Immigration raids have made skin color top of mind for a new generation of California Latinos

Over 30 years ago, my father, then a 21-year-old Chicano, was driving to a 7-Eleven in Tustin, where he had recently moved, with four of his friends in tow. 

A cop soon began following him and signaled my father to pull into the parking lot. Soon one car became two, then four.  

My dad’s slicked, jet-black hair, caramel skin and commanding presence stood out amidst the white skin that primarily populated Tustin. He was covered in ink. War’s “The World Is a Ghetto” blasted from his lowrider’s speakers. The cops most likely believed they’d hit the jackpot: a cholo, uneducated, most likely a criminal. They unjustly searched his car. 

With no incriminating items in the car, the cops advised my father to leave. He and two of his friends had IDs, so they could go. The remaining two did not and were detained. 

As Border Patrol joins Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct roving patrols across the country, my father’s racial profiling incident echoes today. It feels like the walls are closing in on Latinos like my father — as they have before.

And yet, what’s going on today connects me more to his story. 

The eldest of five, my father was responsible for taking care of his younger siblings, as his father was incarcerated and his mother worked at an appliance store to support the family. My father felt like an outsider the majority of his life. 

When I asked him what aspects of himself he felt were judged the most, he replied, “My dress, the color of my skin, tattoos. Even as an adult I still feel like I stand out now.”

Listening to my father recall these stories broke my heart. 

My father hung the moon for me, his voice a beacon of light to guide me through the world’s ocean of uncertainties.

As a senior in high school, I wanted to celebrate my graduation with my father, yet the idea of stepping foot on campus worried him. 

“I do not want to hold you back from receiving any more opportunities,” he said. 

My father internalized the world’s images of him and pictured himself as an obstacle to my success, accepting that his physical appearance would always supersede the internal. Profiling split my father in two. Evidently, the world wanted to rob me of the image of my father I held so dear: a devoted dad, a diligent brother, a husband.

I never viewed my father as a hindrance to my success but rather an extension of it. My father wanted to break the chain between his past and identity so that it would not become an anchor to my dreams and impede the world from viewing me as more than my association to him. But as his daughter, I refused to let this link shatter. 

Today my father not only fears for his own safety, but mine as well. 

“You have to be aware of your surroundings at all times. You’re darker than your siblings. You look the most like me, therefore are more vulnerable to profiling and the experiences I’ve endured. Be careful of where you decide to go now and only go if necessary,” my father advises me. 

ICE raids have narrowed the gap between my upbringing and that of my father’s. Skin color is once again top of mind for Latinos. 

According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, 57% of Latino adults stated that skin color affected their everyday experiences “a lot,” with 62% reporting that their darker skin hindered their ability to prosper. In his concurring opinion for Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that race-based stops are part of immigration policing and can be valid based on certain factors: that there are a high number of “illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work”; that they often work in jobs like “landscaping, agriculture, and construction.” Many legal scholars have argued that Kavanaugh’s opinion effectively allows racial profiling by immigration agents. In September, the Department of Homeland Security reported that 2 million “illegal aliens” had left the U.S., with 1.6 million who have “voluntarily self-deported” and more than 400,000 deportations. 

As society continues to demonize the men in our communities, we daughters must stand and correct the narrative. 

In the past, banding together has worked. In 1968, we broke barriers for education with the Chicano Blowouts, when 15,000 students walked out of their classrooms to protest the discouragement and unequal treatment of Mexican Americans in education. In the 1970s, the Brown Berets combatted disproportionate drafts of Mexicans in the Vietnam War with the Chicano Moratorium, and in the ’90s, we catalyzed the nullification of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187. 

Each moment of Chicano victory was accomplished with joined hands and shared minds, proving that the blaze for change is best ignited by numbers. It’s something my father taught me, too: Even in the waxing and waning cycles of life, when everything seems dim, pain becomes starlight. And from that constellation a map forward begins to form.

This commentary was adapted from an essay produced for Zócalo Public Square.