Roberto Lovato

Anti-immigrant sentiments have a long history in the United States, with the use of the state as a tool against immigration since the Revolutionary War.

After last year’s elections, Lionel Sosa watched the returns and saw more than 30 years of his life’s work endangered. Sosa, the advertising executive who, along with close ally, Karl Rove (“we’ve been good friends a long, long time”), engineered the GOP’s historic advance among Latinos in the 2004 elections, had warned party leaders of the consequences of the anti-immigrant policies of certain of its members.

Homeland Security and its rhetoric of national security target Latinos, wedging their racial and political identities into “good” and “bad” to create a larger fight against the “global war on terror.”