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Why do Latinos work for ICE? (www.theguardian.com)

Half of border agents are Latino, and they are part of a long history of Hispanic support for – and enforcement of – harsh immigration policies

Why? Latinos have often occupied an uneasy middle ground in American society – subject to discrimination and exclusion, yet also susceptible to appeals that promise belonging, security and status. Like every other group, they can embrace political movements that harm others and sometimes even themselves.

This precarity is why Latinos join immigration enforcement agencies in such large numbers. For years, scholars and historians have tried to find other explanations, including economics and stable employment, a desire to serve their communities and seeking proximity to whiteness. But these capture only part of the story.

The phenomenon began as early as the 1950s, when prominent Latino leaders and organizations supported deportation campaigns such as Operation Wetback, which sought to remove hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants (and their citizen family members) from the country. Their support was often rooted in not entirely unfounded fears of labor competition; US employers routinely used migrant labor to undermine unions, suppress wages and break strikes.

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[-] FullPenguin@lemmy.world 120 points 1 week ago

Because your race doesn't exclude you from being a scumbag.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 69 points 1 week ago

Look up the very real group, 'Jews for Hitler."

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Or the IDF.

They don't discriminate between Palestinian Jews, Christians, Muslims, or other.

[-] santa@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Wow. As Jew, this is terrifying. Is Miller the President?

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[-] TRAHR@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Israel’s founders were pro-Nazi Germany and viewed them as allies against Britain (who controlled Palestine at the time)

[-] thethrilloftime69@feddit.online 39 points 1 week ago

The answer as always is capitalism. They force workers to fight each other because otherwise they'd fight the real problem.

[-] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

It's crazy this is like the first time I'm seeing this really talked about. Families don't talk about it, or lie. If you need a job, the best paying one might be for ice, a lot of people are gonna be taking that job. Just like they work in civil service, or corrections, or go to the military. Those masks are for plausible deniability at a family gathering.

Ice didn't just successfully recruit every piece of shit who needed a job, it netted a lot of struggling people who felt forced to compromise their morals because they're offering real money and will hire anyone.

It's horrible, these people are tainted, they may pay a price, but the choices aren't real in this oligar-chic hellscape. I bet if you look at recruitment stats for ice, they'll be the highest where the poverty line is the lowest.

[-] stickyprimer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

In this case the question is how they get them to buy in and do it. “They force them” isn’t an answer.

[-] hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I wouldn’t say force them, as much as manipulate them to do it. Trick them with promises and prizes they’ll never attain, while throwing obstacles in their way to attaining prosperity, and you can get them to fight one another willingly.

It’s easy to take advantage of people who lack critical thinking skills, as that isn’t taught in primary education.

The very few who do manage to claw their way to the top off exploiting others, become part of the problem as they pull the ladder up from behind them.

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[-] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Downloaded Reddit after 2 years without it. The default homepage, after it reads your geolocation, is filled with pro-MAGA posts, or posts that encourage MAGA behavior in Spanish-speaking communities. It literally feels like exploring Elon Musk's X/Twitter.

It's so disgusting. I am Mexican, and a lot of the young men I see there (and TikTok, Instagram and X) literally say the most misogynistic shit ever, especially toward our president, Claudia, without really arguing or sharing a reasonable or convincing reason as to why. Also a lot of xenophobia, discrimination, just absolute childish madness. It's super reactionary and immature. A lot of them are very pro-USA, they love the USA more than themselves. One of them threatened me with violence today because I told him that the Mexican cartels get most of their guns from the Iron River. He'd respond with shit like "Fucking chairo, kill yourself, you are always blaming others for your problems, you leftie commie."

"How do you want Mexicans to defend themselves from narcos that have advanced warfare technology? How exactly is that their fault?" "Shut the fuck up and die. Where do you live? I want to kill you with my own hands." All because I told him he never had a real democracy in the first place, that he isn't a Mega Donor who ever paid for a single ad or campaign of the politician THEY wanted. Also told him that he doesn't have even a quarter of what the average baby boomer had at their age, and asked him why, because he was very pro-capitalist and considered himself a genius, referencing a niche political book about democracy dying or whatever. He got so, so mad.

All this literally started because he was saying Mexico is becoming Nazi Germany, literally. He was arguing with another user that everything Morena is doing right now is fascist, and I debunked his claims, and then he insulted that and said shit about democracy dying or whatever, and I told him he never had it in the first place, then he got increasingly violent, absolute irrational, an animal. A literal wall. And it was so damn ironic because his profile photo had Batman in it.

