By Lee Jongwon. Ethnic Media Services.
API leaders in Atlanta say the raids call for “solidarity” among immigrant communities. “We have to realize that at any moment this could spread to other communities.”
ATLANTA, Georgia – “Pastor, can we send our kids to school?” parishioners at Penuel Mission Church in Duluth, Georgia, constantly ask Pastor Jay Kim, whose church serves the large immigrant Latino population in the Atlanta suburb.
Kim's comments come just days after a series of ICE raids in the Atlanta metropolitan area , including one that targeted a church, spreading fear among migrant families across the country.
Members of the Atlanta API community have stepped up their response.
“We are organizing temporary shelters for migrants who have been expelled due to immigration raids,” says Kim, who is ethnically Korean but grew up in Paraguay and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish. “They need a roof to protect them from the rain.”
The raids have led to the loss of income and, in some cases, housing for families whose primary breadwinners have been deported.
Kim's church is located along Buford Highway, a 30-mile stretch of road in the Atlanta metropolitan area that is a center for the city's large immigrant community , with restaurants and other businesses catering to the area's wide diversity.
“Latinos are neighbors to our Korean-American community. In the workplace and at home, Latinos are indispensable to Korean-American immigrants,” she says. “Many Koreans help them in invisible ways.”
Atlanta is home to one of the largest Korean communities in the country, second only to Los Angeles, as well as one of the largest Latino populations in the country.
A report from Telemundo He notes that arrests during last week's raids took place along Buford Highway, as well as in other Atlanta neighborhoods.
The DEA’s Atlanta division along with the FBI issued statements acknowledging their involvement in the raids. “The FBI, along with our partners at the Department of Justice, is assisting DHS and other federal law enforcement partners in their immigration enforcement efforts.”
According to reports, several thousand immigrants were deported during the first week of Trump's presidency. At least Half of the deportees had no criminal record, despite government assurances that it would only target people with criminal records.
According to the Washington PostThe administration has now issued quotas to ICE agents seeking to increase the number of daily deportations to at least 1,200 to 1,500.
“It’s a moment of solidarity,” says Lily Pabian, executive director of the nonprofit We Love Buford Highway , which works to preserve the multicultural identity of the area. “We have to realize that at any moment this could spread to other communities.”
Referring to refugees and asylum seekers, whom Trump has also targeted for deportation, Pabian emphasizes: “This is a moment for all of us to be very realistic about what is happening and the potential of how far this could go.”
The area around Buford Highway first emerged as an immigrant enclave about 50 years earlier, a time of growing opportunity thanks to the expansion of the region's automotive industry, Pabian explains.
“There were many immigrant communities that brought their entrepreneurial spirit with them to create small businesses,” he says.
That spirit helped to boost Atlanta's economic growth . Immigrants, including unauthorized immigrants, contribute approximately $9 billion in tax revenue to the city each year and are 41% more likely to start a business compared to their U.S.-born counterparts.
Despite their contributions, immigrants have often had to face waves of racism and xenophobia, Pabian says, including during the Covid 19 pandemic, when the API community became a target of hate, the most disturbing example of which came in 2021 after a mass shooting which targeted Asian-owned spas in the city.
“For us it was like 9/11,” Pabian says of the scars that remain from that period, adding that the experience generated a sense of solidarity and empathy that is now extending to the Latino migrant population. “Since the ICE raids, we see that another community is being marginalized… empathy is very important.”
Meanwhile, fear and anxiety continue to spread in communities here.
“Many immigrant parents will stop sending their children to school,” Kim says, “and there will be more cases of workers not being paid for their work. Immigrant women who are victims of violence will also be reluctant to go to the police.”
For his part, Kim acknowledges that there is little he can do to prevent the police from arriving at his church's door.
“If I hear that a member of my church has been arrested, I will try to find out how to contact their family. But if ICE wants to arrest undocumented people in my church, I can’t stop them,” he says, pointing to the absence of “sanctuary churches” in Georgia, which he calls “unfortunate.”
Since the raids, Kim’s church has returned to the COVID-19-era practice of holding online prayer meetings. “We created a chat room with 100 immigrants. We posted morning and evening prayers in the chat room every day with the goal of praying for 40 days.”
And he adds: “We pray on our knees that we will survive the raids.”
Peter Schurmann contributed reporting.
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