Tag Archives: politics

Rethinking Immigration: Lessons from the ‘No Kings’ March

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Today, I attended the “No Kings” march. The crowd seemed smaller than at previous demonstrations I’ve attended, but the messages on the posters stayed the same. Signs scattered throughout the gathering condemned ICE, challenged its tactics, demanded accountability, and called for the agency’s abolition.

A person taking a selfie at the Boulder Farmers Market, with information booths and a crowd visible in the background. The person wears sunglasses and a cap, and there are colorful market tents set up.

Those signs got me thinking about how we arrived at this moment and whether we’ve learned anything from our history.

Controlling borders and regulating immigration are legitimate government responsibilities. How we carry out those responsibilities matters. An immigration system that separates families, instills fear in communities, and treats people as security threats before considering their individual circumstances deserves more than a budget increase and a political talking point.

It deserves a fundamental rethink.

How We Got Here

Immigration enforcement in the United States didn’t always work the way we know it today.

The U.S. Customs Service dates to 1789, when the federal government needed to collect tariffs and generate revenue. The Immigration Act of 1891 established a centralized federal role in immigration control. The following year, Ellis Island opened as a major immigration inspection station. Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 to police land borders between official ports of entry.

In 1933, the government consolidated immigration functions into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In 1940, the agency transferred to the Department of Justice and administered legal immigration and naturalization while enforcing immigration laws and deporting people who violated them.

That arrangement had its shortcomings, but it recognized that immigration involved more than enforcement. People applied for citizenship. Others faced removal proceedings.

Then came September 11, 2001.

A view of a street with a construction fence and debris in the background, showing the remains of a demolished building. A person in a coat stands on the sidewalk, with other buildings and cables visible.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The government dismantled the INS and transferred its functions, along with those of the U.S. Customs Service, into the newly established Department of Homeland Security.

By 2003, three agencies had taken shape:

  • U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (CIS), responsible for administering lawful immigration and citizenship applications.
  • Customs and Border Protection (CBP), responsible for border security and enforcement at ports of entry.
  • Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), responsible for interior immigration enforcement, detention, deportation, and certain criminal investigations.

The restructuring reflected a new national security environment, placing immigration enforcement within a department built to protect the country from security threats.

Crossing a border unlawfully is not automatically the same thing as posing a threat to national security. Yet the post-9/11 framework embeds immigration enforcement within a broader security system, where the tools, priorities, and institutional culture emphasize apprehension and removal over the circumstances of individual people.

We should be asking whether that approach serves the country today.

Reagan, IRCA, and a Different Approach

Immigration reform wasn’t always the political third rail it has become.

A blue campaign button featuring the word 'REAGAN' in bold white letters, with the slogan 'Let's make America great again' underneath.

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The law provided a path to legal status for approximately 2.7 million undocumented immigrants who met its eligibility requirements, including continuous residence in the United States since January 1, 1982.

Reagan understood that millions of people had already established lives here. They worked, raised families, paid bills, and contributed to their communities. Removing everyone who lacked legal status would have been an enormous undertaking, with consequences extending far beyond the individuals targeted.

IRCA offered a compromise. It combined legalization for eligible immigrants with employer sanctions for hiring unauthorized workers and increased resources for immigration enforcement. The legislation was imperfect, and its enforcement provisions created their own problems. Nevertheless, it demonstrated that a conservative president and a bipartisan Congress could acknowledge an uncomfortable reality: an immigration system that ignores the lives people have built here will never resolve the problem simply by ordering them to leave.

I have a personal reason for thinking about that history.

The Tanaka Farm: A Local Lesson in Immigration Policy

Near Longmont, the history of the Tanaka Brothers Farms offers a revealing local chapter in the complicated relationship between agriculture, immigration, and federal policy.

A weathered white building with a red roof is situated in an open field, surrounded by sparse trees and grass under a partly cloudy sky.

The Tanaka family’s agricultural story stretches back through the experiences of Japanese Americans who built lives and businesses in Colorado, including people whose families endured incarceration during World War II. The family’s farming operation relied on immigrant labor.

IRCA’s employer-sanctions provisions eventually extended to agricultural employers, bringing new compliance obligations to an industry dependent on seasonal labor. By the early 1990s, the Tanaka Brothers Farms operation had entered bankruptcy proceedings.

