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BEFORE, DURING, AND NOW: Personal Stories from the Mexican Immigrant Experience

Reclaiming the Narrative

Especially concerning the current political climate, the stories of immigrants are often twisted and distorted due to Trump's claims and actions as a president. Because of individuals that share his mindset and beliefs, immigrants are often reduced to political talking points or racist caricatures. In this blog post, I want to re-center real voices. Through personal stories from my own family’s immigration from Mexico as well as discussing issues involving the current administration, I aim to bridge the gap between lived experience and public discourse. As the title suggests, I want to discuss past hardships that immigrants face as well as the current ones, and those that they may face in the near future. Drawing from Stuart Hall’s theory of “The West and the Rest” and Aníbal Quijano’s concept of “Coloniality of Power,” I aim to show how powerful narratives shape not only policies but the way people see immigrants. These narratives are not random—they erupt from long histories of colonial domination, Eurocentric thinking, and persistent racial hierarchies. This post shares first-hand stories, analyzes harmful rhetoric, and explains how immigrants navigate a world that constantly misrepresents them.

From Survival to Strength: Stories Behind the Stereotypes

My dad and my uncle both came to the U.S. from Mexico under slightly different circumstances, but with similar hopes: a chance to build something better. Their stories reflect the difficult transitions immigrants undergo—not just geographically, but emotionally, linguistically, and socially.

My uncle was only sixteen when he started working long hours on construction sites. The sun would rise after he did, and still, he’d be out in the dust with older men who didn’t speak his language, swinging a hammer to survive. He was often yelled at for not understanding instructions fast enough, but he kept going. “It wasn’t just the job,” he told me, “it was the way they looked at me—like I didn’t belong, like I was some burden.”

He moved around a lot, living in cramped apartments with other young men, sharing one bathroom between six people. After a few years of enduring these conditions, his then girlfriend (and now wife) eventually encouraged him to go into contracting, seeing how skilled he was with measurements, tools, and management. “You’re building other people’s houses,” she said, “why not build your own business?” It was the first time he saw his work as more than just survival—it could be growth.

My dad’s story is a little different. He left high school in Mexico just before finishing. There was no clear future for him back home, especially with his semi-strained relationship with his father. When he crossed the border, he found work almost immediately—not because it was easy, but because companies saw his desperation. They knew they could underpay him, skip breaks, and threaten to report him if he complained. “They treated me like shit,” he said. “Like the work mattered, but the person doing it didn’t.”

Even now, years later, he works long shifts and/or travels far doing electrical work—he wires houses, repairs outages, handles risky voltage without hesitation—but he never receives the pay or benefits he deserves. He’s moved from company to company, always chasing a better wage that never quite arrives. “They keep me just enough to survive,” he told me. “But they never let me breathe.” He must move from company to company because of his status as an undocumented immigrant, and each company seems to either dock his pay or barely add anything more compared to the last. 

Even then, he loves his work. He often shows his latest work, explaining it to me and my sisters even though we can’t fully understand it. Anything from the tortilla making machines in Cardenas to the countless buildings he points at and tells us that he worked on the ceiling. He takes pride in it nonetheless, especially how much time he has honed his craft. Speaking personally, if he were any other man, he could have gone so much further with it if it wasn’t for the countless hurdles they placed in front of us. 

These testimonies reflect the ‘before’ and ‘during’ of migration: the hunger to escape instability, and the reality of being dehumanized once you're here. But they also reflect resilience. My uncle and dad are not just “victims”—they are builders, both literally and metaphorically. Their voices challenge the stereotypical images circulated by political rhetoric and media representations. Their stories challenge the stereotype of immigrants as drains on society. They build it. They power it. They just aren’t allowed to claim it as theirs.

“Regimes of Power”: How the ‘West’ Writes the Rules

Stuart Hall is a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. In his work titled “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” Hall outlines how the idea of ‘the West’ (nations associated with power, progress, modernity, and overall superiority) was constructed in contrast to ‘the Rest’ (nations frequently depicted with images of struggle, poverty, tradition, and resilience) to justify colonial expansion, and how “discourse is one of the "systems" through which power circulates.” (Hall 1996, p. 204) Before there even was a US, this was in relation to Western Europe and the “rest” of the world. As he states, “‘the West’ is a historical, not a geographical, construct” (Hall 1996, 186). ‘The West’ has followed events such as the Enlightenment and the rise of Christendom, justifying their superiority when dominating other nations that they have deemed ‘the Rest’ . 

This moniker still informs how immigrants from Latin America are portrayed. One particular concept that Hall discusses is “regimes of truth”, which refers to the way institutions produce knowledge that comes to be accepted as common sense or natural truth (Hall 1996, p. 208). As a result of this knowledge, immigrants are often ‘othered,’ seen as threats, or framed as helpless victims—rarely as complex individuals. These “‘binary oppositions’ seem to be fundamental to all linguistic and symbolic systems and to the production of meaning itself” he notes (Hall 1996, p. 186) and reminds us that these representations shape public policy, perception, and identity. This framing is alive today in Trump’s portrayal of immigrants as dangerous or inferior, echoing colonial justifications for domination. 

Hall’s framework shows us how Trump's rhetoric fits into a larger historical discourse that constructs power and dominance through representation. Trump’s narrative of 'law and order' constructs immigrants as inherently chaotic. The border, then, is not just geographic—it’s symbolic. It divides those who belong from those who must be kept out, using a discourse that traces back to colonial domination. 

The Past That Never Left: Colonial Power in Modern Borders

To add onto Stuart Hall’s ideas and concepts, Peruvian sociologist and humanist thinker Aníbal Quijano would further decolonial studies and critical theory. Quijano explains that the colonial logic of power never really ended. Instead, it was restructured into the modern world through systems like race, labor, and knowledge. This idea, a term he coined as “coloniality of power” helps explain why immigrants are still racialized, exploited, and excluded today. 

