The discourse of deservingness: Racialized framing during rumored ICE raids

Introduction

Deportation rumors have long existed before the establishment of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). While anxiety and fear of deportation remain a central feature of the immigration experience, America’s most vulnerable communities must now navigate with changes in prioritized and increased deportation levels, federal and state collaboration for mass deportation, and political conversations about immigrant brown bodies. While President Obama was known as the ‘Deporter-in-Chief’ for the unrivaled number of deportations that occurred during his two terms, President Trump’s policy changes and budget proposals focus on making anyone unlawfully present in the country a priority for deportation. President Trump’s 2020 Budget allocated $51.7 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, a 7.9% increase from 2019, for a border wall, 2,800 additional officers, and an expansion of immigration detention centers (White House, 2019). These actions have heightened widespread fear of deportation in immigrant communities and have also strained solidarity among undocumented people. Undocumented immigrants of Latinx ¹ origin have to renegotiate daily life in order to avoid deportation and may adopt racialized framing of immigrants to alleviate fears of removal. Many communities depend on Spanish-language radio stations and digital media for information as they make decisions about heightened threats.

We argue that, in the process of dealing with fear and anxiety during a rumored ICE raid, Latinx people of various legal status used frames to justify that they deserved to stay by noting that it was others who deserved to be deported. Such discourses of deservedness rely on racialized framing of deportation to alleviate individual stress and anxiety during periods of heightened threats of deportation. These discourses reproduce larger, racialized tropes of Latinx criminality and highlight divisions in the community. The Latinx community in this study is encompassed by people of legal status (such as lawful permanent residents (LPR)) and those of traditionally understood liminal status, defined by the ambiguous and temporary nature of their immigration standing (such as Temporary Protective Status, work visas, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) (Gonzales, 2015). Although LPRs in previous decades experienced more security in their status, Menjivar and Abrego (2012) have argued that even LPRs experience liminal status as continuous executive policy changes have increased their vulnerability for deportation. Within this deportation regime, removal proceedings can lead to lasting and devastating consequences for immigrant communities of color, particularly due their criminalization (De Genova and Peutz, 2010). The threat of deportation has forced mixed-status immigrant families, consisting of both citizen and undocumented members, to find ways to cope with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.

The discourse of deservedness yields an understanding of racial formation as it intersects with the current deportation regime, the policies and practices that lead to mass deportation, and deportability (De Genova and Peutz, 2010; Flores-Yeffal et al., 2017; Omi and Winant, 2015). In the following sections, we discuss the racialization and criminalization of Latinx immigrants in the United States. First, we provide a brief summary of events and political context.

The context of hometown

Around 11 million unauthorized immigrants live in the US, with two-thirds being of Mexican and Central American origin (Passel and Cohn, 2016). Over 92% of deportees are Latinx, of which 85% are males of lower socioeconomic status (Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013). Texas has the second largest number of immigrants in the country with border regions and large cities serving as traditional destinations for Latinx immigrants. Hometown ² is a relatively new destination in Texas because of the surge of labor demands requiring the need for cheaper labor. Metropolitan areas like Houston and San Antonio are no longer the only spaces experiencing an increase of Latinx immigrants because of changes in immigrant networks (Massey, 1990).

Further, Hometown carries a reputation of anti-immigrant and anti-Black rhetoric that has systemically kept out minorities from the city through their policies and public attitudes. The intentional residential segregation of Hometown, similar to other cities and suburban areas, is consistent with a history of exclusion that creates unequal distribution of social and economic resources across racial groups (Massey and Denton, 1993; Peterson and Krivo, 1999; Light and Thomas, 2019). Despite the more diverse arrivals, Hometown represents a highly conservative Texas county, as 58.5% voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 55.9% voted for him again in 2020.

According to the Center for Migration Studies (2015) and Census (United States Census Bureau, 2017), 13% of over 200,000 people living in the Hometown area are foreign-born, of which 45% are unauthorized. Southeastern University is the primary employer in Hometown. Its impressive growth in enrollment from 2000 to 2016 drives a local boom in real estate, construction, hospitality services, retail, landscaping, educational and healthcare services – industries which employ both authorized and unauthorized immigrant workers (Passel and Cohn, 2016). A nearby location, where most immigrants live, is 41% White and 38% Latinx. Hometown, on the other hand, is 67% White and 15% Latinx. The growth of the Latinx community is noted in many local political discussions and the vast differences within these neighboring towns reflect spatial segregation.

The rumored ICE presence

In February 2017, reports that ICE was present in Hometown circulated on Spanish social media platforms and radio stations. What followed was a week of frenzied posts, debates, and calls to the local Spanish radio station about these reports. Although these reports were unsubstantiated, they created real fear and anxiety among this community that has lasting effects. Participants in the 27,000 member La Pulga (Flea Market) Facebook page took part in lively discussions about the life of immigrants in Hometown, Texas. Given that ICE agents conducted targeted apprehensions across the state in February, the heightening a sense of uncertainty was warranted. Coincidently, February 16th was the national boycott ‘A Day Without an Immigrant’ and the conversations regarding ICE sightings, immigration policy, worker rights, and political attitudes spiraled online and on the radio as people in the Latinx community looked for advice and support. The La Pulga Facebook page posts reflected the community’s anxiety and fear about whether ICE was in town during those days and what business they were conducting.

Since various calls and emails flooded Hometown’s local news stations about alleged raids at construction sites and other locations, an ICE spokesperson released a statement indicating that they would not be conducting raids in the county. In retrospect, 153 undocumented immigrants were arrested by ICE in South and Central Texas in February and March, although there were no arrests in Hometown to our knowledge (Staff, 2017).

In March 2017, Hometown’s County Sheriff declined participation in a program known as 287(g) that would deputize local law enforcement as agents of ICE. ³ The opposition to the program was not due to alliance with the immigrant community, but rather unreasonable expenses associated with participation such as costs associated with training, salary, and benefits. Hometown’s law enforcement is frequently visited by ICE and immigrants with deportation holds are picked up every Wednesday. Despite Hometown’s County Sheriff's stance on improving communication with crime victims regardless of immigration status, they voluntarily cooperated with ICE according to previous statements made by the Sheriff's office.

While Hometown’s ICE presence is only one example of how the heightened threat of deportation can create chaos in marginalized immigrant communities, immigration and law enforcement policy interact in ways that lead to the hyper-precaritization of everyday life for Brown and Black immigrants. Hyper-precaritization, a tool we use to frame this heightened threat of deportation, is both an economic and existential state of anxiety that results from the interlocking labor exploitation and hyper-surveillance of working-class, foreign-born people of color (Schierup et al., 2015). Immigrants are racialized as undocumented, live in over-policed poor communities of color, and are often relegated to working in low-wage industries, many of which are conducted in plain view of law and immigration enforcement (like day laboring, landscaping, and construction). Hyper-precaritization can lead to economic difficulties and a heightened sense of deportability given employers’ racialization and threats of deportation as labor discipline that has been highlighted in much immigration research (Golash-Boza, 2015; Menjivar and Abrego, 2012; Provine and Doty, 2011; Schierup et al., 2015).

At the same time, residential segregation leads to concentrated pockets of mixed-status and unauthorized families living in areas where there is heavier police presence, and greater possibility of being stopped for driving without a license. Driving to school or work can produce anxiety and uncertainty (Provine and Doty, 2011). In this way, the social inclusion of hyper-precaritized immigrants are dependent on their labor utility in the local economy. Immigrants are vulnerable to a continuous threat of removal when they no longer appear to provide economic incentive (Golash-Boza, 2015; Schierup et al., 2015). While we do not focus our analysis on the labor demands of Hometown, we include them to clarify the context of deportation and contextualize the consequences of hyper-precaritization of Latinx immigrants during deportation threats.

Since the 2016 presidential elections, immigrants are more acutely aware of their deportability as they maneuver daily tasks, especially as executive orders consistently change immigration policies and priority levels. The fear of deportation is not new, yet fear has increased during the last four years. The Trump Administration’s aggressively racist and xenophobic approach to immigration has resulted in heightened numbers of deportations and a shift in popular perceptions of immigration. This results in anti-immigrant rhetoric that has led to a nation-wide conversation about citizenship and immigration. Fear of deportation subverts routines, like driving kids to school or going to the supermarket, because they can result in contact with local law enforcement and may end in deportation. Importantly, even if local deportation rates are relativity low, the pervasive presence of federal and local surveillance of everyday life results in a heightened sense of deportability. In response to hyper-precaritization, the Latinx immigrant community in Hometown may accept racialized definitions of deportation that define categories for those who deserve to stay and those who have earned deportation.

