The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials)

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

I fucking hate thinking of migrants as butterflies. Butterflies can’t fuck a bitch up.

but I see my father’s face in their every one, and I know that this

astigmatism will always be with me; the light will always fall this way.

Contractors have mastered a plantation model in their line

of work, exploiting whatever sense of community that might exist among Latinx people. The workers think there are people along the chain of command who are watching out for them, but melanin and accents are ineffective binding substances.

And so September 11 changed the immigration landscape forever. Muslims and Sikhs became the target of hate crimes. ICE was the

creation of 9/11 paranoia. The Secure Communities program would require local police to share information with Homeland Security. Immigration detention centers began to be managed by private prison groups. And New York State, as well as most other states, axed driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.