S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On today's show , we dive into the origins of deportation. A filmmaker and historian team up to talk about those origins and where it even comes from. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. This year has been marked by intensified immigration enforcement , as violent Ice raids continue to sweep the country. At the face of that policy is deportation. My next two guests are here to talk about how we got to this point and the history of deportation. I'm joined now by Kelly Lytle Hernandez. She's a historian and professor at UCLA , as well as a 2019 MacArthur Genius Fellow. She's also author of several award winning books , which include McGraw A history of the U.S. Border Patrol and Bad Mexicans Race , Empire , and Revolution in the Borderlands. Professor Hernandez , welcome to midday.
S2: Thank you so much for having me on.
S1: So glad to have you here. Also with us is Alex Rivera. He's a professor , filmmaker and 2021 MacArthur fellow. He currently teaches at Arizona State University's film school based in LA. Professor Rivera , it's good to have you on the show , too.
S3: Thanks for having me.
S1: All right. Well , you know , from the both of you , I'm curious to know , how would you characterize the current national political conversation around immigration and deportation today ? Professor Hernandez , I'll start with you.
S2: Well , obviously , we are in a crisis moment. Um , many of our community members are being targeted for detention and removal. And I think for me as a historian , one of the things I'm trying to do in this moment is give us some perspective about how we have grappled with these moments in the past. What kind of tools advocates and organizers and migrants have used , um , and to help us to understand this machine that we're confronting so that hopefully we can blunt it.
S1: Um , professor Rivera ? Yeah.
S3: No , it's a it's an extraordinary moment. I've been interested in questions of migration , really ? Since since college , since I realized I was part of an immigrant family in the 1990s. And I've been making films about it since then. So let's call it 30 years. And in that long sweep of time , um , there's been a lot of continuity but also change. And on the change side , we're definitely in a moment of , um , extraordinary , spectacular violence. And then also in a really dangerous moment where even people who are maybe against agents who wear masks or against people being tackled in the street are saying , but we do need to have closed borders. You're hearing that a lot from the Democratic Party right now , that they think maybe they were too soft on immigrants , and that's how we got here. And so I see this moment as really dangerous , obviously , for immigrant family members , for our communities , but also dangerous for the national story that is sort of drifting towards , um , a place where the border is being seen as natural , where deportations are normal , or we know where there's this kind of common belief that we have to control the flows of people through force. And I'm very interested in challenging that story and and turning to history as part of that , um , that challenging.
S1: Well , let's do that. Professor Hernandez , you know , because it is important to talk about , really the reality of how we got here. So let's start at the 19th century with the first man to be deported in the United States.
S2: So after the Civil War , um , as Anglo-American settlers push across the American West , one of the the goals of manifest Destiny is not only to remove native peoples , but to keep out or lock out. non-White migrants and Chinese immigrants have been some of the first , um , immigrants to arrive in the American West who were not coming from , from from back East and were not Anglo American. So some of the first people to be targeted for deportation after that war , of course , were Chinese immigrants. And there's a couple of laws to to think about here. First is the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act , which I'm sure many people are familiar with. That law banned Chinese immigrants , laborers in particular , from entering the United States for ten years. But then ten years later , Congress passes another law called the Geary Act. And this one's not so well known , but it's really , really important. What the Garriock does is it says not only are Chinese laborers not allowed to enter the country , but all Chinese immigrants in the United States had to register for a certificate of residency. The only way they could get a certificate was by having at least one white witness who said that they were lawfully in the United States , and any Chinese immigrant who either refused to or couldn't get the certificate was subject to up to a year in prison , followed by deportation. So this really is our first post-Civil War race based deportation law. And very quickly , Chinese immigrants fight this law. They launched probably the the largest first civil disobedience campaign in in U.S. history. And rather than get these certificates of residency , they start showing up at US marshals offices and courts with lawyers in tow saying , I'm here to to , um , to make myself available for arrest and challenge this law. And so the first so-called deportees are also some of the first immigrant rights activist. They are ordered deported , but they fight the laws and they actually push a set of decisions up to the US Supreme Court that lay the basic framework , the legal framework of our modern contemporary immigration system. So there are many individuals who are first targeted. Um Fong Ting is one of the people who submits himself for arrest in New York , and eventually pushes his case all the way up to the US Supreme Court. That issues a ruling in 1893 saying that , yes , deportation is lawful , and in particular that the form of power that the federal government has when it comes to deportation is absolute and exclusive , meaning it's really a form of plenary power or total power. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. You know , given manifest destiny , what was the situation for indigenous people and African-Americans at that time ? Yes.
