Deportation, Migration, and Imperialism (2025)

In this zine, Sông2Sea analyzes the U.S.’s history of deportations and its connection to U.S. imperialism and racial capitalism. Understanding not just what’s happening, but why, is critical. By understanding the historical forces and ideologies that shape immigration policy, we can build stronger and more strategic movements for justice.

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Sources

• Deportation figures reported by DHS 

• ICE detainees data

• The Cost of Immigration Enforcement and Border Security

• The American Prospect: Wage Theft Is a Real National Emergency

• Four Charts on Immigrant Worker Exploitation in America 

• High-Growth Occupations Reliant on Undocumented Immigrant Workers in New York State

• Operation Wetback, the 1950s immigration policy Donald Trump loves, explained 

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) 

• Dismantle, Don’t Expand: The 1996 Immigration Laws

• The NSEERS Effect: A Decade of Racial Profiling, Fear, and Secrecy 

• The USA Patriot Act: A Policy of Alienation

• The Criminalization of Immigration in the United States

• Congress Approves Unprecedented Funding for Mass Deportation

• Department of Homeland Security - US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Immigration Provisions 

• Tapping Ancient Wartime and Security Laws, Trump Administration Dramatically Expands Immigration Powers 

• Unpacking 21st Century Immigration Policy

• A Distorted Image of Immigrants

• Beyond Sanctuary: Local Strategies for Defending Civil Liberties

• Secure Communities - Wikipedia

• With “Shock and Awe,” the Second Trump Term Opens with a Bid to Strongly Reshape Immigration

• Trump’s Rash Immigration Actions Place Cruelty and Spectacle Above Security

• Covert carcerality for “high‐income cheap labor”: Indian tech workers in the United States

• The US Immigration System Treats Workers as Disposable

• Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

• How capitalism uses immigrants

• Monthly Review | Disposable Workers: Today’s Reserve Army of Labor

• The New Global Capitalism and the War on Immigrants 

• Austin discloses financial ties to defense contractors

• Hegseth earned $4.6M in salary as Fox News host in past 2 years, nearly $1M in speaking engagements

• US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Sold 23 Stocks Days Before Trump's Liberation Day Market Crash

• Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

• Who Profits - The Israeli Occupation Industry - Boeing Company

• Boeing Co | AFSC Investigate

• 'Exploitative' labor practices in Washington state prisons highlighted in new report 

• Opinion: The Washington state education system’s dark ties with the prison industrial complex – The Seattle Collegian

•  Ninth Circuit affirms for-profit operator of Northwest ICE Processing Center violated labor law 

• Northrop Grumman Corp | AFSC Investigate

• Netanyahu: Trump right about building wall, 'great success' in Israel

• Netanyahu in hot water over praise of Trump's wall

• INTERVIEW – ‘Expose them’: Viral Palantir protester warns all complicit in Gaza horrors

• Palantir Technologies Inc | AFSC Investigate

• Where Do Many Police Departments Train? In Israel

• How the US and Israel exchange tactics in violence and control

Image Credits

• Historical photos of 1950s mass deportations in Southern California

• Anti-ICE demonstrations expand to Colorado; police arrest 17, fire pepper balls 

• ICE's novel strategy allows for more arrests from inside immigration courts

• Marines in LA as ICE protests spread to more U.S. cities: In photos

• How Donald Trump’s spending bill could kick US deportations into overdrive

• Inside the border crisis: Photos from the front lines

• Protests grow across the U.S. as people push against Trump’s mass deportation policies

• Union leader David Huerta faces criminal charges for protesting ICE raid

• Deindustrialization and Its Impact in the US, the UK, and France

• Deindustrialization

• Everyone’s heard of the Patriot Act. Here’s what it actually does.

• U.S. Immigration Protests: Memorable Photos

• Core countries

• Map of US bombings in southeast Asia

• A Well-Adjusted Debt: How the International Anti-Debt Movement Failed to Delink Debt Relief and Structural Adjustment 

• Mexican-Born Population Over Time, 1850-Present

• How Trump’s bill will supercharge mass deportations by funneling $170bn to Ice 

• Mahmoud Khalil and Trump admin clash over new request to release or transfer him closer to family

• Detainees at Northwest Detention Center launch a hunger strike — Fight Back! News

• Hundreds Protest Against ICE at Seattle Federal Building

• "Chinga La Migra"

• The Sanctuary Movement in Chicago

• LA protests timeline: How ICE raids sparked demonstrations and Trump to send in the military