I seriously think more than half of my country, Mexico, is absolutely lost. Irredeemably ignorant. I hate to see it. They are young and being filled with bullshit in their feeds. It feels very deliberate, very on purpose.

Sometimes I wish I was born as a Bonobo monkey instead.

[-] taiyang@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

It's very interesting to hear your perspective. They're getting hit by propaganda, that's for sure, and I see a lot of Mexican-American men in Los Angeles acting the same way. There is definitely a toxic masculinity problem for young Latino men, as bad or worse than White men.

I'm not sure if half your county is lost, but without proper education and upward social mobility they may remain ignorant. Poverty and religion tends to promote ignorance, and Mexico has a lot of that. At least your president and government seems to be doing a fantastic job from what I can tell (although the bar is pretty low). Universal healthcare, public support for affordable EVs... uh, their own national chocolate production(?), I hear a lot of things almost every week. It might not change overnight but that's how you push for better future generations.

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

The right wing elites and their billionaire donors captured social media for propaganda.

[-] NeilBru@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Sometimes I wish I was born as a Bonobo ~~monkey~~ ape instead.

[-] dreamkeeper@literature.cafe 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What a fucking lunatic. Funny how he's so worried about the cartel while repeatedly threatening violence against a complete stranger. Dude is a legitimate threat to everyone around him.

And you're right that it's deliberate. These social media companies need to be treated like terrorist organizations. They're intentionally fanning the flames of violence and aggression because that's what makes them money.

[-] PepperoniNipple@lazysoci.al 6 points 1 week ago

100%. I really wish TikTok, X, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit got banned. But you can imagine the revolt and anger that'd cause. They'd call us fascists and authoritarians.

We are incredibly cornered, I really don't know what I can do. It's easier when it's a foreigner, but when it's someone from your country, it hurts differently, I feel a lot less compelled to even try, because well, you saw what happened, and there's also the risk of actually interacting with a narco who can use Pegasus to locate my phone's coordinates.

Every year is a new generation of thousands of brand new children receiving access to the Internet and being exposed to these things. With parents who are increasingly more economically depressed and neglectful; just give them an iPad and move on type of parenting.

It's really scary. I am so angry at the top 1%, you have no idea. It's crazy how people get censored the most when they express violence toward the top 1%, like the whole Luigi Mangione and Elon Musk censorship in Reddit and Insta. Also the word "Jeffrey Epstein" getting banned in X I think, for a while, to stop people from talking about it.

But people saying heinous shit get a pass, like say, Asmongold, who thankfully got banned today, but still, it took so long, and it should've been a permanent ban, because he literally said, out loud to his audience of millions of people in Twitch and YouTube, that he would "shoot and kill Mexican women, men and their children for crossing the border." He does dog whistles like that everyday, but just because he did it so blatantly this time, he got the ban. Shit like that is what I mean. It's so transparently clear.

Sometimes I wonder if they are trying to boil the pot until it explodes, which makes no sense, because I am very sure they would likely be the ones getting burnt the most. I don't think they are that smart, even if they hire dozens of psychologists and economists to tell them their best plan to keep squeezing people for profit. They are just killers to me, not different from the narco at all. They behave exactly like a Mafia. Just imagine being Trump, going to sleep knowing you gave an order that killed a bunch of little girls in the Middle East just to distract people from some files that prove you're a pedophile who raped children and even killed them ala House of Cards to silence them? Like what the fuck? Why is this reality? What kind of job is that? What kind of world is this? How are we still supposed to praise and love God if this is their world? If God exists and cares, why are they not doing jackshit about all this pain their children are going through? Everything is incredibly cynical. It seems like only the most sick, blind and delusional people can thrive. Those are the most loyal, therefor the most rewarded by these monsters. I hope Historians manage to record all of this in a way it can never be forgotten or ignored by future generations. As a warning we should never forget.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Remember: Elon and his stupid fanboiz are "free speech absolutists", though. I mean, he had to buy Xitter, because, otherwise, conservatives had zero free speech, LOL. Because something something shadowbanned, etc.

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[-] zd9@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

Uncle Tomás

[-] N0t_5ure@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago

The age-old mentality of "fuck you, I got mine."

[-] stickyprimer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Yeah, and there’s a cultural version of this which is like “Our community has come a long way since I came - we’re real Americans now. You’re not. You took the easy way and stayed in the old country while I took the hard path of coming here. Now you want to ride in on my coattails.”