S2: Thank you for asking that question. So , of course , the , you know , the exact same time that Congress and legislators here in California are attempting to lock out Chinese immigrants. They're also pushing native folks onto reservations. And what happens here in California is really important. It's fairly distinct from what happens in the rest of the country , as Anglo-Americans are pushing West under the banner of manifest Destiny. There are a variety of tools that are used to to claim the land or to remove native people from the land , but once they hit the Pacific coast , they literally run out of runway. They'd run out of land to push native folks out. And so here in California , there is a concerted campaign of genocide that unfolds where local municipalities and the federal government are paying people bounties to turn in native bodies , dead bodies or scalps , um , and more activities like that. So , um , that's what's happening here in California in terms of native folks , for black folks. By the 1880s , after the Civil War , folks were emancipated. But they're largely locked in the US South and are being prohibited from migrating west. So it's really not until World War One , World War Two , that you get a large number of African-Americans who begin to migrate out to California. Mhm.
S1: Mhm. You know , and you're working on a film called banishment , actually inspired by Ting's story. Who you spoke about earlier in this early history of deportation. And Professor Hernandez is writing , what themes are explored in that film ? Yeah.
S3: So as I mentioned , I've been working on immigration issues for three decades or so , but I had never thought about who went first. And so when I , when I read , um , Professor Hernandez's book , City of Inmates , there's a chapter in there that tells this story of these , uh , uh , first folks targeted kind of by the modern deportation regime. And , and one of them in particular , whose name is on that Supreme Court case. Fong You Ting. The story just blew me away. I found it fascinating. And it was fascinating , eh ? Because it takes us to a moment when the idea of deportation , the idea that the federal government can use handcuffs , chains , cages , also called jail cells , trains , boats to remove a person and send them somewhere because the federal government has decided they're in the wrong place. That idea , at this moment in time , in 1893 , was not seen as natural or normal or predetermined. It was contested and it was contested by many people , and it was believed to be absurd by many people. And so vanquishing was an act was a laundry man in in New York City and a member of the Chinese Equal Rights League. He walked in , as Kelly mentioned , to the U.S. Marshal's office , to present himself for arrest , to create the test case , to challenge deportation. And this whole thing was extraordinary to me. But the real kicker for me and what made me want to develop a film around these ideas is that they almost won in the Supreme Court. They got three justices to write lengthy dissents describing why this country should not have deportation , why it was unconstitutional. Sidebar it is not anywhere in the Constitution. The word deportation. This power doesn't exist. That the rebel immigrants asserted that in court , and they convinced nearly half of the Supreme Court in 1893 to agree with them. So the story was extraordinary , and we're trying to bring it to life in a film. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , I want to talk about President Trump's attacks on Somali immigrants last week , because I think this this kind of all pairs together. He described them as garbage. Saying he wanted to send them back to where they came from. How does defaming an entire group of people , along with racism and xenophobia , continue to play a role in immigration policy today. Professor Hernandez , I'll start with you.
