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from ellis island to ice
- claire
- Jan 14
- 10 min read
Updated: Jan 15
it’s hard to compare modern immigration to someone’s great-grandfather showing up in 1910 because the actual rules are completely different. people treat the ellis island era like it’s the end all be all, but it just isn’t. it was one moment. and short one. the system we have currently isn’t some ancient, permanent structure. it’s not what granpappy patricks experience. it’s recent, and it was built with very specific goals in mind.
for some extremely simplified and brief historical context:
the first time “unlawful presence” really became a legal issue in the united states was with the chinese exclusion act of 1882. that law didn’t just restrict immigration in general — it targeted a specific group by race and class. chinese laborers were singled out, barred, and forced to carry certs of residence to prove they were allowed to exist where they already lived…. if they couldn’t produce papers on demand, they would be detained or deported. this is where the idea of presence itself becoming suspicious starts to harden in this nation full of immigrants.
even official histories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries bragged about the united states as an “open door” for the weary and oppressed of every race, except the chinese. the wording is almost bored about it, a shrug in print that treats exclusion as an obvious afterthought rather than a violent choice. that’s noteworthy because the people reading those pages often had never met a chinese person, yet they absorbed narratives that framed an entire group as an exception to liberty. it’s a glimpse into how normalized racism became in public language and policy. sound familiar?
here is an excerpt from an old new jersey history book i was reading a few months ago when i was learning about SHIPWRECKS.
the chinese exclusion laws, once enacted, didn’t quickly end. they lasted in various forms for more than sixty years, shaping who was considered “lawful” and who could be made illegal simply by birth or appearance…. that long run gave the idea of criminalized presence room to take root. following that, the criminalization of crossing outside ports, the quota systems of the mid-20th century, and the 1965 restrictions all layered new categories of legality on top of each other, making a routine movement morph into a maze of permissions and penalties.
in 1929, crossing the border outside a designated port of entry became a federal crime for the first time. this was the undesirable aliens act. before that, border crossing was regulated, but not criminalized in this way. this mattered most in places where movement had ALWAYS been fucking fluid. mexican laborers crossed back and forth for seasonal work. no ceremony. no paperwork worth mentioning. when that law passed, the behavior didn’t change. the label did. suddenly, the same people doing the same jobs were criminals by definition. this is where the term ‘illegal alien’ comes into play.
it was the immigration and nationality act of 1965 that really snapped the system into its modern shape. on paper, it’s often described as a civil rights–era correction. it eliminated the openly racist national origins quotas that favored northern and western europe. that part is true. but at the same time, it introduced something new that almost never gets foregrounded. for the first time in u.s. history, congress imposed strict numerical caps on immigration from the western hemisphere.’
before 1965, there were effectively no limits on how many people could immigrate from mexico, canada, or much of the caribbean. people crossed for work, went home, came back. families built lives across borders because those borders weren’t enforced as hard barriers yet. movement was normal, seasonal, and expected. from the government’s perspective, it was a pretty damn good system. people worked, contributed, and then often left. there was less need for enforcement, detention, or removal because the movement itself was flexible. borders were regulated but not militarized. the state didn’t have to spend billions policing people who were already doing what the economy asked of them.
from 1942 to 1964, the u.s. didn’t just allow mexican labor, it engineered it (through the bracero project). millions of workers were brought north legally to work farms and railroads. entire families built lives around seasonal movement. cross, work, go home, repeat. it was normal. it was expected. it worked for the economy. then the program ended. almost immediately after, the 1965 immigration caps kicked in. labor demand stayed. legal access vanished. the same crossings people had been making for decades suddenly became crimes. sources of income for tens of thousands of families, gone in a flash.
this is, in part, where the modern undocumented population comes from. not from a sudden wave of lawlessness, but from a mismatch between labor demand and legal access. people kept moving the way they always had. the state started calling it a crime to immigrant. this ‘well did they come here legally?” discourse trying to justify bad behavior and an overpoliced state.
first, it helps to be honest about what “legal” even meant back then.
grandpap didn’t come here legally in the way people mean it now. he didn’t apply from abroad. he didn’t wait years for approval. he didn’t hire an immigration lawyer. he didn’t secure a sponsor or prove he wouldn’t be a “public charge” for the rest of his life. he showed up. that was the process.