[-] stickyprimer@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It’s actually pretty universal for immigrants to look down on more recent immigrants from wherever they are from. It’s partly self-shame - being reminded by them of where you used to be in life. It’s partly “I paved the way now you want to coast in.” And it’s partly cultural self-hatred. After spending years assimilating and shedding their accent, they simply despise the fresh immigrants they have worked so hard not to be like.

Once I suggested my father find a community of other immigrants from his country. He said “With these fucking villagers that are coming over now? No thanks.”

That moment said a lot.

I guess one final factor: sometimes immigrants left their home country because they didn’t like the way things were there, and people fresh from there may represent what they didn’t like and tried to leave behind.

It’s very white-centric to just assume Latinos would always stick up for other Latinos. Because you know - they’re all the same, aren’t they???

[-] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

While I can't speak for others, as an immigrant, there are times when i hear of news of immigrants committing crimes and in my mind I say "oh jeez you are making us look bad!" Eventually, it dawned on me that one of the reasons as to why immigrants throw other immigrants under the bus is because the former think it's signalling to locals that "we're one of the good ones. See! Please don't hurt us." It's like with any oppressed groups where they occasionally feel the need to sacrifice some of their members to the oppressors in the vain and pathetic attempt of self-preservation. It is a similar thing with "Jews for Hitler" group.

[-] nomnomdeplume@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Wait til you find out the kinds of things the cartels do to other latinos

[-] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 week ago

I asked my Mexican coworker why he supports Trump. Even tho he was an illegal alien that finally got his citizenship. I asked him about the others that had to struggle like him. His answer. "I got mine. They gotta hustle to get theirs"

[-] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The Republican motto almost verbatim: "I got mine. Fuck you."

[-] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Selfishness knows no end.

[-] some_designer_dude@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

His hustling days aren’t over, if ICE has anything to say about it…

[-] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe 7 points 1 week ago

“He did not, in fact, get his.”

“Not in the way he meant it, at least.”

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This unfortunately

There are way too people who are just like him who exists

They are called chuds

[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Ladder pulling.

The ones working for ICE have legal status, thanks to previous generations that did not.

Now they want to keep the labor market free from scabs.

Also, an opportunity to show out for their new jackboot overlords.

[-] shweddy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

They think that since they "did it right" they'll be free from persecution when they run out of immigrants

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[-] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

Because bootlickers who value money over morality can come in any color.

[-] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Their support was often rooted in not entirely unfounded fears of labor competition; US employers routinely used migrant labor to undermine unions, suppress wages and break strikes.

WOAH the exact same thing that every other labor movement in the world and in American history has realized but Schumer's "pro-union", "pro-worker" modern DNC? Color me shocked

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[-] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago

Because racism isn’t exclusive to white people. There i ruined it for you.

[-] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 8 points 1 week ago

I think you'll find a high correlation with organized religion and conservative upbringing. The article mentions "fears of labor competition" but I think the fact that it goes back almost a century paints a very different picture about how deep rooted the culture can be.

[-] Blackfeathr@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Because they think they'll be spared when all the "illegals" are gone. Nope, the guns will be turned on them eventually.

[-] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

My response is "You're selfish and you should feel bad".

[-] GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Operation Slur??!

Are you fucking kidding??

[-] BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Turns out slurs originate from somewhere.

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[-] resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe 6 points 1 week ago

They’re bullies. They love pushing others around.

[-] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

Read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He talks quite a bit about these types of people.

[-] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 5 points 1 week ago

Just cos theyre non-white doesn’t mean they’re intelligent.

[-] Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Because America selects for this mindset and this activity. It happens with any color or type of person that isn't default accepted. The only groups of people who don't have this many turncoats are groups where the race/gender/sexuality/starbelly is still too "unacceptable" to guarantee benefits if they turn, or ones where this already happened generations ago.

The ones who betray first, survive. That's intentional, and it is what has bred the cogs of the America we are in now.

[-] theblurstoftimes@leminal.space 5 points 1 week ago

They’re peacocking to make their masters think they’re different and worthy of their admiration. But sticking feathers up your butt doesn’t make you a chicken. They think as long they show they’re not like those other Latinos on the news (it’s never fake news when it’s minorities committing crimes). A good lap dog gets more treats and doesn’t get put down.

[-] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

Dude that shit aint nothing, look at ALL U.S immigrants. Irish, Italian, German, Scots, Cuban immigrants, Vietnam immigrants... wave after wave after wave of xenophobia. Get them dirty x out of here, stealing jobs and wellfare money at the same time.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Reminds me of Jews for Hitler.

[-] RodersTrotters@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

How do you say Clayton Bigsby in Spanish?

[-] n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago

It's called a paycheck

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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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