S2: Well , you know , I have to say , as a historian , I feel like I'm locked in a time loop. Some of these quotes that I hear coming out of the administration sound like they could have been said by legislators or presidents in the 19th century , or certainly the early 20th century as well. So , you know , I think what I want to want to talk about a little bit is that the US system of immigration control has always been deeply , deeply racialized. You know , we're talking today about the Chinese exclusion era of the 1880s , 1890s , which lasts all the way through World War two. But in fact , the very first immigration law that this country passes is the 1803 Immigration Act. And that law targeted free black migrants for exclusion from the United States. It was followed by a set of state level bars on black entry. And what's happening during this time period ? The antebellum period during slavery is that there are revolutions happening across the Caribbean , namely the Haitian Revolution. And slavers in the southern United States didn't want Haitians entering the United States and inspiring or inciting revolt among the enslaved. So they began to pass this nation's very , very first immigration bans , targeting free black folks for exclusion. That is the origin story of what's happening right now on the streets of LA , of Charlotte , of Chicago , of San Diego and elsewhere. Um , it's always been a deeply racialized system. The language and rhetoric that we're seeing come out of this administration is , um , unnervingly familiar for me as a historian of this system. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Tell talk a bit about. Well , actually , um , Professor Rivera , I want to get your input on that as well. Before I jump over here to the next question.
S3: Oh , no. Well , I mean , Kelly obviously can speak to the deep sweeps of history and and these continuities really in the racial intent of this system , um , really across centuries. And , you know , I just would also mention some of her work , uh , called a website called Mapping Deportations. Where , where , where she looked at with other researchers at UCLA. Um , you know , the past 100 years , 100 plus years of deportation and found that 92% , fully 92% of people removed by force from this country have been people of color. And so this system starts with racial animus at its beginning , and has performed that way in the long sweep of its history. You know , for me as a filmmaker , I'm always trying to find individual stories. It's you can't really put a point , a camera at history. You have to point the camera at , you know , people and individuals , and hopefully those individual stories illuminate history. And so I'm interested in looking at the story of Fang Ting in that moment. But in other films I've looked at my family , I've looked at other communities. And you just we have to use common sense. If you look at an immigrant detention center , look who's inside. It's brown skinned people , overwhelmingly brown and black people. And this is the nature of this system. Um , and it's actually it's not it's not too complicated because it's written in the history books. It's written in the laws. That's how it was intended to function at its beginning. And if we look around it well on our feeds , social media feeds of who's being tackled in the streets , look inside of a detention center. Who's there ? We see what this system is doing. It's kind of apparent , Mhm.
S1: You know , Professor Hernandez , when we talk about black folks and um , who were who were forced to be here. Uh , I think about the Dred Scott case. I think about birthright citizenship. Um , which is something that the Supreme Court will actually weigh in on here soon. Um , what what what how does that conversation , um , impact who's considered American and who isn't today ? You think ? Yeah.
S2: That's such an important conversation about the 14th amendment right now. Um , and I want to take us back a little bit to , to talk about immigration control , um , for a variety of reasons. Um , first , let's talk about the 14th amendment , which does several things. It provides birthright citizenship to every person who is born in the United States , for the most part. But it also bans states from violating the due process and equal rights of any person in the United States , regardless of citizenship status. And the 14th amendment is really , really important in the history of U.S. immigration control for this reason that prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment , it was principally states that passed and enforced this country's immigration laws and its bans. If you're poor , you can't enter. If you're black. You can't enter. If you've got a communicable disease , you can't enter. All that's happening at the state level prior to the passage of the 14th amendment. But what happens here in California is that California passes a law in 1873 to ban so-called lewd and debauched women. They intended this law to keep out Chinese women in particular. Keeping out Chinese women was really important to cutting off the potential of the growth of a Chinese American community because women birth children in the United States who would be birthright citizens following the 14th amendment. So when the 14th amendment passes and states are no longer allowed to pass laws that are