People throughout the U.S. are being kept in jails or deported without due process. On May 22, I joined dozens of citizens at a Cumberland County Commissioners meeting, to demand that Sheriff Kevin Joyce stop cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The story of immigration in the U.S. is a long one. And it is a story where people coming to the U.S. to escape persecution or find new opportunities are consistently met by hate. The general population sees them as alien, and the federal government sees them as a means to an end. Immigrants throughout U.S. history have served as workers in times of need, and then scapegoats for problems in the country. We exploit people one day, and condemn them the next.

The U.S. government has consistently prioritized white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant immigrants from Northern Europe — people like those who framed our government. In the early 1800s, Irish and German immigrants faced housing and job discrimination. Nativist political cartoons showing them as burly, violent alcoholics were the norm.

Even worse happened to Chinese immigrants on the West Coast who were recruited to build the transcontinental railroad. When the railroad was done being built and the U.S. entered a recession, these people were met with violence, anti-miscegenation laws and eventually the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring most immigration from China from 1882 to 1943.

Southern and Eastern Europeans came to the U.S. in large numbers, including my Italian great-grandparents, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This coincided with rapid industrialization and many jobs in factories. Upon arrival, these groups were looked down upon for being Catholic, and the U.S. severely limited immigration again by passing the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, and later the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In both world wars, American citizens with heritage in Germany, Italy and Japan were bothered, attacked and interned in camps.

The U.S. history with Mexican “immigration”  is even more complicated. In 1821, Mexico declared independence from Spain, and held a huge territory from Guatemala to Oregon. In 1846, the U.S. went to war with Mexico over disputed land along the Rio Grande. This dispute was largely due to the U.S. hunger for land on which to extend slavery.

The war ended in Mexican cession, which doubled the size of the U.S. However, these new Americans did not choose to immigrate. Instead America essentially immigrated to their land. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended this war, the U.S. was supposed to protect the civil and property rights of the people living in their newly acquisitioned land.

While many of these people were granted U.S. citizenship, the vast majority lost their land to those looking for a fortune in the gold rush. Labor shortages in the late 1800s after the Chinese Exclusion Act led to more recruitment of Mexican workers. Yet only a few decades later, during the Great Depression, the U.S. forcibly relocated over 400,000 people from the Southwestern U.S. to Mexico to alleviate the economic burden.

Historically, U.S. policymakers’ treatment of immigrants has rarely been about their character, but about their economic utility. Do we need laborers? Let people in, but sneer at their religion and customs. Do we have a recession? Push people out and slam the door behind them. It’s easier for politicians to point the finger at immigrants than to solve the real economic problems.

But we can’t fall for it. We need to push our government to use our resources to improve conditions for all of us instead of persecuting some of us.

At least 60 ICE detainees are in our county jails, according to Sheriff Joyce. Don’t let my neighbors be the next entry into the history books. Cumberland County needs to cease all cooperation with ICE and instead continue to make our towns welcoming and safe places to work and live.