someone like him arrived by ship, stood in line, answered a few questions, got a quick physical inspection, maybe had his name changed or misspelled, got stamped, and was let in. sometimes the whole thing took hours. sometimes a couple days. rejection rates were low, and deportation usually happened immediately if it happened at all. there was no concept of overstaying, no permanent undocumented class waiting to be created later.
this isn’t about minimizing what many of our ancestors went through. the journey was brutal. the boats were crowded. people arrived sick, broke, scared, and unwelcome in a lot of places. discrimination was real. exploitation was real. none of that is up for debate.
but comparing that experience to what immigrants face now just doesn’t hold. it’s not the same system. it’s not even close.
my ancestors endured hardship within a structure that was designed to absorb them. today’s immigrants are forced to survive inside a structure designed to delay, extract, destabilize, and remove them. the suffering isn’t interchangeable just because both groups struggled. the rules matter. the power dynamics matter. the intent of the system matters.
for a lot of people, just applying to be a citizen is already thousands of dollars. filing fees alone can run from a few hundred to several thousand, depending on the visa or status. that’s before lawyers, which most people need because the system is deliberately complex. a basic immigration attorney can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000. asylum cases can stretch higher. appeals cost more. missed paperwork costs more. starting over costs more.
there’s another piece people rarely want to sit with. a lot of the people now being punished by this system are fleeing situations the united states helped create.
this didn’t happen by accident. the u.s. has spent more than a century destabilizing governments, seizing land, backing coups, propping up dictators, funding proxy wars, enforcing sanctions, and extracting resources. when those interventions blow back onto civilian populations, people move, not because they want t., but because staying becomes impossible, even deadly.
in 1954, the u.s. helped overthrow guatemala’s democratically elected government after land reforms threatened american corporate interests. what followed was decades of civil war, death squads, and mass displacement. the guatemalan families showing up at the border today are living with the aftershocks of that decision.
the same pattern runs through el salvador, honduras, and nicaragua. cold war–era u.s. support for military regimes and paramilitary forces hollowed out civil society. violence became normalized. economies collapsed. people fled north because the alternative was death or desperation. then they were told they were breaking the law.
the middle east follows the same logic. iraq after 2003. afghanistan after twenty years of occupation. syria torn apart by proxy wars and regional power struggles the u.s. was deeply entangled in. sanctions that crippled civilian economies. weapons flowing freely while refuge did not. people fleeing bombed cities and collapsed infrastructure arrive here only to be treated as suspects, liars, or threats. immigration doesn’t exist in a vacuum. most of the time, people don’t uproot their lives for fun. they move because something made staying impossible. very often these days, that something has an american fingerprint on it.
and then, after helping destabilize entire regions, the united states turns around and builds a system that makes entry nearly impossible, humiliating, and dangerous. it criminalizes people for surviving the consequences of policies they never voted for and had no control over.
when people fall back on “did they come here legally?” as a way to justify cruelty or an overpoliced state, they’re skipping the part where legality itself was rewritten. they’re skipping the part where the u.s. benefited from flexible movement, then shut the door. they’re skipping the part where the same government destabilized countries and then punished people for leaving them.
today, immigration enforcement in the united states is handled largely by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency created in 2003, not some ancient institution. ICE didn’t exist when grandpap arrived. it exists now, and it exists to detain, surveil, and remove people inside the country, not just at the border. and it is the same age as my younger brother who still hasn’t aged out of his teenaged angst.
at any given time, ICE detains tens of thousands of people. in recent years, the average daily detention population has hovered between roughly 30,000 and 35,000 people, cycling hundreds of thousands through the system annually. these are not brief stops. people are held for weeks, months, sometimes years, often in county jails or private detention centers with limited oversight. to be clear: these detainments were happening under every president since it’s enactment, (obama and biden included) people die in that custody.
since ICE was created, hundreds of people have died while detained. deaths have been linked to medical neglect, delayed treatment, suicide, and use of force. this isn’t disputed. these deaths are documented by the government itself, often acknowledged quietly, long after the fact, with little accountability. And, of course, it doesn’t stop with non-citizens.
