Maddy Crowell’s Wired feature reveals Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids as a force multiplier for the hardships already confronted by immigrants and asylum seekers in the United States. Sam and Ava moved their family to Chicago, where they applied for Temporary Protected Status, found steady employment, and secured special-needs support for their daughter. Six months of ICE surveillance and raids intensified the vulnerable family’s struggle, prompting job loss and delaying crucial medical care for both parents. A crucial story told from the vantage point of those directly affected by recent immigration raids—and still just a drop of the collective terror faced by immigrants in America.
One day, in January, Sam was at work when a sharp piece of plastic flew from a machine and lodged in his eye. When he came home that night, his eye was swollen, and he had a lump on his eyeball. A white dot obstructed his vision. Ava urged him to go to the hospital, but he refused; he was too scared. What if ICE was lurking at the parking lot or in the lobby? If he got deported, what would the family do? For two days, he didn’t go to work. He lay in bed, hoping it would heal. But the pain in his eye was excruciating and had started to extend deep into his skull. They began to fear he might lose his sight.
More stories of immigration and America
ICE Is Pushing Minneapolis Underground
“After ICE raids, tear gassing protestors, and two killings, DHS ‘border czar’ Tom Homan arrived in the Twin Cities to announce a winding down of immigration enforcement. But the battle has merely moved from the streets to the underground, and the city remains under siege.”
Disappeared to a Foreign Prison
“The Trump administration is deporting people to countries they have no ties to, where many are being detained indefinitely or forcibly returned to the places they fled.”
A Lone Louisiana Lawyer’s Fight against Trump’s Deportations
“Louisiana is home to a higher concentration of migrant detention centers than almost anywhere else in the country. Many in the region don’t seem to mind too much. Lawyer Christopher Kinnison, though, is an exception.”
In the Shadow of an Immigrant Detention Center, a Small House Offers Refuge
” Amid rising ICE arrests, volunteers provide aid—a meal, a bed, gas money—to anyone visiting someone detained in remote rural Georgia.”
Inside the Deadliest Immigration-Related Disaster in US History
“He went in search of a better life for his family. His brother refused to let him go alone. Only one survived the journey.”
A Theology of Smuggling
“In the early 1980s, in Tucson, activists and religious leaders joined forces to protect refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. Their collaboration galvanized the Sanctuary Movement.”
