FIVE. Fighting the Machine in the Streets and in the Courts

Abstract

This chapter documents the growing resistance to deportation at the dawn of the age of mass expulsion. It focuses on metropolitan Los Angeles as the ground zero of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) interior enforcement efforts in the 1970s. It describes the tireless efforts of immigrants and activists that helped build solidarity and empower the “undocumented” community. The chapter also discusses the effectiveness of voluntary departures, INS raids, and fear campaigns that are meant to scare people into the shadows or out of the country. It analyzes the basic idea of being undocumented that automatically implied deportability. It also talks about the resistance of the undocumented community's resistance that helped determine the civil rights of noncitizens and defend the immigrants' dignity that transcended legal status and citizenship.