Application of racial formation

We frame our discussion of immigration through a critical race theory lens to understand deportation's connection to a racialization of anti-immigrant ideology. This racialized ideology promotes a political agenda to expel a specific type of immigrant. Particularly useful to our analysis, Omi and Winant (2015) interpret race to be the epicenter of the American experience – an element situated in political and institutional structures. Racial meaning is consistently transformed by political struggle that is rooted in the American legal system and connected to the dynamics of immigration enforcement. The internalization of racialized ‘common sense’ narratives (i.e. racial stereotypes, understandings, images, and inclinations to act) of the dominant social group by Latinx people reveals how processes of racialization can lead to acceptance of symbolic violence (Feagin and Cobas, 2008). While Feagin and Cobas’ analysis focused on assimilation of Latinx Americans, we argue that immigration enforcement and the heightened threat of deportation can lead to divisions within Latinx immigrant communities due to acceptance of the ‘undeserving criminal immigrant’ narrative. The discussion regarding the racialization of Latinx immigrants cannot be understood outside the context of their systemic criminalization.

We position our work at the intersections of several theoretical viewpoints and bodies of literature: racial formation, immigration, hyper-precaritization, and deportation as they are all vital to understanding how (il)legality is understood and contested (Hernández et al., 2018; Schierup et al., 2015). The heightened enforcement of immigration coincides with growing insecurities surrounding the shift from predominantly European to predominantly Latin American and Asian immigrants (Massey et al., 2016). Provine and Doty (2011) further argue that contemporary policies regarding unauthorized immigration reinforce racialized anxieties through the criminalization of immigrants of color. This criminalization results from frameworks of illegality that undergird our policing systems, beyond those within the Department of Homeland Security (Armenta and Alvarez, 2017). The construction of illegality, regardless of actual documentation, is produced by the laws of federal and state agencies but is also reinforced by the general US public (Enriquez et al., 2019; Flores and Schachter, 2018). As we will explain, these constructions of legality further shape Latinx immigrants’ understanding of the threat of deportation.

We use Omi and Winant’s terminology of a ‘racial project’ to frame contemporary immigration enforcement practices as rooted in racist stereotypes about non-White immigrants. A racial project is “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural) along particular racial lines” (Omi and Winant, 2015: 125). We argue that the narrative surrounding deportation that frames Latinx immigrants as criminals and as disposable cheap labor is a racial project. This racial project remains rooted in ongoing racial formations in society that produce criminalized perceptions of deportation (De Genova, 2004; Golash-Boza, 2015; Gonzales, 2015; Hernández et al., 2018; Provine and Doty, 2011). These racialized frameworks, including those criminalized notions of deportation, are not only adopted and normalized by the dominant society, but they also trickle down to the very group they target.

The effect of ICE street raids, whether legitimate or fabricated, inflict fear in Latinx communities. Street raids are less common than home raids (Golash-Boza, 2015). However, the aftermath of street raids leads to rumors that circulate in communities long after they take place. The increased threat of deportation leads to distrust in local authorities because there is uncertainty about who will report unauthorized immigrants to ICE. This is evidenced by governmental programs such as Secure Communities ⁴ that partner with local law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of detained individuals (ICE, 2018). Secure Communities operates in Hometown with ICE picking up persons they have deemed removable through an immigration hold every Wednesday. Hometown’s county has helped ICE apprehensions grow from 21.3% in 2014 to 77.8% in 2015 (TRAC Immigration, 2016).

Misconceptions of deportability affect Latinx communities of various immigration statuses because these programs may unintentionally adopt racialized beliefs that connect criminality with immigration removal orders, thus leading to more encounters with local police that result in deportation. Heightened threats of deportation create greater distance between Latinx communities and the general population; making Latinx immigrants even more susceptible to abuse and mistreatment. This also creates divisions within Latinx communities that strains with solidarity and weakens efforts of resistance. The illusion of a panethnic collective experience alienates those who are mistreated and criminalized at higher rates (i.e. Afro-Latinx, Indigenous Central Mexican, and mestizos of darker complexion). While illegality is both socially and legally constructed, Gómez Cervantes (2019) argues that racialization of Latinx immigrants as a homogeneous population normalizes non-White Latinx and Indigenous bodies as undocumented. White Latinx people or Mestizos with lighter skin tones may employ Whiteness as a resource during heighten threats of deportation (Gómez Cervantes, 2019).

