ICE, Labor, and the Lie We Keep Telling Ourselves: How Racism Broke the Workforce and Why These Raids Won’t Fix a Thing

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Kenneth Cooper’s brilliant satire lays out the absurdity of the moment. His humor carries a truth that’s easy to overlook: these raids are not only cruel, they expose the deeply flawed system New Orleans has lived with for decades. And that system didn’t break overnight. It broke because of race, history, economics, and willful neglect.

If we want to understand this ICE chaos—and what it means for the future—we have to look honestly at the city we built and the labor force we mishandled.

The Hidden Story Behind the Construction Boom

Walk onto almost any construction site today and you’ll see crews of young Hispanic men working hard, learning fast, and carrying a workload that would make most supervisors blush. They are filling a void that didn’t appear out of thin air. That void was created by the way this city treated generations of Black men.

For decades, young Black men stepped into these jobs with strong backs, work ethic, and the hope that showing up early and staying late would lead to a better life. What they got instead were:

• lower wages than white workers
• supervisors who never expected excellence
• disrespect disguised as “tough love”
• fewer training opportunities
• constant reminders of replaceability

These weren’t isolated incidents. This was culture.
A toxic one.

Black men didn’t leave the trades because they lacked discipline or desire. They left because the workplace treated them like they didn’t belong there. They certainly were not welcomed with open arms. Rather they were greeted with skepticism and distrust. The American view of Black men is most represented in the workforce.

Racism didn’t just bruise feelings. It shaped the labor force.

Whiteness Didn’t Fix Itself—it Outsourced the Problem

Instead of addressing the bias, correcting the pay gaps, or creating real opportunity, contractors simply imported a new labor pool. Hispanic workers arrived in New Orleans—especially after Katrina—with some skill, hustle, and the willingness to endure anything to survive.

Supervisors praised them as “hard workers,” “loyal,” and “easy to manage.”

Let’s be honest about what that meant.

It meant they believed Hispanic workers:

• wouldn’t talk back
• wouldn’t demand raises
• or wouldn’t challenge authority
• wouldn’t call HR
• wouldn’t invoke history

It was the same white supremacy that failed Black men—just applied to a new group.
The exploitation didn’t end; it shifted.

And because poverty forces people to accept injustice, the system kept turning.

The Manufactured Tension Between Black and Hispanic Workers

Now many Black men look at construction sites and see work that should be theirs being done by someone else. A generation ago, it was. Today, the demographic doesn’t look the same.

But the tension isn’t natural.

It was engineered:

• by low wages
• by disrespect
• also by discrimination
• by supervisors who would rather work through a language barrier
• by a system that praises one group while marginalizing another

Black men and Hispanic men are not enemies.
They are casualties of the same structure.

When you pit two marginalized groups against each other, the ruling group never loses.

Now “Americans” feel threatened by birth rates and demographic trends. In America, the white population is dramatically dropping. Blacks and Asians remain the same. But one group is rising at a faster rate than the white population is losing workers. Yep the same Hispanic population that is getting all the jobs in this country. In fact their growth is predicted to make this an Hispanic country in 30 years. You read that right. America is going to be the new Mexico.

But conservative Americans are not going to just start speaking Spanish overnight. These ICE raids are just the beginning of the attempt to stem the tide. They may not be able to change the birthrate quick enough, but if fewer and fewer Hispanics are here then they can’t produce American citizens.

ICE Raids Are Not About Safety. They Are About Power.

The sudden “Operation Swamp Sweep” is not a public safety measure. It is political theater designed to scare families, disrupt neighborhoods, and send a message to white voters are not waiting on the sidelines for demographic change.

Because here’s a truth no politician will say out loud:
The shift to a Hispanic majority population transfers power and wealth in America.

That changes everything:

• elections
• policy priorities
• political power
• cultural influence
• future coalitions

And white America sees the writing on the wall.

These ICE sweeps are not designed to fix illegal immigration.
They are designed to slow demographic change.

Fear as policy.
Terror as governance.

The Economic Disaster No One Wants to Admit

Right now, the impact is immediate:

• job sites are empty
• employers are panicking
• schedules are slipping
• costs are rising
• workers are hiding
• families are terrified

But just like hurricane debris removal crews, ICE raids move on.
They don’t stay.
They don’t build.
And they don’t solve.

The workforce will return as soon as the storm passes.
But we will pretend nothing happened.

We will pretend ICE didn’t shake the economy.
We will pretend supervisors didn’t create this problem.
And we will pretend Black men “don’t want to work.”
We will pretend Hispanic men are “taking jobs.”

Pretending is the American way.

New Orleans Must Confront Its Labor Reality

The city is broken not because of Hispanic workers coming in—but because we never built a fair system for the workers already here. And instead of addressing the bias, we doubled down on it by exploiting a new labor force under a different language.

If New Orleans wants a real, stable, long-term workforce, we need to:

• train Black men intentionally
• treat them with respect
• pay them fairly
• hold supervisors accountable
• protect Hispanic workers from exploitation
• stop letting ICE terrorize the city
• build a shared future instead of pitting communities against one another

Because the truth is simple:

Black workers and Hispanic workers are not each other’s threat.
Bias and discrimination is.
And ICE is its enforcement arm.

What Comes After the Raids

These sweeps will leave fear behind, but they won’t leave solutions.
They never do.

The next chapter in this story must confront the past honestly and build a new labor system that respects, teaches, and empowers the men who build this city—Black and Hispanic alike.

And until we do that, we’ll keep rewriting the same broken story, pretending the problem is the workers instead of the system that built the problem in the first place.