The timing invites questions about how immigration policy, labor requirements, agricultural economics, and the treatment of farmworkers intersected. It does not, by itself, establish that IRCA caused the farm’s collapse. That history deserves a closer look at the evidence, the decisions, and the people who lived through the consequences.

Three individuals engaged in conversation by a gate outdoors, with a grassy area and a building in the background.

I’m pursuing those questions in a book and documentary project that examines the Tanaka farm and the larger agricultural history of the Boulder-Longmont area, including the Japanese American community, migrant labor, and the forces that shaped who worked the land—and who ultimately benefited from it.

Local history can reveal what national political arguments often obscure. Immigration policy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It reaches into fields, workplaces, families, and communities, with consequences that can last for generations.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Today’s turnout may have been smaller than I expected. That doesn’t make its message less urgent. Public attention comes and goes, but federal enforcement policies continue to affect people’s lives long after demonstrators return home.

A person wearing a gray beanie holds a cardboard sign that reads 'Melt Ice' at a protest, with other protesters and signs visible in the background.

We need to distinguish between enforcing immigration law and treating enforcement itself as the ultimate goal.

An alternative would preserve legitimate border controls while establishing clear limits on enforcement powers, meaningful independent oversight, due process, and humane treatment. It would create workable legal pathways for people with deep roots here, meet the demand for immigrant labor, and let employers and workers comply with the law without turning entire communities into targets.

We should also ask whether ICE, as currently structured, is the best way to accomplish those objectives. No federal agency deserves immunity from scrutiny because Congress created it, presidents reshaped it, and changing political priorities gave it new missions.

What government builds, government can change.

Reagan’s IRCA compromise reminds us that immigration policy need not be a choice between unrestricted entry and mass deportation. The history of the Tanaka farm reminds us that federal decisions can have consequences far beyond the halls of Congress and the headlines of the day.

The “No Kings” march reminded me that government derives its authority from the people. That principle must mean more than showing up with a sign once or twice a year. It means insisting that government agencies remain accountable to the public they serve.

If our immigration system produces fear without lasting solutions, divides families without addressing the forces that draw people here, and consumes public resources without resolving the problems it was created to solve, then defending the status quo is not responsible governance. It is a refusal to learn.

We can secure our borders without abandoning our humanity. We can enforce laws without treating every undocumented person as a threat. And we can demand accountability without pretending that the only choices are to accept the system as it stands or abolish every form of immigration enforcement.

That work shouldn’t end when the march ends.

Before Dismissing Democratic Socialism, Ask Why It’s Growing

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Every time the phrase “democratic socialism” pops up in a political discussion, someone inevitably reacts as if a Soviet submarine has surfaced in the neighborhood swimming pool.

For many Americans, especially those who grew up during the Cold War, the word “socialism” comes with a lot of baggage. It evokes memories of school drills, the Iron Curtain, and endless warnings about communism. To some, the term sounds less like a political philosophy and more like a 1962 emergency broadcast.

Before dismissing democratic socialism outright, it might be worth asking a simple question:

Why is it growing?

The answer has less to do with Karl Marx and more to do with rent.

Younger voters aren’t advocating for government ownership of everything. Most aren’t spending their weekends debating nineteenth-century economic theory. They’re looking at housing costs, healthcare bills, student debt, stagnant wages, and wondering why the American Dream require a six-figure salary and three side hustles.

For them, democratic socialism serves as shorthand for a belief that the economy should work for more people, not just those at the very top.

Whether that diagnosis is correct is a matter for debate, but the concerns themselves are real.

The conversation becomes more interesting when demographics enter the picture.

Every day, roughly 10,000 Americans turn 18 and become eligible to vote. Every day, roughly 10,000 Americans also turn 65 and enter retirement age. One generation is stepping onto the political stage while another gradually exits it. That’s not a criticism of older voters. It’s how time flies. Elections are always a contest among the past, the present, and the future.

Political parties ignore these demographic shifts at their peril.

The emerging electorate is more diverse than any generation before it. Demographers project that by around 2045, the United States will become a “majority-minority” nation, meaning no single racial or ethnic group will constitute a majority of the population.

Whether that development excites or worries people, it represents a profound demographic change that will influence politics, culture, and public policy for decades.

In that context, the question are why young voters are embracing new ideas and why anyone would expect them not to.

After all, every generation rebels against the assumptions of the previous one.

The Baby Boomers challenged the norms of the 1950s. Generation X questioned institutions. Millennials entered adulthood during economic turmoil. Generation Z inherited housing prices that make Monopoly look affordable.