While we know that ICE raids are detrimental for those being targeted, we focus on the unreliability of information during rumored ICE raids that often creates community-wide panic. This unreliability of information encourages discourse on belonging, heightening existing divisions within the Latinx immigrant community. The resulting narrative creates a dichotomy of immigrants who are worthy of staying and those deserving of removal. This uncertainty of legal status can result in real consequences pertaining to the social organization and mental health of vulnerable immigrants of color (Garcia, 2017; Lopez et al., 2017).

The convergence of deportation and criminal law

Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893) first established deportation as a civil, non-punishment. As such, there are no guaranteed protections of Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and only a limited Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures (García Hernández, 2015). Deportation allows for what Hernandez (2005) labels ‘undue process’ because of the numerous ways in which deportation structures have regressively denied basic human rights to noncitizens and their inability to advocate for justice. Although immigration proceedings are civil cases, the criminal justice system has increasingly become central to government’s processes of handling immigration. Hence, the number of individuals deported with criminal convictions on their records has increased (Cantor et al., 2015; García Hernández, 2015). Deportation, in our modern context, has become more synonymous with criminality than ever before and creates the illusion that undocumented people are criminals, specifically those of darker complexion (Gómez Cervantes, 2019).

Menjivar and Abrego (2012) assert that the collision of immigration and criminal law has led to current practices of legal violence, a form of symbolic and structural violence, normalizing the criminalization of immigrants. The normalization of legal violence, in turn, helps frame injustices against immigrants as legitimate; limiting avenues of advocacy for undocumented people. De Genova and Peutz (2010) argue that deportation is situated within a socio-political regime that reproduces and reinforces narratives about nationalism, race, sovereignty, citizenship, and class. Divisions within a deportation regime are inevitable among noncitizens and citizens. However, while their analysis of the legal status of immigrants stresses the systemic connections between immigration policy and criminal law, it is also important to focus on how undocumented people find ways to cope with deportability. Due to federal and state acts of legal violence, the rationalization and justification of systemic mistreatment against Latinx immigrants are associated with the Latino Threat Narrative. Though based on negative stereotypes, this narrative is reproduced across media platforms, including news media outlets; one of the major providers of information (Chávez, 2008; Mohamed and Farris, 2020).

The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act expanded the crimes that qualify for possible basis of removal and increased penalties (i.e. misdemeanors were changed to felonies) for non-citizens. Moreover, enhanced penalties are retroactive so that misdemeanors committed as a juvenile could make a noncitizen deportable decades later (Golash-Boza, 2015). Criminalization of immigrants, as evident in deportation orders issued for ‘aggravated felonies,’ depicts both documented and undocumented immigrants as worthy of deportation by the government and general media. Deportation orders associated with aggravated felonies are misleading as they often include charges that were dropped or are misdemeanors (Guerrero-Perez v INS 2001). According to García Hernández:

Arrests for immigration crimes doubled from 1994 to 1998, doubled again from 1998 to 2004, and yet again from 2004 to 2008. Indeed, arrests for immigration crimes grew faster than any other type of federal crime from 2006 to 2010. This trend shows no sign of abating. In 2010 a full 46 percent of individuals arrested and booked by United States Marshals Service for suspicion of any federal crime found themselves in the predicament because of an immigration offense. This had a profound impact on federal criminal law practice. (García Hernández, 2015: 11)

Immigration-related laws can vary among states but the most damaging provisions are common across the US and focus on limiting and criminalizing the behavior of day-to-day activities that impact survival of immigrants, such as driving without a license. We explore a possible consequence to both federal immigration policies and state enforcement power which operates to regulate the movement of Latinx immigrants. Specifically, Latinx communities are not immune to the internalization of criminalized notions of deportation and may accept these problematic and racialized terms to ease anxiety about their own deportability. The racialized notions of the ‘illegal immigrant’ must be noted in these discussions among Latinx immigrants as they are not immune to the internalized racism. The Latino Threat Narrative is pervasive in the US and in their countries of origin. We argue that racialized divisions within Latinx immigrant communities may be exacerbated by heightened threats of deportations such as ICE raids because of uncertainty that results from unclarity and misinformation in information networks.

