A disturbing trend that I saw layed out at the NOI Summit and throughout various spaces here at Netroots Nation, is how blogging/pushing for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is being framed.

For us Latino bloggers who write about immigration as a part of our lives, not as a public policy issue, we do not have the luxury of waiting for there to be a CIR bill to pick apart pedazo por pedazo. At the NOI Summit it was asked of the “immigration bloggers”, how can white mainstream progressive bloggers write about CIR in a way that engages their readership and pushes for action. The way the question is presented puts immigration not as an issue of people’s daily lives, and in some cases deaths, pero rather as a way to define who are acceptable political targets on Capital Hill. Cuz for real, my vecinos in Corona, Queens, aren’t thinking about Congressman Schumer with his talk of illegals as their champion. They don’t want to be Luis Ramirez.

Sitting at a table on Wednesday with peeps from such blogs as Firedoglake, I raised that issue that while the progressive whitosphere wants to wait for their to be a bill to break down before writing in earnest about immigration, the Obama administration has already laid the groundwork and contextualized, in three very specific ways, the atmosphere in which CIR will happen. That is an atmosphere of detention and deportation. In a word, terror.

Radical Latino immigration bloggers were told by more mainstream immigration bloggers and advocates (some Latino, some not), that Secure Communities was a compromise we had to swallow. The program, which allows the immigration status of people in local jails to be checked routinely and systematically, further binds immigration status to criminality and if peeps being checked are in jail anyway, they probably deserve it, no?

Then the expansion of 287(g) programs was announced, which allows for more racial profiling of Latinos and state sponsored terrorizing of Latino ‘hoods a la Sheriff Joe in Maricopa county. This move was a little harder to defend. And yet while the Latino pro-migrant sphere blogged the hell out of the “revamps”, the mainstream progressive blogosphere was pretty quiet. I guess when they aren’t leaving your children without parents it’s easy to ignore.

Last pero I am sure certainly not least, the Obama administration put the Department of Homeland Security and I.C.E to monitor the treatment of immigrant detainees. Much like Secure Communities, this was championed as a step in the right direction by immigration advocates in part because it closed detention centers like Hutto. Framing this as a victory reveals short term thinking/memory. I fail to understand how a police entity like I.C.E who has violated human rights within the U.S. suddenly is expected to uphold human rights inside detention centers. Is this again a case of the good vs. the bad immigrant, that is the idea that those detained must have done something to mark themselves and therefore deserve their place behind razor wire? How can this be treated as a step in the right direction when seen in conjunction with prior measures will increase deportations and detentions. Is this parallel track to the prison industrial complex acceptable as long as the detention centers are prettier, cleaner?

The above issues were not acknowledged by mainstream/white progressive bloggers at the NOI Summit. I put it out on the table and they went “next”. For them next was about targeting and calling out employers state by state who hire undocumented workers. Pero when you, white progressive blogger, call out these employers will you protect the undocumented workers susceptible to I.C.E. raids? Will you, white progressive blogger, offer an alternative way for immigrant families to survive and feed their children? Will you care for the children left without parents? No. When the white progressive blogosphere wants to target Congresspeople, especially if they are Republican and overtly racist while supporting Democrats and a presidential administration who, CIR bill or not, have already drawn a line in the sand, they are accomplices and apologists not allies and certainly not activists or organizers. The line as to what Comprehensive Immigration Reform will look like is a bloody stain of abuse behind multiple walls and borders. That line is another tally mark of the death of another immigrant/Latino.