targeting Chinese immigrants for exclusion , immigrant exclusion , as well as a variety of other discriminatory legislation. What happens is there's a member of the Supreme Court , Stephen Field , a Justice , Stephen Field , who selects a case of 22 Chinese women who were banned from California and ushers that case up to the US Supreme Court because he knows that Chinese immigrants will no longer be able to be targeted for exclusion at the state level. And he takes that case to the Supreme Court. It's called Chai Lung v Freeman. And in the Chai Lung ruling of 1875 , what they do is they determine that the federal government is the seat of immigration control. That choice , that decision , that scheme was created to circumvent the 14th amendment and its ban on the violation of equal protection for Chinese immigrants trying to enter the United States. So the creation of what we now know as the modern immigration regime , which is a federal immigration system , really happens through an effort to skirt the equal protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. So there are so many ways in which the 14th amendment is really important for us to understand in terms of immigration control , birthright citizenship , and more. Now , coming to black folks , you know , we're we're often told that immigration is not our story , right ? I am a descendant of enslaved folks here in the United States , and we're often told that this is somebody else's story. Well , I want to say one thing about that. The reason why there has not been significant black migration to the United States over the course of U.S. history from the Civil War , largely to the present , is because there have been a set of mechanisms and schemes put in place to exclude black migrants , namely from the Caribbean , from being eligible to enter this country. So black migration did not not happen because black migrants didn't want to come to the United States or were not trying to come to the United States. It was , in fact , a what I call a whites only immigration system in the various rules put inside of it , visa eligibility and whatnot. That made it nearly impossible for black immigrants to enter this country and become a part of our community in a significant way , as was happening for other communities , namely European communities , but also others. So that is , you know , I think really important for us to think about is that when we say immigration is not our issue , the origin of that is not a story about who we are as African-Americans. It's actually a story about white supremacy primacy , and this whites only immigration system that prevented us from reconnecting with kin in the Caribbean and beyond.
S1: Still to come , we continue the conversation about deportation , including efforts to resist it. Midday edition is back after the break. Thanks for sticking around. You're listening to KPBS Midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. We've been tracing the origins of deportation and how we see that history impact modern immigration policy today. I'm joined again by Kelly Lytle Hernandez , historian , UCLA professor , and MacArthur fellow. Also here is Alex Rivera , filmmaker , Arizona State University professor , and also a MacArthur fellow. I want to start by asking , what are the ways you've seen deportation resisted , Professor Rivera ? You have a film called The Infiltrators that actually dives into this. Yeah.
S3: Yeah. That's right. Well , um , I mean , I think if you've anyone who's been around an immigrant family going through deportation and I mean , 100% of them , you're going to see resistance , um , being around a deportation , which I've had the displeasure of , of of being right , of witnessing. Um , it's , uh , it's just extraordinarily painful and horrific. And , um , so there's resistance in many , many ways. But the film you're mentioning , the The Infiltrators is a kind of different take on the story. It follows a group of undocumented youth people sometimes called dreamers back in the year 2010. So this is a little while ago , but they were organizing and people probably remember the bold campaigns led by uh , dreamer activists , um , under during the time of the Obama administration. Really. And so these were young people who were trying to stop deportations , starting with their own. And the film follows them when they're in a kind of advanced state of their activism. And they decide to do this campaign , um , where they infiltrate a detention center. So they basically orchestrate their own arrest by Border Patrol on purpose to go into an immigrant detention center. This one was in Florida in order to create a political campaign , an organizing campaign with detainees inside to get people out. And so the film that I made , along with my my partner Cristina Ibarra , follows these , uh , bold and audacious young activists who try to get into an immigrant prison to get people out. And I think it's one of the it's not by any means the only. It's part of a long history of , um , of extraordinary , creative , inspiring and audacious activism that that surrounds the phenomenon of deportation. Always.
S1: And , Professor Hernandez , I'll turn to you to tell us more about that. That long history. Uh , because what are some historical examples of resistance to deportation ? And how do we see it today ? Yeah.