Methods

Data for this paper are derived from several rich qualitative sources. First, 16 hours of audio recordings of the Spanish radio shows were obtained, with relevant discussions transcribed and coded for themes that focused on issues of immigration and deportation. ⁵ Second, given Spanish radio’s pivotal role in the discussion, we interviewed radio DJs. Five out of the six radio DJs (80%) were male that we interviewed. All DJs ranged in age from mid-30s to 70s and participated in the study to discuss their part in that week’s shows and their views on the role of media in the community broadly. The radio station, which is part of a larger radio conglomerate with multiple local stations, has been in operation since the mid-1970s and was, at the time, the only Spanish radio station. Residents of Hometown and the surrounding area can hear this radio station in majority Latinx public spaces like stores and restaurants. Covering parts of multiple surrounding counties, it is the most sought-after source of information and entertainment in Spanish for 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants ⁶ in the area. The radio shows referenced by our respondents covered the rumored ICE threat during working hours and was extended into a later segment due to the increase of calls and questions. While the station has a digital presence, the on-air discussions did not move to the online platform during the rumored raid.

Third, to gain a better understanding of the local Latinx community, reactions to ICE raid rumors, and the role of media, we also interviewed five female journalists working at other news outlets who were between 30 and 50 years of age. ⁷

Fourth, we focused on the La Pulga (flea market in Spanish) Facebook page since it was the other main locus of community discussions about ICE and the national ‘A Day Without an Immigrant’ boycott. In addition to obtaining IRB approval to use discussions posted on the moderated La Pulga site, we also obtained permission from the moderators and individuals who participated in those interactions. One of the authors, who had been a member of La Pulga and participated in discussions about ICE in February 2017, reached out through La Pulga to obtain interviews. Only six individuals responded. This low level of participation highlights a response to an October 2017 announcement that all immigrants’ social media accounts will be monitored (Friedland, 2017). Many people are reluctant to use social media and to discuss their strategies against deportability. Facebook interviewees ranged in age from 20 to 60, with half being male-identified and half being female-identified.

In order to complement the interviews of the online participants, the research team sought to obtain a comparable public space to the La Pulga Facebook page and radio. As the fifth source of data, we interviewed 14 individuals who frequented a weekly flea market popular with Latinx people in Hometown. To participate in the interviews at the flea market, individuals had to be Latinx and make use of either the local Spanish radio or La Pulga. The 12 female identified and two male identified participants were in a similar age range as the La Pulga Facebook interviewees, between their early 20s and 60s. From interviewees’ own statements, we believe that the participants varied in legal status, including US citizens, legal permanent residents, and unauthorized immigrants. It is more difficult to know the legal status of the people who called into the radio shows or posted on La Pulga, unless they revealed their status to the research team. The multiplicity of sources of our qualitative data allowed for a deeper and more comprehensive ethnographic exploration of the implications of ICE raid rumors on the Latinx community.

Throughout this project we found that members of the immigrant community seemed resistant to participate in the study due to the conservative nature of Hometown’s politics and the anti-immigrant discourse. Hence, special consideration was taken during the research process to protect individuals’ identities. During our research design stage, we considered the highly sensitive nature of deportability and the real fears that our participants expressed. Hence, we did not ask participants’ legal status and pseudonyms are used. ⁸

In the end, a total of 29 interviews were analyzed for the code discourse of deservedness. Data were analyzed using discourse analysis with Atlas.ti, a qualitative data analysis software. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, translated by the bilingual authors, and coded systematically by all four authors for issues of ICE, deportability, trustworthiness, and media. This analysis software allowed us to create an initial code scheme with more ease. We used a structurally contextualized critical discourse analysis, that ‘connects discourse and structure in the analysis phase’ (Moore, 2014: 67). In the following section, we demonstrate how ICE raids heighten the need for reliable information across media platforms due to polarity in the Latinx community that can result from increased risk of deportation.