For a discussion assignment in my Latin American Studies & US Liberation class, I discussed the meaning behind one of Quijano’s central ideas. The concept of “race” is explained as not a biological reality, but instead invented as a tool for social classification and domination. This concept originated during the colonization of the Americas and would become a global central organizing principle of social, political, and economic life. He explains how colonizers used the idea of race to justify European superiority and to organize labor and society around hierarchies of racial difference, seeing as those who they ended up conquering shared various traits that often contrasted their own (Quijano 2000, p. 535). This racial classification wasn’t only about physical traits however: it was tied to labor, value, and access to power. Indigenous peoples were subjected to serfdom, Africans were enslaved, all the while Europeans were assigned positions of authority and wage labor. These positions were deliberately designed to uphold a global system that privileged Europeans, and dehumanized others. According to Quijano, these arrangements weren't natural but historically constructed to maintain control (Quijano 2000, p. 535). In other words, this isn’t accidental… it’s strategic. 

Fear as Fuel: The Weaponization of Immigrant Narratives

During his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump regularly demonized immigrants. In 2015, he infamously claimed that Mexico was sending ‘rapists’ and criminals to the U.S. These kinds of comments are more than just offensive, with taking office in both 2017 and 2025, he has been able to almost fully shape public policy and fuel social division.

For yet another discussion assignment in my Latin American Studies & US Liberation class, I discussed an ABC news article, one that outlines a series of events surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in California, and how the situation had since escalated. The story describes how ICE raids in the Los Angeles area led to public protests, backlash from local leaders, and soon after the mobilization of the National Guard by President Trump against California’s sanctuary policies and without the Governor’s consent. 

The story highlights how immigration enforcement becomes a battleground for complex competing narratives about law, safety, and identity in the U.S. While the article doesn’t particularly induce actions from its audience, instead seeking to inform, the discourse that erupts from the issue urges the public to either fear immigrants as threats or empathize with them as vulnerable members of society—and at this moment in time, presenting it like an ultimatum. Depending on which “truth” dominates, the public may support increased deportation efforts or push back with more protest and legal resistance. These narratives don’t just inform opinion, they shape law enforcement practices, public funding, and national identity.

The AI image depicts Trump in a suit, holding innocent-looking kittens and supposedly rescuing them from the two Black men in the background of the image. These men, who are presumably immigrants, are shirtless and only clothed in shorts, setting them entirely apart from the White man in a dehumanizing way. As if the false accusations of eating pets was not enough, the disparaging imagery makes them look much worse. 

Trump’s discourse (and broader American policy) depends on maintaining racial hierarchies, which is why his policies regarding mass deportations are reverting back to the policy that led to events such as the Japanese-American internment camps. The administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport suspected illegal immigrants with limited or no due process (Hafetz and Ward). As a result of the current version of events such as the ICE camps, ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and immigrants from the Global South are constantly made to appear ‘less modern,’ ‘less intelligent,’ or ‘less legal.’ Quijano shows us that the language of national security and economic fear hides deeper colonial legacies. Immigrants become a figure suddenly constricted by these histories—measured not by humanity but their supposed “savagery”.

As the president, Trump is arguably being the “regime” that upholds “truth” that Stuart Hall defined. His framing that has persisted throughout his terms continuously paints immigrants and those who defend them as threats or criminals, and now a considerable part of the nation views extreme measures as necessary. Anti-immigrant social media posts in particular reproduce colonial hierarchies through memes and misinformation, and doing so at a rapid pace. Using AI to generate images has become increasingly common, and it only further accelerates their hatred when they can fabricate images fast enough to match it. These images highlight that despite how contradictory, clearly false or even foolish a narrative may seem, his narrative continues to be used and believed. Trump’s words created a discourse where immigrants are a ‘problem’ to be solved—one that he could apparently solve by treating them not people with complex lives, but less than human. This isn't new, it's a modern form of colonial discourse that draws on historic binaries between the civilized and uncivilized that Stuart Hall criticizes in his work. Representation determines who gets to be seen as human and who becomes a threat, and these viral images often erase real immigrant voices while reinforcing fear-based narratives.

Not Just Policy—People: Listening, Remembering, Resisting

As Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote in the beloved musical that reflects the story of an immigrant turned Founding Father of America: “You let me make a difference. A place where even orphan immigrants can leave their fingerprints and rise up.” While the actual historical figure leaves much to be desired in his own ideas of immigration policies, the art form speaks for itself: America . Miranda himself states that “we continue to forget that immigrants are the backbone of this country” having written a musical that receives mountainous applause with a singular line: “Immigrants, we get the job done.” We recognize their hard work and their contributions to society, but oftentimes forget the people behind the sheer industriousness.

Immigration stories are not monolithic. Some come into the country legally, others do not have any other choice. Some arrive alone, others with families they need to protect from places with dangers more prolific than one can imagine. My family’s story is one of pain, strength, survival, adaptation, and most of all tenacity—and it is constantly distorted by the public narrative. This blog post, along with countless others, is a reminder that the truth about immigration can’t be found in political speeches or campaign slogans. It lives in the voices of the people who have lived it. 

Through the lens of Hall and Quijano, we can see how harmful narratives are shaped by centuries of colonial thinking and sustained through power and discourse. As readers, I invite you to not only hear these stories but question how and why certain voices get erased or misrepresented, and what it means to resist those erasures. Using more than one lens and perspective allows us to do just that. In doing so, we can begin to build a future grounded in dignity, understanding, and truth—not in fear.

Works Cited

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yWbkKZkA37zMzNG_MBrj3jf4uTFR_UiOWVTjQEc6EHM/edit?tab=t.0