{"id":4018,"date":"2025-09-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=4018"},"modified":"2025-11-03T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T21:02:53","slug":"3q-with-william-d-lopez-on-raiding-the-heartland-an-american-story-of-deportation-and-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2025\/09\/16\/3q-with-william-d-lopez-on-raiding-the-heartland-an-american-story-of-deportation-and-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"3Q with William D. Lopez on Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Pictured: William D. Lopez<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

William Lopez is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Faculty Associate in the Latina\/o Studies Program. He is the author of Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, a follow-up to his award-winning first book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. In addition to his academic research on the public health impacts of deportation, Dr. Lopez regularly contributes to the public discussions on deportation, diversity, and Latino culture in venues such as the Washington Post, CNN, San Antonio Express News, Detroit Free Press, and Truthout. He is on the Boards of Health in Partnership and The Latino Newsletter. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI, with his wife, two children, and pup. You can find him on Twitter: @lopez_wd and Instagram: @DrLopezOnImmigration<\/a>. Here, I interview him about his new book, Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Cover Raiding the Heartland<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

AMW: The book vividly documents the emotional and logistical labor shouldered by local organizers and everyday residents in the wake of these raids. What does this reveal about who is actually doing the work of \u201cfamily preservation\u201d in America today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WDL: In the aftermath of worksite raids\u2013and really, any form of detention and deportation\u2013entire communities show up to support the families of those detained. Those with professional roles often go above and beyond what they are used to, working through the night and pushing themselves to use an entirely new set of skills. After worksite raids, in which dozens to hundred of people are detained, those who respond include journalists who travel hundreds of miles to cover a breaking story, lawyers who have never done immigration work but show up at raid sites, and certainly pastors and other religious leaders who open church doors to those who are too terrified to return home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But much of the labor after a raid goes unseen by the larger public and lasts far longer than the media is able or willing to cover. First and foremost, it’s families who support other families when someone has been removed. This work often falls to mothers, as fathers are more frequently detained in worksite raids. These mothers must counsel their children coping with the disappearance of a father, find ways to replace the income of the absent breadwinner, and figure out what to do without a driver to help with the logistics of the home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And let\u2019s talk about educators. One thing this research made abundantly clear is that after families, our country\u2019s teachers will bear the brunt of mass deportation. It\u2019s teachers who deal with half empty classes after a worksite raid, teachers who comfort the students asking where all their classmates are, teachers who explain to students that the parents who dropped them off may not pick them up. It\u2019s principals and superintendents who have to make sure that buses don\u2019t drop students off in empty homes, who have to figure out if they throw away all the extra food uneaten in the cafeteria because students didn\u2019t show up or if they hand deliver it personally to students homes, which we heard about multiple times. And it\u2019s school districts who have to figure out what to do about the enormous gap in learning between their Latino and white students that show up when deportations increase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


AMW: Much of the public conversation about immigration enforcement focuses on the border or urban areas. What does Raiding the Heartland<\/em> reveal about how enforcement operates\u2014and is resisted\u2014in rural America?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WDL: Uneaten meals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s one thing that sticks with me, that I hear about over and over in my work, it\u2019s how many times people mention the meals left uneaten after someone is detained.  Over and over again, those left behind after an ICE arrest tell me about the violent and traumatic moment the father or the cousin or the neighbor is taken. Then they tell me about the moment after, the loud silence of the person\u2019s absence, the work day, school day, or day of errands cut abruptly short, and the meal left uneaten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This image of the uneaten meal has become one of best, albeit painful, ways for me to understand and describe deportation in rural areas like Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska, or Iowa: it\u2019s violent and traumatic, sudden, and shocking, and then utterly, bitterly lonely. It\u2019s also intimately violating, happening during tender family moments sharing food with nephews and nieces or eating birthday cake at a party. After worksite raids, so many people are detained that there\u2019s often no one around to offer help because everyone is desperately trying to take care of their own families. And because the Latino population is so small in many rural areas, unlike in the South, there are relatively few protests and media attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know this isn\u2019t part of the question, but if there was one thing I worry about constantly, it\u2019s that the advocacy and organizing energy built after the arrests in LA won\u2019t transfer over to arrests and detentions in the Midwest because our Latino and immigrant populations are so much smaller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AMW: Your book title also calls these worksite raids an \u201cAmerican story.\u201d How is this an \u201cAmerican story,\u201d and not an \u201cimmigrant story\u201d? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WDL: So much thought goes into book titles that I\u2019m glad you asked! You know, in my public health work, many of us who work on immigration issues are always making the case that these massive systems\u2013like the deportation system\u2013don\u2019t just impact the health of immigrants. They shape the health of everyone in the US by changing the structure of families, economies, and even things like cross-race relationships. But our work is often seen as solely relevant to immigrants, or to Latinos, or to Spanish-speakers, or to other statistical minority groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But deportation, especially the mass deportation the current administration is engaged in, impacts everyone in the US. It\u2019s not something anyone can ignore. At the very least, mass deportation is going to take the buy-in of millions and millions of Americans, who will see their kids go to half empty classrooms, families separated by borders, due process disappear, and the arrests of protestors who oppose these. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only that, but the scapegoating and removal of immigrants has always been part of American history. Some of the removal strategies we see now are not new, they are just being used on a larger scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So that this is an \u201cAmerican story\u201d implies that mass deportation will affect us all. But it\u2019s also meant to be a call out: we\u2019ve been here before. We know how this goes. We know what strategies politicians use to spread fear about immigrants. And if mass deportation is going to happen, it\u2019s going to take mass public consent. I like to believe the public will refuse to consent. We certainly are seeing this pushback throughout the country, most evident at the moment in LA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books<\/a> on infidelity<\/a>, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life<\/a> (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg<\/a>. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families<\/a> blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website<\/a>. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Lopez is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Faculty Associate in the Latina\/o Studies Program. He is the author of Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance, a follow-up to his award-winning first book, Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4018"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4071,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4018\/revisions\/4071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}