SPLC Reports Latinos Under Siege in Southern States

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report today detailing the systemic discrimination and exploitation Latin@ migrants face today in the South.

In Tennessee, a young mother is arrested and jailed when she asks to be paid for her work in a cheese factory.

In Alabama, a migrant bean picker sees his life savings confiscated by police during a traffic stop.

In Georgia, a rapist goes unpunished because his 13-year-old victim is undocumented.

. . .

[Latin@s] are routinely cheated out of their earnings and denied basic health and safety protections. They are regularly subjected to racial profiling and harassment by law enforcement. They are victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report attacks. And they are frequently forced to prove themselves innocent of immigration violations, regardless of their legal status.

Roberto Lovato has dubbed this phenomenon Juan Crow, highlighting the similarities of this system to the previous network of social norms, law enforcement priorities, and economic abuses that kept Southern blacks poor and powerless under the Jim Crow regime of official disenfranchisement.

For this report, Southern Poverty Law Center researchers surveyed 500 low-income Latinos - including legal residents, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens - at five locations in the South to take the pulse of a community that is being increasingly driven into the shadows by a sweeping anti-immigration movement.

We found a population under siege and living in fear - fear of the police, fear of the government and fear of criminals who prey on immigrants because of their vulnerability.

This mirrors my experiences representing undocumented migrants in two of the most migrant-friendly cities in the country: New York City and Philadelphia.  I would not want to be undocumented in Alabama or Tennessee.

There's more on the SPLC report from Immigration Impact.