José, 28, who did not give his last name for fear of retribution from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, said he was leaving his house in rural southwestern Colorado recently “when two federal SUVs pulled out, blocking my path in both directions.”

Jose is not a criminal, though 10 years ago he crossed the border into the United States from Mexico without legal documentation. Since then, he’s worked as a painter and a chef, has always paid federal and state taxes, and has never been in trouble with the law.  

That morning, though, he was a target: “It was the migra, and they pulled me out of the driver’s seat, forced me into one of their cars and asked me for identification.”

Because the ICE agents were looking for someone else that day, and because rural Colorado has limited jail space to hold detained migrants, they let José go. But they told him he had to show up for an interview at an ICE substation.

Jose didn’t go to his interview. “I don’t want them to find me,” he told me. “I’m always looking over my shoulder. My life is here, but I’ve moved and have to start over again.”

Jose’s experience is not unique. Scores of people with darker skin—including Native Americans—have fallen prey to the new administration’s trawl-net approach to immigration enforcement.

During his campaign, President Trump repeatedly said, “I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” His stated goal is to deport 1 million immigrants before 2026.

During the first 50 days of Trump’s second term, ICE arrested nearly 33,000 people—but only half of them were convicted criminals. ICE also detained foreign students for voicing their political opinions, arrested at least one legal U.S. resident, and wrongfully held foreign visitors for weeks, including a woman from Canada who was legally in the United States.

Created as part of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE was charged with policing immigration in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Before 2003, immigration enforcement was primarily handled by other federal agencies operating within a far less militarized framework. Two decades later, ICE has ballooned into a federal behemoth. 

ICE says its work is essential for national security, but its more than 20,000 employees operate with extraordinary freedom. Local and county police usually know and understand the community they work in, and in case of misconduct, they can be held accountable for their actions. But not ICE.

Under Trump, ICE has become increasingly aggressive in its tactics while appearing to focus on non-criminals and activists. In recent months, ICE has concentrated on apprehending people far above the U.S.-Mexico border; used military planes as a tool of deportation; outsourced detention to third parties, including private prisons and sovereign nations like El Salvador; and enlisted wartime law to bypass due process.

For the first time, ICE is also employing data from the Internal Revenue Service to identify some undocumented residents—a move that could also have devastating consequences for legal residents and citizens who get swept up with the undocumented.

Nayda Benitez, a director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, oversees a state hotline where people can report ICE activity in their community. “We’ve seen a huge increase in reports,” she said. In one Colorado town, she said, ICE showed up at a trailer park, “and they put a woman into handcuffs who was a U.S. citizen.”

As a legal advocate for immigrants in southwestern Colorado, I see the contributions of migrants everywhere. Children of immigrants attend local schools, and their parents work in every sector of the economy, including restaurants, transportation, construction, farming and ranching, hotels, resorts and hospitals. I also see the fear that immigrants are forced to endure, and the countless ways in which ICE agents disregard our nation’s most cherished rights, including freedom of speech, due process, protection from government excess, and cruel and unusual punishment.

“If you look at authoritarian leaders throughout history,” Benitez said, “our nation is repeating some key patterns like academic censorship and the marginalization, criminalization and dehumanization of specific social groups.”

It’s time to take a stand against federal overreach, and ICE is the right place to start.

Benjamin James Waddell is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He writes in Colorado.

The post ICE is eroding the rule of law appeared first on Writers On The Range.

McNatt works as an operating room nurse and is a single mother of two teenagers, one about to go to college. Though she landed on the homeownership ladder at one of its lower rungs, she’s relieved. “But this is not how I saw myself approaching the age of 40,” she muses.

The rent on her home lot is $650; her mortgage just $604. Combined, that’s about half of what she had been paying to rent an apartment in Durango.

These days, real estate prices in Durango, as in so many Western towns, have outrun most workers’ ability to buy or even rent modest digs. McNatt, for example, makes $85,000 annually, which places her at over 90% of the area median income in Durango.

A two-year-old study by Root Policy, a Denver consulting firm, showed that single- and two-parent households have begun leaving Durango and southwestern Colorado in droves. Replacing them are retirees and wealthy non-working people. That means businesses struggle to find workers as 80% of people moving into La Plata County don’t work in the region.

Adding to the housing crisis is the boom in short-term rentals, compounded by second-home owners snatching up houses once rented to students at the local Fort Lewis College. Fort Lewis has been scrambling for housing. Starting in 2019, demand for on-campus living skyrocketed, and this August, the college of 3,856 students placed 93 kids in hotel rooms. Thirty more were quadruple-bunked in off-off-campus apartments.

The town thrums with stories of scores of students living in cars and scouting for “safe parking,” meaning places where police won’t roust them out. Others camp out on public lands.

The city of Durango, population 19,400, has tried to help by limiting short-term rentals within city limits, and hiring housing expert Eva Henson to figure out how to create workforce housing.

At a Durango council meeting last month, Henson said that only 169 housing units are under construction, while a thousand more are planned. Finished units for the first nine months of 2022 totaled 59. Meanwhile, a ballyhooed Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) regulation, which would allow homeowners to add “granny flats,” fizzled. Just two were completed this year, and potential builders complain that restrictions remain tight.

According to the Root Policy study, Southwestern Colorado’s overall housing deficit is 2,500 housing units. “Every town is short on housing,” agrees Nicole Killian, a community development director for the Durango bedroom community of Bayfield. Killian says developers plan to build 800 homes over the next decade, a 75% increase in housing units.

What everyone can agree on is that the area’s housing shortage began in Durango, the biggest and most attractive town, then radiated out to every other town within 50 miles.

“Durango has had a sales tax that funded parks and recreation,” says Mayor Barbara Noseworthy. “Now we need to redirect some of that money toward housing.” But the council is divided, with some members favoring a free market approach.

So far, the free market wants only million-dollar homes. McNatt tells the story of two clinical experts at the hospital, each making $160,000, who “have looked for a house forever. And he’s like, I refuse to pay $1 million for a house.” In the end, “they paid over $1 million and are now house-poor.”

One result of the housing crunch, says Mayor Noseworthy, is finding people for essential jobs: “We have difficulty getting math teachers. If you can’t get a high school math teacher, who’s going to live here?”

Meanwhile, one housing solution in Durango has been Chris Hall’s Hermosa Orchards Village of 22 tiny owner-occupied homes, a gem of collegiality. Many of its residents commute to Purgatory Ski Area or Silverton seasonally, and given their small inside spaces, tend to congregate outside on their stoops.

On Nov. 8, there is hope for affordable housing, thanks to Proposition 123 on the ballot. The measure would give grants and loans to local nonprofits to build workforce housing, and provide mortgage assistance to people like McNatt.

At the end of my interview with McNatt, she took me to meet a friend who lives in a storage unit. The box-like space was narrow, his sleeping bag on a foam pad just fitting between a snow blower and a leaf blower. He said he was glad he’d found it.

Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Durango, CO.

The post When no home is affordable, where do you live? appeared first on Writers On The Range.