Discourse of deservedness

Roberto Gonzales’ (2015) work on undocumented youth yields important findings regarding the stratification of immigrants based on merit and good character. The contemporary framing of immigration in news media has created a dichotomy between undocumented immigrants deserving to stay and those deserving to be deported. García Hernández (2015) argues that the term ‘immigrant’ holds a specific legal definition that is commonly used to describe noncitizens; however, popular understandings of immigrants also include permanent residents and those who were naturalized. The complexity of deportation is centered on the potentially removable or those in the process of removal that can extend to those with legal authority to reside in the United States. Since deportability is frequently associated with previous and often ambiguous ‘convictions’ or criminal proceedings, the stratification of immigrants is identified through the language of the criminal justice system. The process of deportation and immigration enforcement itself is a racialized process. This stratification, as mentioned earlier, intersects with racialized frames of Latinx people.

As we have previously stated, this framing is a direct consequence of previous and ongoing immigration policies in the US. Although the heightened threat of deportation has exacerbated social divisions, in analyzing the use of radio and digital media among Hometown’s Latinx immigrant community, we find that participants used a discourse of deservedness to explain away fear or anxiety regarding the presence of ICE in their spaces. This discourse of deservedness is rooted in racialized and criminalized notions of Latinx immigration. This coping mechanism was used to alleviate panic but highlights how Latinx immigrants can also participate in their racialized criminalization without purposeful intention. Although the threat of deportation may lead to Latinx people feeling hunted or forced into the margins, this fear does not fully represent the everyday reality of deportation after immediate reactions of ICE (Garcia, 2017). We found that respondents were not completely sure what made immigrants deportable given recent changes in deportation priority levels, thus adopting definitions that have circulated online and on the radio.

Debates about why ICE was in town – and who deserved to be picked up – intensified divisions within the Latinx community and was evident by how people discussed immigration issues on the radio and alerted one another on Facebook. We argue that discourse on social media and the radio creates racialized notions of deportability and facilitates the marginalization of immigrants who do not fall within the frame of deservedness. Even while some respondents argued that digital media are less reliable than radio, they also had conversations centered around traits of deportability. Even Spanish Radio DJs, framed as leaders of the community by most of our participants, inadvertently perpetuate frameworks that allowed for racialized notions of deportability.

According to the 2019 Immigration Statistics, the Fiscal Year of 2018 yielded a 13% increase of ICE removals, with Mexican nationals accounting for 141,045 out of the 256,085 immigrants removed in 2018 (ICE, 2018). The top eight countries with the highest rates of deportations are all from Latin America, as opposed to lower rates of deportation from non-ethnic White countries of origin. These statistics demonstrate that deportation is something that many Latinx, specifically Mexican and Central American immigrants, experience – thus racializing the process as an act affecting Latinx communities. The role of ICE remains mysterious to many Latinx community members, but a centralized fear exists concerning ICE’s power to deport individuals, and many are ready to accept racialized definitions of deportability because of ‘racial common sense’ in ‘dominant society’s deep assumptions’ (Feagin and Cobas, 2008: 40). This fear was also intensified during the drafting of the Texas Senate Bill 4 that would extend power to local law enforcement to act as federal immigration enforcement. ⁹

The Spanish-speaking radio DJs were seen as better sources of information during Hometown’s deportation threat because of their history with the community and access to resources. Many respondents echoed feeling that what is said on the radio must be true because they are sources of news. However, conversations on the show often reproduced inequality surrounding deservedness. Radio DJs stated that they verified information through the local police station, immigration lawyers, and other important members of the community. While the radio might be the best source of information for many in this study, information shared did not evade racialized definitions of deportability.

Some radio DJs perpetuated racialized definitions of deportability that were underscored by their relationships with local law enforcement. Radio DJ Daniel, a highly regarded man in the community, in his 70s and who has been on the radio for 50 years, stated the following after he said that 15 to 17 callers mentioned the rumored ICE raids in Hometown:

We [live] under the terror, the frustration, the anger, but we cannot act scared, and we cannot live our life with the power of fear. When we are controlled by fear, we commit errors, we drive nervously, we look nervously over our shoulder thinking that everyone is out to get us. We have to, under these circumstances act like [nothing is wrong]. All we [at the radio station] know is that they are looking for people with deportation orders. And we know that [ICE] is here for deportation reasons. There is no confirmation of people, innocent immigrants, taken in by ICE.

