation offers students personalized immigration legal services from attorneys and representatives in multiple languages.

“They’ve [UFW Foundation] been providing in person and Zoom informational sessions about know-your-rights and how to prepare for the new administration. They are very knowledgeable of what’s going on, so we always recommend to students, if they have a question, to make an appointment with the immigration attorney,” Lupita said.

According to Lupita, many students that come into the Dream Center are concerned about their financial situation in college. While the conversation regarding student federal aid is ongoing, the Dream Center has been working with the financial aid office and still offers guidance to students interested in the Dream Act.

On top of financial burden, increasing numbers of students have experienced mental health struggles during the Trump administration, according to Lupita. The Dream Center has therefore partnered with Psychological Services on campus to provide emotional support for students.

“It is really sad, sad to go to a place and be asked, ‘What is your immigration status?’ We shouldn’t be asking that information to our students, especially in this country that is supposed to welcome everyone,” Lupita said. “So we started that collaboration with psychological services here at Fresno City College, who is also known for providing mental health support, offerings, tips and resources to help students manage stress during these uncertain times.”

For more information, follow the Dream Center on Instagram or visit their office in Old Administration Building (OAB)-137.

“What’s new is the most important, and one of the things that I have always shared with our students is that the most important thing right now is to keep being informed,” Lupita said. 

Matt Matera – Sharing our Power

Matt Matera, founder of Central Valley Education Pathways and previous senior coordinator of the Immigrant Student Resource Center in the University of Arizona, gave information about the difficulties many immigrant and undocumented students have to go through.  

He mentioned how Arizona has the opposite of AB 540 and AB 130, bills which allow undocumented students to access college with financial help. Though the restrictiveness of living in Arizona had helped prepare him for the current issues regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

“When I moved to Fresno a little more than three years ago, I was like, ‘oh, it’s gotta be a little bit better, it’s California,’” Matera said. “I see the Trump signs, I see the things around me. I talk to folks, and I’m like, okay, and I think we can do more, right?”

Matera discussed a recent academic senate meeting, where he said many faculty members at FCC stated they would be open to ICE coming into their classrooms. He felt that teachers tend to respect authority, disregarding the different types of warrants that could allow them to legally turn down ICE. 

“When there’s a constant attack on people, and when someone like me, who’s a white, U.S. cisgender male with Uber privileges, it pushes us to make sure, how we use those privileges,” Matera said. “Ways that we need to make sure we’re protecting each other is, we can all remain silent. We can all be practicing our Fourth and Fifth amendment rights.”

Matera highlighted several Instagram accounts with educational resources, particularly with a focus on warrants, like the Asian American Legal Defense Fund and the National Immigration Law Center.

“If a warrant has U.S. court, something by the district court, and it is signed by a judge, which will usually start with ‘HON,’ then it is a judicial warrant that would have to be followed. An administrative warrant is not going to look like that, that can be signed by anybody within an immigration enforcement and does not have to be followed in a location,” Matera said. 

Matera said that ICE vehicles typically have no tags and are not commonly seen in the neighborhood. He explained that if not familiar with the vehicle, one can ask the driver if they are an officer/with law enforcement, and they have to provide that information.

Before Matera’s time was up, he brought attention to Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist who was arrested by ICE agents in New York. Matera projected a QR Code during his segment linking an ACLU petition for Khalil’s release.

“We’re being told ‘you’re not allowed to do that,’ your constitutional rights allow you to protest, especially on college campuses,” Matera said. “He is at threat of deportation now, even though he holds a green card.”

Rigoberto Garcia – The Importance of Interconnectedness

Rigoberto Garcia, a Chicano-Latino studies professor at Fresno City College, discussed interconnectedness. He said that about 45% of agricultural workers are undocumented, and people often find themselves disconnected from these workers that others rely upon to live. 

Garica pointed out that most people don’t see what others are going through, and don’t hear the stories so it’s hard to visualize when not in those direct spaces. These spaces are lacking and are absent from starting these conversations to talk about what others are experiencing. 

“It dehumanizes people, people that we categorize one way or another…When we dehumanize people, when we don’t think we’re connected to them, when we erase their stories, it’s hard for people to develop an understanding,” Garcia said.

He said the starting point for society, politics, and economics should be the intrinsic value and respect people deserve, rather than prioritizing profit, power and control. 

Blanca Ojeda – Everyday Activism

Blanca Ojeda, a community organizer for Faith in the Valley, shared her experience in first starting to organize for housing justice, where she was able to see the terrible conditions people were living in. 

Faith in the Valley, created in 2016, is a nonprofit organization working to empower communities and the Valley Watch Network was made in 2017 to warn about ICE presence. 

She began managing the Valley Watch Network hotline to help with rental assistance calls. Since November, the calls have changed to center more on the struggles of forced deportation. 

With ICE becoming more prevalent, they started to train people to become legal observers and to educate people about dealing with immigration officials and protecting themselves.

Ojeda said it was important to address healing justice, such as using the various arts to speak from a personal space and to spread information, or to help with providing legal education to others. 

She then detailed the supporting roles of The Valley Watch Network. 