u.s. citizens are detained by immigration authorities every year. government reports and investigative journalism have confirmed hundreds of documented cases where citizens were arrested, jailed, or held by ICE or border agents because they were misidentified/couldn’t i mmediately prove their status. some were held for hours. some for days. some lost jobs, housing, or custody of children in the process. legality did not protect them, paperwork did.
and then there is renee good. it is not okay for the police or ice or ANYBODY to be that violent toward ANYBODY. do not let the government normalize state sanctioned violence. they are supposed to protect us, not murder us.
enforcement also now involves weapons, raids, and lethal force. ICE agents carry guns. operations happen in neighborhoods, workplaces, and homes. people have been shot during enforcement actions. people have died during arrests. when that happens, investigations are slow, internal, and rarely result in meaningful consequences. the violence is treated as an operational error, not a systemic problem. it is not normal for our government to be so violent to anybody, but especially it’s own citizens.
the more people detained, the more money execs from these private prisons make.
a large share of immigration detention in the united states is run by private prison corporations. the two biggest are corecivic and the geo group. these companies don’t just provide services. they profit per occupied bed. empty beds are lost revenue. full beds are success.
corecivic’s longtime ceo is damon hininger. the geo group is run by george zoley, who has led the company for decades. both companies have spent millions lobbying the federal government for harsher enforcement, expanded detention contracts, and longer holds. this isn’t hidden. it’s in their public filings lol.
when detention numbers rise, so does revenue. when enforcement expands, contracts expand. when laws get stricter, shareholder value improves. executives are paid accordingly and compensation packages for top leadership routinely land in the millions, tied directly to company performance. performance, in this case, means people locked up. how are we supposed to deliver fair and due process when detention isn’t a last resort but a growth strategy? so when someone says “they’re just enforcing the law,” what they’re really defending is a pipeline that turns detention into revenue and suffering into line items. not some neutral process. not some ancient tradition. a modern industry with executives, shareholders, and quarterly goals.
there’s also 287(g). local police acting as immigration enforcement which means city cops and county sheriffs deputized to do ice’s work.
the effect is immediate. people stop calling the police, they don’t report crimes, they avoid hospitals, and they hesitate to send their kids to school. every interaction with authority becomes a risk calculation instead of a source of safety. nobody should have to live in a police state.
this doesn’t make communities safer. it makes them quieter. it replaces trust with fear and turns everyday institutions into extensions of deportation. legality doesn’t protect you when enforcement is this diffuse, it just widens the net.
look, we can go on for eons here, but here are some REAL, RECENT events.
we live in a world today where people are quick to judge who they do not know based on nothing but propaganda and lies pushed by the government or player in power to push an agenda. people immigrate for a bunch of different reaons. if you’re white in america there is a good chance your family came here fleeing poverty, war, genocide, and more. and they weren't all good guys, either. criminal records didn't carry back then like they do today.
you may be wondering how this ties back to atlantic city, but it’s pretty simple.
there are plenty of places in this country where someone can live their entire life without really knowing a jewish person, a muslim, a latino family, a russian or ukrainian neighbor. fear travels faster in those places. it’s easier to blame a group you’ve never shared a hallway, a barstool, or a school pickup line with.
atlantic city is not like that, diversity isn’t theoretical here. it’s who runs the corner stores, cooks the food, fixes the houses, staffs the casinos, teaches the kids, and keeps the lights on. you hear different languages on one block. you smell three cuisines before you hit the next cross street. and ICE is here.
my dad immigrated here in the 90s. irish, white, undocumented. he went to jail. he got deported. he deserved it. i’m not here to rewrite that part of it lol #traumatic. but when he was first locked up, i was put in a support group for kids with incarcerated parents. that’s where the difference hit me. even then. 2009, 2010. my dad’s sentence was light compared to what i heard around that room. other families torn apart over minor infractions. longer time. harsher treatment. fewer second chances. different outcomes for doing less. crying with kids who - at the time - i felt had a whole hell of a lot more reason to cry than me. it makes me want to cry just remembering.
so next time you go speaking about immigrants like they’re subhuman, or speaking about people of a different race/nationality/religion, remember history. remember humanity.
by Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
i’m working on a resource list for atlantic city/south jersey, but in the meantime, please refer below:
the government wants you to stay racist and dumb, stop giving in to them.
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