On July 10, while waiting to board her flight home to Florida, Maria Rosales was detained by ICE agents at Logan Airport. Though Rosales originally came to the United States at age 4 from Colombia, and her DACA renewal application has been long-pending, immigration officials claimed she had “illegally overstayed her visa.”

In July, Rosales’ arrest was just one of a record 51,000 carried out by immigration enforcement, many of which occurred at U.S. airports. As part of a partnership between the agency and TSA, The Boston Globe’s Cristina Silva said that the Trump administration is “going after people that previous administrations have not gone after,” and picking up immigrants with pending legal statuses to meet “very high daily targets.”

“They’re stopping people at the check-in counters and at the arrival gates,” Silva said. “Some of these people are spouses of American citizens, they are people who may have overstayed their tourism visa or other kinds of visa. There may be people who are trying to get green cards, or who are waiting on visa extensions, who have been issued work permits.”

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Yet airports are just one hotbed for immigration agents, many of whom have carried out arrests wearing masks and civilian clothing. Though Silva said pushing back on federal ICE actions is “very difficult,” Governor Maura Healey’s signing of the PROTECT Act will block immigration arrests in Massachusetts “courthouses, schools, child care centers, hospitals and health care facilities.”

“Activists and others in [Massachusetts] have been putting a lot of pressure on the governor to be a foil to the White House and to step up and protect these communities,” Silva said. “So here she is taking action.”

Julio Ricardo Varela, founder of The Latino Newsletter, celebrated the act as the end of an “18-month process” stemming from the work of Black and Latino lawmakers on Beacon Hill. In addition to blocking what Silva called “warrantless civil immigration arrests,” the act also gives immigrants greater power to sue ICE agents for violating their constitutional rights.

“Now whether this will drive a wedge — and whether we’re going to see more ICE enforcement in Massachusetts because of this — the jury’s still out,” Varela said. “But immigrant communities were asking for more protection, and the fact that [PROTECT] was signed into law, I think, was a historic accomplishment.”

Similarly, Silva and Varela commended a new study that found Democrats are trying to move past “cultural pandering” to Latinos. With four of the nation’s leading Latino civic organizations teaming up to mobilize voters, they said upcoming elections will show “how important Latinos are” to the political landscape, which has historically focused on identity over key issues.

“Pew has shown that Latinos who support Trump and other conservatives don’t really focus on their Latinidad, on their ethnicity,” Silva said. “They want to talk about the economy. They actually don’t like it when politicians pander to them and focus on them being Hispanic.”

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“You’ve seen the [Latino] community look at itself introspectively and say, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a bigger issue here…’” Varela said. “And it’ll be interesting to see, but I do think you’re starting to see this notion of Latino political power finally starting to percolate.”

Plus: A historic drought in Puerto Rico is cutting off water supply for 25% of residents, so why is the United States keeping quiet? And is flaunting your #LatinaPower… #AntiAmerican? It’s all on Under the Radar’s Latinx news roundtable!

Guests

  • Julio Ricardo Varela, MS NOW columnist and founder of The Latino Newsletter
  • Cristina Silva, managing editor for operations and standards at the Boston Globe

Stories featured in this week’s roundtable