• The first role being the dispatcher, the person who helps answer the calls.
•  The second role is the responder, a person who will go and respond quickly to the scene of where ICE is. 
• The third role would be the accompaniment team, those who help with mutual aid of families who are left vulnerable, such as support with groceries and driving. 

Ojeda promoted the network for anyone interested in volunteering. 

Ojeda said ICE will often target the male of the family as he is the main supporter, therefore destabilizing the family. Once families are left unstable, they are forced to move since there is no longer a way to support themselves. 

The number provided for the Valley Watch Network is 559-206-0151, which can be used if ICE is seen in the community. 

Texting pictures to the hotline number is important to verify the sighting and capture the location. Ojeda mentioned the importance of ICE being aware of any recording, as they will act more according to the law.

She also warned that agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Marshalls, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosions (ATF), Federal Bureau of Prisons, and Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) are all federal agencies that enforce immigration laws. 

It is important to document the date and what agency it was if there is a sighting in the community in order to report about it. Ojeda also showed a judicial warrant. It is signed by a judge and action would need to be taken upon it within 14 days. If the warrant goes past the date, then it is no longer a valid warrant. 

“It’s always helpful to have somebody at the side shouting, reminding you constantly that you have the right to remain silent. You have a right to refuse to be searched, and you have the right to an attorney before you say anything. And so if somebody’s there reminding you that, then you can hear them right, then you can kind of snap out of it and be like, That’s right. I have rights,” Ojeda said.

Any Questions?

After each panelist spoke for at least 15 minutes, the discussion opened into the crowd, prompting anyone interested to ask questions.

Q: “Most ICE agents I’ve seen or heard of wear excessive face coverings without any kind of markings. Why don’t they show their face, do you think they’re ashamed of what they’re doing?”

Blanca Ojeda: “I think they’re trying to keep themselves safe. I think they are scared that they’re seeing a lot of communities come out in response… do not record the person being detained. Record the ICE officer. So we do want to be familiar with who those people are. And I think now they’re trying to play it safer, where they’re completely covering their faces… Police have the power to lie to you, they have the authority to lie to you. What we’ve seen is, they’ll pull someone over and they’ll completely lie… and so they will use a very firm voice and a very firm tone, and when you don’t obey, they will use force. And this is why it’s so important to have a legal observer reporting the situation, because if somebody there is able to capture that, then we have a case, then we have an argument, then we can pull in attorneys, and the attorneys can say their constitutional rights were violated, and that is really the only way that we can fight back.”

Q: “What do you say to people who argue that America will ‘survive’ because Trump already ran once and everything turned out fine? Why is democracy more important than ever?”

Paul Gilmore: “Take the long view. We look at what just happened in January, a new administration coming in. But in some ways, if you look at the previous four years, it wasn’t bliss then, either. ICE still existed, people were being detained… it’s not just this person, it’s an entire system that we’ve gotta look at.”

Matt Matera: “We have to start in this place that we’re seeing each other as equal. I think of this quote from Naima Penniman. It’s in Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy book…when Hurricane Katrina was causing its devastation, the trees that survived the storm were these oak trees, right? And why do oak trees survive? They have roots and they don’t just dig deep, they actually dig wide. So they spread and they actually interconnect with other oak trees. So the way that they were able to survive the storm is because they’re connected to each other. So her entire theory always sits with me when I think about what’s our responsibility to each other, it is to organize and connect with each other. Because the ways that we can survive these things and to even thrive and fight back is to interconnect with each other and to see them. So for folks who are like, ‘I’m going to wait this one out,’ that’s a pretty irresponsible thing to do, because it’s going to impact you.”

Rigoberto Garcia: “To be docile in the face of terror normalizes terror in our societies. And although it has been used over and over, the more we just accept it and let it happen to other folks, the more it normalizes in our lives.”

Q: “Because it starts with human decency and having value as a human regardless of scale or talent and what you can give, do you have any recommendations on how to teach or share that with others?”

Rigoberto Garcia: “I think meeting people where they’re at, there’s a phrase that people use. It says ‘platicarnos, faminando,’ walking and talking. And the idea is that you’re meeting folks where they’re at, but you’re also walking with them, learning with them and developing your ideas with each other based on where you are in that context. It’s important that it looks different in different places.”

Q: “So I’m a Clovis faculty member. In conversations we’re having with [campus] administration, what I’m finding troubling is the way they are rhetorically positioning exigent circumstances. Yes we have AB21, yes we have SB54, ‘oh, exigent circumstances, law enforcement at any any level, must comply with federal agents.’ …So with that being said, how do we address the way in which they are disingenuously engaging with this enforcement in certain cases? How have you all dealt with that kind of control position here at FCC?”

Rigoberto Garcia: “As an instructor here, I think what we quickly realized is that we needed to organize beyond what’s being done by the institution, and I think figuring out strategies for us was important, also our network, as was mentioned. And what we understand is that there are going to be situations where it’s probably going to be the campus police that’s going to walk ICE to the classrooms. And so we developed some strategies that we’re still thinking through, but for such situations, including identifying safe spaces on campus, also having our own rapid response network that exists within the campus to alert folks and to let out our classes if we get any idea of things that are happening.”