Given those circumstances, it shouldn’t be surprising that younger voters are exploring alternatives and asking questions about wealth, opportunity, and economic fairness.

Critics of democratic socialism argue that expanding government programs increases taxes, create inefficiencies, and weaken economic incentives. Supporters argue that today’s economy has produced a widening gap between those who have accumulated extraordinary wealth and those struggling to keep up with the cost of living.

Both sides make points worth discussing.

What gets lost in the shouting match is that many of the policies associated with democratic socialism already exist in America. Social Security, Medicare, public education, unemployment insurance, rural electrification, and public libraries were all controversial at one time.

I remember a political cartoon from the 1950s of a Russian truck dumping wheat in the ocean to prop up prices. The U.S. government subsidizes ag businesses the same way.

Today, most Americans view them as normal parts of civic life.

This doesn’t mean democratic socialism is right. It doesn’t mean capitalism is wrong.

It means the debate is more complicated than the labels.

For older Americans, “socialism”still conjures images of Cold War adversaries like Joseph Stalin’s work camps . For younger Americans, the term means affordable healthcare, attainable housing, stronger worker protections, and a chance to build a stable life.

The disconnect is less about ideology and more about vocabulary.

Before dismissing democratic socialism as a relic from another era or embracing it as the answer to every problem it’s worth listening to what its supporters say.

Political movements rarely grow by accident.

They grow when enough people feel that something isn’t working.

The label isn’t the story.

The story is why a growing number of Americans, especially younger Americans, believe the current system needs repair.

If that many future voters are asking the question, both political parties might want to pay closer attention because if something keeps surfacing in the political pool, it may be less useful to shout “submarine” and more useful to ask what’s driving it to the surface in the first place.

How Acronyms Shape Xenophobia in America

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The Alphabet of Exclusion: The bureaucratic lexicon included “acronyms” to save time. In the history of American xenophobia, acronyms save face. Three-letter shorthand compresses the jagged edges of state power into something smooth, portable, and easy to swallow.

Today, we see ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) dominating the headlines.

These acronyms are the latest entries in a century-long glossary of exclusion.

Our Long Memory of Othering: Linguistic distancing is an ingrained feature of American domestic and foreign policy.

The names change, but the grammar of “the outsider” remains consistent.

• The Precedent – The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882): Before the era of modern acronyms, this was the first significant law that restricted immigration based on a specific race.

The Act codified the idea that certain people wouldn’t assimilate, establishing a legal basis for the federal government to exclude anyone deemed a threat to the nation’s homogeneity.

• The Prototype – EO (Executive Order) 9066 (1942): Eighty-four years ago, on February 19, 1942, the ink dried on EO 9066. With a stroke of a pen, FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) authorized a military action and birthed a new “alphabet soup” of exclusion.

The WCCA (Wartime Civil Control Administration) and the WRA (War Relocation Authority) were established as wartime agencies for prison management.

By World War II, the language had become clinical. EO 9066 did not mention Japanese people or any specific ethnic group.


Instead, it authorized the Secretary of War to define “military areas” from which “any or all persons” could be excluded, a neutral phrase that allowed the WCCA and the WRA (War Relocation Authority) to operate with stoic efficiency.

By the time the public learned to say these new initials, 125,000 Japanese Americans had been rounded up from the West Coast, and filed away under the euphemistic labels of “evacuees” in “relocation centers.”

• The Modern Pivot – 9/11 and the Muslim Ban: The 21st-century xenophobia found its shorthand in the wake of 9/11. We saw the DHS implement NSEERS (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System), which targeted men from predominantly Muslim countries.

Later, the “Muslim Ban” (EO 13769) echoed the 1942 rationale and used the national security blanket to cover the profiling of a specific faith.

• The Present – ICE and the DHS Deportation Machine: Currently, the conversation centers on ICE and the DHS’s overly aggressive deportation tactics.

A three-letter enforcement agency reduced the complexity of migration and the history of Latin American labor by stripping away human dignity.

History suggests that when we stop using names and start using initials, take actions, and hold beliefs we’d rather not hold to account.

The WRA and WCCA have been abolished, replaced by DHS and ICE.

The letters changed, and digital databases replaced the paper files.

The underlying belief that certain populations must be registered, monitored, and managed for the safety of the collective “us” remains the durable dark side of the American grand experiment.