On July 21st, 40-year-old father of 3, Ignacio Linares-Rodriguez’s request for a public defender and recusal of his private attorney, Raul Villalobos, was denied by Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce. The frustrating news comes after months of delays, no-shows, and confusion caused by Villalobos, all of which have detrimentally affected Ignacio’s case. With Judge Joyce’s ruling, Ignacio had two options: go to trial with a lawyer who has no interest in defending him or take a plea deal and risk deportation back to Venezuela, his home country.
Ignacio has been detained at Cook County Jail (CCJ) since August 2025 after he was accused of robbing an elderly woman. Like the thousands of captives held inside CCJ, he has spent the last year serving time for a crime he has yet to be convicted of in dangerous conditions. In his time at CCJ, Ignacio has been mistreated and attacked in the jail for being Venezuelan. This month, he was arbitrarily moved from one division to another with no notice and forced to leave all of his belongings behind.
According to Ignacio’s partner Grace, Ignacio should never have ended up in CCJ. When Ignacio was arrested last August, he was forced by police to sign a statement admitting to the robbery. Ignacio told Grace that the statement was in English and he was not provided a Spanish interpreter. What Ignacio could understand from police was that if he didn’t sign the paper, he would be deported – so he signed.
Since Ignacio was detained, no attorney has tried to use his coerced guilty statement as evidence to dismiss his case. Instead, Ignacio was left stranded in CCJ for 2.5 months, due to inaction from his Public Defender Paul Collins. His inadequate representation prompted Ignacio and Grace to retain Villalobos, in hopes that he would better support Ignacio and help him fight his charges, but they were wrong. Despite being retained in January, Villalobos spent the last 4 months letting the state stall on discovery. He told Ignacio he should take the State’s offer: 5 years at 50% and “direct deportation,” before viewing the State’s evidence, and accused Ignacio of lying when he said that he was not the person captured on camera footage carrying out the robbery. Through it all, Grace had tried repeatedly to contact Villalobos and understand his defense strategy, while trying to keep Ignacio’s spirits up. However, all she got from Villalobos was radio silence. Eventually, Grace and Ignacio decided to fire Villalobos in June and get him another public defender.
On July 14th, however, Grace and Ignacio were both surprised to see Villalobos still acting as Ignacio’s lawyer. When confronted about his failure to recuse himself, Villalobos lied to Grace by claiming that Ignacio still wanted his representation before blowing her off. This set up the events of July 21st, where, after a month of stalling, Villalobos finally put in his recusal, only for the judge to reject it. Judge Joyce delivered a slap to the face to both Ignacio and Grace when he stated that he “has great sympathy for Mr. Villalobos,” and that Ignacio’s request for proper representation was somehow an attempt to “delay the proceedings.”
On July 30th, believing he had run out of options and to alleviate the stress on his family, Ignacio agreed to the state’s deal. Having spent a year in CCJ, Ignacio could be released from prison in January. Ignacio’s case is a telling example of how the judicial system fuels mass incarceration, while operating in tandem with the policy of mass deportations. Anyone locked in CCJ and their families will tell you that the state and the jail work in tandem to keep them confined. The state will stall cases, leave legally innocent people in hellish conditions, and use that to force plea deals and swell their conviction numbers. In Ignacio’s case, with conviction also comes the threat of direct deportation. As of now, it’s unclear how and if Ignacio will be deported, but it is more than likely that he could be detained and taken into ICE custody soon after his release. Instead of reuniting with Grace, Ignacio could end up back in dangerous conditions while the feds repeat the state playbook. This time Ignacio will choose between staying in hell or self-deporting back to Venezuela, a bitter irony for Ignacio and many other Venezuelan immigrants to the US.
For decades, US imperialism has denied the Venezuelan people the right to trade its oil resources on the global market, crippling the country’s economy in the process. In January, the US elevated its attacks by bombing the country, killing 100 people, and instituting a coup by illegally kidnapping and detaining Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. The sum total of these actions has forced thousands to flee to the U.S. for a life free of insecurity. While we are meant to look at Ignacio as a criminal, we must ask ourselves this: why have none of our leaders stood trial for their crimes against the Venezuelan people? Why are we told to see immigrants like Ignacio as the problem, when it is the US empire and its soldiers, drones, and economic sanctions that are causing unspeakable harm across the globe?