S2: So I want to tell you a story about a pretty phenomenal group of people in the early 20th century. So , you know , Alex's film is about this ruling. Fang Yutang. And I want to really emphasize what Fang Yutang does. Is it not only says that deportation is lawful , but it affirms this principle that the federal government has total and An absolute authority over immigration control. What that means is that the United States Constitution does not apply , that there is no judicial interference when it comes to the rules and the enforcement of immigration control in terms of who is getting excluded from the country and who's getting rounded up and removed from the country. So , as Alex noted , there were three really important dissents in Fang Yutang. One of them says , there is no way in which we can have such forms of brutality and lack of of due process within the United States , that it would be possible , if we allow the federal government to have absolute authority over deportation for the federal government to round people up , put them on boats to send them into the middle of Mexico and leave them abandoned there. And so as you leave Fang Yutang , the federal government has absolute authority over exclusion and deportation of immigrants. And in 1903 , a group of Japanese immigrants rallied around a young 1516 year old pregnant teen who was being faced with deportation or threatened with deportation , and they took the government to court. They said , you cannot deport this young woman without at least some form of due process , that she needs a hearing in which she has a translator and can understand what is happening and needs to be able to see the evidence against her. And they win that case at the level of the Supreme Court. And so it's this ruling , Yamakawa v United States in 1903 , that first carves a measure of due process into the deportation system. Now that's an administrative system. Due process. And deportation does not look like due process in a criminal legal system. But there is now some form of due process for deportees. And that's only because immigrants rallied with and for one another alongside citizen advocates , and took the government to court and were able to carve out that lane of due process. So that we have that today because of a fight that happened in 1903.
S1: Well , this Saturday you'll both be speaking at an event called Where Does Deportation come From in Logan Heights ? Talk to me about the decision to have this conversation now.
S2: But also , more importantly in our history are some lessons about what we have done as community members in the past that has worked , what hasn't worked and creates Yeats inspiration as well. I mean , the group of , um , immigrants and advocates who won the Yamakawa ruling , who really took the government to court and won , should inspire us that we can keep fighting , whether it's in the courts , in the streets , elsewhere in museums and more in classrooms , that we can build a better world or just world , a safer world for all of us.
S1:
S3: I'm very excited for the event , uh , on Saturday. And I love the frame of where does deportation come from ? Because it's almost like asking a question of deportation that , um , that immigrants get asked. Where are you from ? You show me your papers. You know , at the way , right now , today , so many people , family members , community members are being treated as invaders or as , um , disposable. Right. And but now but we're going to kind of flip it this weekend and look at the phenomena of deportation itself as a type of invasion into our culture , as a type of alien , uh , form of thought. Because I think when we watch , uh , in the media today , people being ripped out of a car wash tackled to the street or ripped off of a , a roof where they're doing work in , in North Carolina or mothers being ripped away from their children. You know , I think people lots of people , I think , feel disgusted , feel shocked , feel horrified , and then they're told , well , this is what it takes to have sovereignty. This is if you want to have a country , you have to have the doors closed. You have. And we're in this very dangerous moment where this phenomena of , um , using force to control people's movement that is becoming kind of naturalized. And so this weekend , I'm very excited to open a space where we can kind of look at history , but we're looking at history in order to imagine alternatives , to remember a moment when this system was not , uh , not determined , where it was vulnerable , where it was attacked and questioned. And so , um , you know , I feel like there's not enough space right now for in our society to think against borders , to think against deportation , to think from a moral place about how would we want to be treated , any one of us , if we were born somewhere else and needed to move , to be with our families , to find work , to find hope ? How would what is a moral immigration system look like ? I think we need to get there , and the only way we get there is by talking and and and listening. And so this weekend is an opportunity to do all of that.
S1: Well , this is such an important and meaningful conversation. Um , I've been speaking with Kelly Lytle Hernandez , historian , UCLA professor and MacArthur fellow. And Alex Rivera , Arizona State University professor , filmmaker , and also a MacArthur fellow. The event Where Does Deportation Come from ? Will take place at Bread and Salt this Saturday. You can find more details at KPBS. Professor Hernandez and Professor Rivera , thank you so very much.
S2: Thank you for having us on.
S4: Thank you.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
