The day ICE came to town

Juneau has long been a community filled with immigrants. Early on, Juneau’s mines and canneries were populated with workers from Scandinavia, the Balkans, and the Philippines, to mention but a few. Family names bear contemporary witness to their presence: Savikko, Dapcevich, Carrillo.

In more recent times Latinos from Mexico and Central America have chosen Juneau as their home, where they too have wanted to build their version of the American dream. Spanish is ubiquitous on construction sites, in restaurants and hotels, in our healthcare facilities.

Because of war, earthquakes, violent gangs and authoritarian rule, Juneau has also become a place of sanctuary for refugees from countries like Haiti, Venezuela, and Ukraine. I’ve been proud of how the Juneau community has embraced these newcomers — a reflection perhaps both of the innate goodness in people and an unconscious connection to their own ancestors’ struggles in a new land.

Some of our immigrants are undocumented. Others have received their “green cards” granting them permanent residence in the United States. Still others have been here under protected status or have applied for asylum. And not a few have been naturalized as U.S. citizens.

In the past, some immigrants were targets of periodic sweeps by the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), the predecessor to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These were conducted openly and methodically, resulting in one or more undocumented immigrants being “removed” from the country, egregious to the family and close friends, but largely unnoticed among our broader population.

No more. President Trump and Secretary Noem have unleashed a reign of terror throughout the country. There are daily reports of immigrants snatched off the streets by masked men and whisked away in vans, individuals shuffled from one detention facility to another, many ultimately removed from the country to remote destinations to which the detainee has no connection, not even a common language. In the parlance of dictatorships, they are “disappeared."

The government’s PR machine spews out the propaganda that these roundups are simply to rid the country of “criminal illegal aliens” and members of “terrorist” gangs. But the dragnets have swept in children, grandparents, people who have invested decades in the country — all to achieve a Trumpian goal to deport a million people in his first year.

Trump has targeted particular groups for expulsion. For example, on June 27, he ordered 500,000 Haitians in the United States who had been provided temporary protected status because of ongoing conditions in Haiti to leave by Aug. 3. Noem concluded that their continued presence in the United States was “against the national interest” despite acknowledging the ongoing "grave insecurity, gang violence, socio-economic collapse, and environmental disasters" in Haiti. In the last month this order led several members of Juneau’s small Haitian community to leave a home they had come to love.

It should come as no surprise then about the panic set off on Thursday when initial rumors of the arrival of ICE agents in Juneau began to circulate. Text messages, phone calls, posts on Facebook urged anyone of foreign birth to stay home from work, turn off their phones, not answer their doors, stay out of public circulation and carry documentation at all times. A planned picnic for refugees was quickly cancelled. Several businesses reported severe staff shortages. At least one closed for the day on Friday.

It's not clear whether the agents conducted any interventions or, for that matter, whether they were ever here (hotel clerks at two hotels acknowledged their presence). There were no reports of any arrests. But Juneau got a taste of fear about an agency that has few visible constraints and one that, with the support of our Congressional delegation, will add 10,000 agents and 80,000 new daily ICE detention beds. Sleep well.

• Bruce Botelho is a former Juneau mayor and Alaska attorney general.