Criminals or Victims?
The media source I chose to view for ethnicity within the criminal justice system was the first episode of the Netflix documentary series Living Undocumented. The main focus within the first episode is on two families both with children and both with at least one adult of the family getting deported. Noah’s story is that of a sweet little three-year-old kid whose mother was taken in by ICE while she was pregnant due to the deportation warrant that was out on her. She was arrested when the car the father was driving got pulled over and her papers were requested event though she was asleep at the time. Noah was permitted to continue home with his father though at the time of this episode they are driving to an ICE location to hand Noah over as demanded by the warrant for him. There are lawyers working on Noah’s and his mother’s case in an attempt to keep them from being deported, but the episode ends before you find out whether the attempt was successful. An interesting point that was made by the lawyer was that under normal circumstances she would not have been arrested as typically you are not asked for the papers of all the people in the car, only those of the driver. The lawyer believed that the only reason as to why this occurred was because their appearances were similar to those of Mexican descent who are normally those who immigrate to America illegally. This is remarkably similar to an instance mentioned in The Black and the Blue where Fred Watson is told to exit his vehicle and hand over his identification before being written up on an enormous list of trumped up charges. Any white person present in that city would never have had such a thing happen to them, but because he was black Watson was charged with various crimes that were completely illogical in the context of what was happening (Horace, 2018, pg. 94-96). The other family that was predominately featured in this first episode was that of Alejandra Juarez. Alejandra was the wife of a former Marine who was discovered as an illegal immigrant in 2013. However, under Obama’s administration she was only instructed to check in with ICE officials and was not deported. Under the Trump administration though, she was one of the first people selected to be deported. She was originally given the time constraint of two months, but it was extended when she asked to be allowed to see her daughter finish elementary school with the understanding that she would not fight the deportation process. She had broken no laws while residing within the US and was being deported anyways simply because her name was on ICE’s radar from a routine traffic stop. Given this information, is it any wonder that people have a tendency to distrust police officers if this is what a routine stop can cause to occur? African American children are typically indoctrinated into the belief that they can not trust police from an early age as police will tend to stop them for no reason or always be looking to blame them for something (Henning, 2018, pg. 75-78). On the other hand, if immigrant children are caught it could mean deportation for their whole family.
I felt that this documentary allowed me to gain a better understanding of what life is like for those who came to this country illegally and their reasons for doing so. When asked, people tend to tell you that the reason immigrants are being deported is because they were in the wrong by coming into America illegally in the first place. What you never hear about is how they may have entered the country to flee from persecution or violence and that there are very few opportunities to enter the country legally. If someone did choose to go the legal route, there is ever possibility that by the time their name came up as being eligible they could be dead. However, even once you do manage to escape that which you were fleeing from in your home country, you have to constantly be on edge to make sure you are not found out as that could cause you to end up in an even worse situation. This fear is not something most of us can understand as we are citizens and do not have to worry about these kinds of things. However, we do have sympathy and we can feel it for those who are living in fear of what could happen if they were to relax their guards for the smallest second.
References
Living Undocumented on Netflix
(I used my friend’s account to watch it on our TV so I don’t have the link)
Henning, K. (2018). The role of policing in the socialization of black boys. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp. 57-78). Vintage Books.
Horace, M. (2018). The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, And Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.