Another radio DJ, Jessica, spoke on air against fear and tried to alleviate anxiety by also using criminality as a precursor to deportation. She stated to her callers:

Normally, they take 4 or 5 people that are undocumented immigrants with problems with the law. Here, [in Hometown], they have increased that number, and the only advice [the radio program] has is to know your rights and don’t break the law.

Due to the high volume of callers who were fearful of being picked up by ICE, radio DJs emphasized criminality as the basis of deportation because it is the most frequently used imagery and topic in news reports (Mohamed and Farris, 2020). Only one radio DJ in our sample stated that there was only a possible chance that innocent and law-abiding immigrants could be picked up for ‘being at the wrong place at the right time’. The following responses demonstrate the racialized definitions of deportation made by respondents we interviewed. When asked if either had ever heard that people were scared of going out due to ICE, Linda and Carla stated in turn:

Like I have said, [ICE] is only doing their job…They only come for people that [have done something], so they have [files on] them. On the very radio [station], they say it. We have nothing to fear if we don’t do anything [wrong]. Later it comes on the radio that if you drive, don’t drink. If they stop you with alcohol while driving, there you get into trouble. Well, I have seen that [the government] says that they are only doing their job, and they advise you so that you live well under the norms or rules in which we are in.

Conclusion

Although heightened threats of deportation may result in unification of vulnerable immigration communities, we found that Latinx people of various legal status alleviated stress and anxiety by adopting racialized notions of deportability. Deportation, a federal civil procedure, often intersects with criminal procedures because local law enforcement are becoming the first agents of contact. Further, changes in immigration policy’s deportation priority levels makes individuals with past criminal proceedings, even if they were never convicted of the crime, more vulnerable to deportation and removal. The misinformation and circulation of false narratives about immigrants with criminal pasts, fail to acknowledge that the damages of mass incarceration also extend to Latinx people (Diaz and Armenta, 2018).

In our study, radio DJs often conceptualized a moral stance on deportation and engaged social justice rhetoric to unify the community but unintentionally contributed to community divisions due their acceptance of policing and structural inequality within the context of Hometown. The participants we interviewed picked up on this moral overtone and used similar phrasing to alleviate their fears and anxiety about deportability. However, this language of morality transitions to a language of belonging for some, noting the ways Latinx citizens and immigrants, regardless of status, positively contribute to the community. The introduction of anti-immigration laws like the Texas Senate Bill 4, that allow local law enforcement agencies to act as federal immigration officers, will require the need for trustworthy outlets of information during times of heightened threats of deportation that do not rely on racialized notions of the undeserving immigrant. The collaboration between federal immigration agencies and local policing efforts will only lead to more divisions within Latinx communities, further entangling criminality within the framework of deportation.

The discourse on deservedness, our discursive frame of analysis, occurred across all platforms and emerged in all sources of data. While many members of the Latinx community are uncertain about deportability, many have adopted the discourse of deservedness to combat anxiety about the threat of deportation. This discourse of deservedness positions criminality as the prerequisite for cases of removal, placing blame on individuals who are apprehended by ICE. Paradoxically, this framing alienates some community members while, at the same time, calling for solidarity within the Latinx community, demonstrating that immigrants can adopt the criminalization and marginalizing mechanisms of society to alleviate their anxieties during heightened threats of deportation. Further research should focus on how Mexican immigrants actively distance themselves from other Central and South American Immigrants. The discourse of deservedness serves as a frame that structures information in online communities and on the radio as mechanism of protection from deportation. What we found in our study is a racial formation within the Latinx community based on the prevailing understanding of Latinx immigrants in the United States. This prevailing narrative criminalizes deportation and highlights a lack of understanding about the complexity of Latinx immigration today.

Future research should explore ‘colorism’ within the Latinx community that may fuel the discourse of belonging and exclusion that focus on the use of racist frameworks about Latin America within the United States. The current deportation regime groups all Latinx people as homogenous, however, this ‘colorblind’ generalization eliminates the real and dangerous ways in which discrimination permeates immigrant communities (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Interest in the ways Latinx communities use social media to circulate narratives is valuable because it can help frame how misinformation and disinformation can hinder mobilization efforts vital to immigration reform. Although Hometown’s rumored ICE presence occurred in 2016, the results discussed here remain relevant for understanding how Latinx immigrants are affected by deportation conversations. We hope that future work will bring some clarity to the framing of immigration as a racial project in everyday discourse online.