Our Enemies in Blue. Kristian Williams

year, 29,016 were charged with immigration violations in federal court (twelve times the 1994 level, 2,453);136 and immigration violations accounted for 12 percent of the federal prison population—approximately 260,000 people.137 Additionally, 387,000 immigrants were deported under a judicial order, and another 476,000 were “returned” without a hearing.138

      The result is that immigrants are increasingly isolated, fearful, and powerless.139 That is likely part of the point. As Christian Parenti argues, American capitalism needs a steady supply of immigrant labor, but it needs it cheap. By criminalizing the workers, the state helps to keep them uncertain, uneasy, disorganized, and docile. The attack on immigrants, therefore, is both “[p]olitically…an organic expression of nativist hostility and a very useful, rational system of elite-inspired class control”—“the primary product” of which “is … fear.”140