The fear before, during, and after immigration raids distresses both the immigrants who are directly affected and the networks of people who provide support to immigrants.

That is why it is a matter of public health and why William D. Lopez, a public health professor at the University of Michigan, studies immigration.

“The net of deportation pulls in so many more people who didn’t expect to find themselves pulled into the mass deportation campaign or machine,” Lopez told Pulp.

Lopez has now written two books on the topic of immigration. His first book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, focuses on one raid by ICE, SWAT, and local police in Washtenaw County and what happened afterward. In Lopez’s words, “That book was not so much on the people who were deported but on the families who are left behind and, by extension, the communities in which those families live.”

Lopez’s latest book, Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, was published in September and is broader in scope, with stories of six worksite raids in 2018. However, according to Lopez, little is known about such raids, an issue that drives Lopez’s research.

“When things are not defined, they’re harder to study, understand, and resist or oppose,” he said. “We describe our work as research advocacy.”

In Raiding the Heartland, Lopez offers a definition for these raids, based on his research, “as an immigration enforcement action in which (1) ICE agents enter a commercial space, (2) in a single enforcement action, (3) on a single day, (4) in a single community.”

The scale of these raids is significant because dozens of workers can be arrested in a single worksite raid. With so many people involved, the effects have a farther reach. One group, among others, who become involved when a worksite raid takes place is teachers, and one of Raiding the Heartland’s chapters focuses on them.

“Every time there’s a worksite raid, you’ll hear from educators who didn’t expect themselves to be caught up in it,” Lopez told Pulp. “But it makes sense. Worksite raids happen during the workday, and with very few exceptions, children and teenagers are at school during the workday. That means it’s always on teachers to explain that the parents who dropped them off may not be the parents who picked them up.”

The teachers whom Lopez met in his work shared with him the ways in which they provided aid to the families hurt by raids. On the day of the raid, communicating with students about what happened to their parents and helping them get home was the first issue. In the days and weeks following a worksite raid, families need resources. The teachers Lopez spoke to delivered food to their students’ homes, where families were afraid to even open the door for fear of being detained.

Lopez learned about these consequences of worksite raids by conducting 77 interviews across the heartland, or as he described in our interview, “rural areas in the middle of the U.S.” His research team included Dr. Nicole Novak, a community health researcher based in Iowa who wrote the foreword to Raiding the Heartland, and student researchers. Their method of interviewing shed light on what happened in worksite raids.

“When little is known about a phenomenon, at least from an outside perspective, often we’ll start with interviews,” Lopez said about this approach. “You have to understand it. … Using interviews was the best way to unpack the ripple effects and the outcomes of worksite raids.”

From these interviews, Lopez weaves together stories about what went on during worksite raids in his book. He talked with parents who grappled with what to do when the breadwinner is detained and whether it was safe to leave the house. He talked with lawyers who gave up weekends to lend their expertise to immigrants in legal trouble. He talked with faith leaders who offered their churches as shelters and hubs for aid. He talked with community members who volunteered their time to drive immigrants to court hearings. Such conversations reveal the many needs that arise following a worksite raid. The community support is crucial.

As Lopez writes in Raiding the Heartland, “The most effective responses to worksite raids across the country match specific needs of the community with the volunteers who have the personalities, skills, and life circumstances to address them.”

Meeting needs is essential, and at the same time, the worksite raids inflict trauma and generate empathy within immigrants and the people who provide support. It changes how they view immigration enforcement.

Lopez also writes in his new book that "when you allow yourself to feel empathy, the violence that depends on dehumanization is no longer possible. For those who saw Latino immigrants as their peers—whether historically or for the very first time, whether in person or through stories on the news—their removal from the life they had built began to seem inhumane and cruel.”

Lopez has seen and heard about immigration and deportation firsthand, not only through his interviews but also while growing up near the Texas-Mexico border and then moving to Michigan. The methods of immigration enforcement may vary from location to location, from the border in the southwest U.S. to the raids in the heartland, and Lopez has reflected on these distinctions. The methods allow the current administration to shape its story about immigration, he said.

The passion that Lopez has for his work shows up not only in his book but also in how he talks about being a public health researcher.

“My job is to tell you about the systems and the policies that manifest themselves in people’s bodies. Whether you support a policy or not, you always want to know how it impacts the health of your community,” he told Pulp.  

This goal has led Lopez to welcome the attention that his book is receiving, such as C-SPAN’s recording of his book event and conversation with U-M professor Dr. Ashley Cureton at Literati Bookstore on October 2, and a related article written by Lopez in TIME.

“To me, the notoriety of Raiding the Heartland speaks to a hunger throughout the country to learn more about how deportation works, what it does to families, and how we can creatively work to keep our communities safe, healthy, and whole,” he wrote in an email to Pulp after our interview.

Lopez’s passion for his research also emerges in his hope for his new book:

What I want the readers to take away from Raiding the Heartland is that deportation under the current administration is purposefully cruel and chaotic,” he wrote in the email. “That is a choice that the administration is making. Second, communities don’t just let people get removed. They find ways to resist, and we’re seeing that across the country. These strategies of mass resistance are occurring—mass deportation has started, but so has mass resistance. Third, there is a role for people … in combating what we see is a growing deportation machine with no respect for the rights of people in the U.S. ... Fourth, these communities are full of superheroes: superhero reporters, superhero lawyers, superhero pastors, and other kinds of volunteers. But movements can’t be built on superheroes. We also need people to do work of any size, right? There’s no piece too small that you can do to support immigrant communities. The last thing that I would say is mass deportation, wearing down immigrant communities, is part of the administration’s strategy, but so is wearing down the people who love them. Grinding all those advocates into the dirt is part of the strategy. We have to find a way to spread the work, spread the effort, and also care for ourselves amid this effort.

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian.