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Sometimes a peek through a small window can reveal a vast sea change taking place across the wider landscape. Such was the case recently when an incident signaled that changes roiling the country elsewhere had arrived on our doorstep in bucolic Cottage Grove.
On Nov. 5, Juanita Avila, a local business owner, was pulled over and thrown onto the roadside by unidentified masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents before they discovered the green card in her pocket that she’d told them was there. In a later statement, the Cottage Grove Police Chief said that his department had been informed early that day by ICE that they would be in town, and that, in compliance with Oregon’s sanctuary law, no action was taken to assist them.
Neither were any officers dispatched to the scene when a bystander called to report that a kidnapping looked to be in progress. “Thanks for letting us know” was the reply the caller received as ICE continued to forcibly restrain a law-abiding member of our community under the guise of immigration enforcement, the same community that police had sworn to protect and serve.
After the scuffle, and with the help of her daughter, Emely, who was driving by and stopped when she saw her mother’s distress, ICE agents told Juanita, “Everything is fine now. You can go.” But everything was not fine. Juanita was left with physical and emotional trauma, and she and her daughter were both shaken and confused by the treatment they’d received from agents of a country they’d worked hard to become an integral part of. Juanita’s questions about why she’d been stopped went unanswered. No apology was offered. It was left to the citizens of Cottage Grove to begin reparations, which they did by honoring Juanita and Emely with a somber candlelight prayer vigil the following week at nearby Coiner Park.
Had this been a singular case of mistaken identity, it might have been forgiven or settled privately in a civil suit. But it wasn’t an isolated case. The dragnet continues in our town and the Eugene-Springfield area. A recent analysis of ICE data from the Deportation Data Project shows that ICE’s pattern of illegal racial profiling is well documented, concluding that mass deportation, as it is being carried out, “is a socially and economically damaging goal.”
ICE is also shattering the Pledge of Allegiance we solemnly recited as children by demonstrating that justice is dispensed to some, but not all of us. This is not defensible or sustainable in a pluralistic democracy. The methods ICE uses are those of a police state, not a nation that proclaims “liberty and justice for all.” Little did we suspect, as children, that those words would come to ring so hollow.
