U.S. policies helped create gang culture in El Salvador, a country with no previous history of U.S.-style gangs and gang warfare.
The U.S. government’s huge new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) was established to battle a new kind of domestic enemy, undocumented immigration. Yet the creation of ICE was not so much motivated by a perceived need to enforce migration policy as by a desire to build up the domestic security apparatus.
In this spirited call to action published by our friends at ColorLines, Roberto Lovato writes, "While important and good, negotiations, marches, lobbying and other crucial work will continue to be ineffective without an urgent strategic component. The radical political moment requires the further opening of a radical flank of the immigrant rights movement." Lovato suggests this radical flank could look to Latin American social movements for inspiration.