While some might lay the blame on Trump fascism, the reality is that no matter which of the ruling class’ political parties—democrat or republican—holds power, immigrants have and always will be oppressed in this country. What many of our political leaders would like us to ignore is that US imperialism is the main driving force of immigration from Latin America. By way of coups that prop up dictators, economic restructuring and sanctions, drone warfare or blockades, the US has forced sovereign nations to bend to the will of its companies by flooding their markets with cheap goods and pushing countless potential immigrant laborers to American shores. The long-standing reasons behind US imperialism across Latin America are threefold: to profit from the resources of sovereign countries to enrich and further perpetuate US domination; and to maintain the frenzied movement of immigrants that allows companies in the U.S. to pay lower prices for their labor due to nonexistent protections (1). But the economic extraction at the heart of US empire in Latin America, however, contradicts its own white supremacist ideology that hates immigrants. This is seen explicitly in the “America first” rhetoric of Trump and his social base.
How can US imperialism hate immigrants but need them all the same?
During the Obama era, this tension was resolved in part by the distinction between good and bad immigrants. The good immigrants came to the US through legal channels, and the bad immigrants were criminals for coming in illegally. Policies like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, made this good versus bad distinction explicit. Children born to immigrant parents who didn’t choose to be born in the U.S. were granted an education and work authorization, while those who consciously chose to cross the border illegally were threatened with deportation, forced into exploitable work options, or pushed into illegal activity to make ends meet. When in 2008, the economy crashed, and there were no longer any cheap jobs to push immigrant laborers into, a wave of deportations followed, under the guise of capturing criminals. That is why it should come as no surprise then that Obama deported 3 million people over the course of his 8-year presidency—with little to no opposition. So long as he could say he was deporting criminals, and made legal pathways for those who immigrated the “right way,” he could sway the public into accepting his policies (2).
While Trump-style deportation policy has captured mass attention with its cruelty and Nazi-era comparisons, his treatment of immigrants has finally made explicit the expendable attitude the ruling class has towards immigrants that was hidden by Obama-era charisma. Where Trump departs from Obama, however, is in his overt commitment to white supremacy by any means—ignoring divisions between good and bad immigrants to target any immigrant laborer in the U.S. for deportation whether they are here legally or not.
But this overt white supremacy has come at a price. Trump-era cruelty has awakened many to the horrors befalling immigrants and has caused mass protests against the kidnappings, killings, and maimings that have marked his second term. In recent months, however, to quell mass outrage, the military-style invasions of major cities have been replaced by the cold and calculated mass deportation policy that defined Obama’s presidency. Trump has even recruited Obama-era deportation specialists and devout white supremacists like Tom Homan. Homan, who was appointed by Obama to head ICE’s deportation branch, deported more people in one year (432,000) than any other year in US history in 2013.
Since stepping into the spotlight as “border czar” with the ousting of loud and proud Nazi Greg Bovino, Homan and others like him, including DHS advisor and White House chief of staff, Steven Miller, have devised new tactics to churn up deportation numbers by any means. Whether by obliterating Temporary Protected Status (TPS), denying refugee and asylum cases, or torturing immigrants in ICE detention until they “voluntarily” leave, many of these policies reflect a growing commitment to the erosion of legal pathways for immigration and thus the distinctions between good and bad immigrants championed by Obama (3).
Ignacio’s denial of due process, forced confession, and now threat of deportation is a clear example of this and what’s to come. As more and more immigrants languish in ICE concentration camps, live in fear of deportation, and are forced to work in squalor or outside the law, we must understand that they have and will continue to be expendable to the ruling class, whether as the labor that enriches their pockets or the sacrificial lamb that fuels white supremacy and keeps them in power in this country.
(1) “What’s going on?” in Proletarian identity crisis: Blame the migrants or blame the bourgeoisie? 2024. Going Against the Tide. https://goingagainstthetide.org/2024/12/02/proletarian-identity-crisis-blame-the-migrants-or-blame-the-bourgeoisie/
(2) Grant, Pat (2025). “The Obama administration (2009–2016).” Whistles won’t stop this: The immigrant proletariat and state repression from Chinese exclusion to the Bovino boys’ terror. Going Against the Tide. https://goingagainstthetide.org/2026/01/23/whistles-wont-stop-this-the-immigrant-proletariat-and-state-repression-from-chinese-exclusion-to-the-bovino-boys-terror/#sdfootnote62anc
(3) Grant, Pat (2025). “State Power” in The reality of immigration enforcement today.” Whistles won’t stop this: The immigrant proletariat and state repression from Chinese exclusion to the Bovino boys’ terror. Going Against the Tide. https://goingagainstthetide.org/2026/01/23/whistles-wont-stop-this-the-immigrant-proletariat-and-state-repression-from-chinese-exclusion-to-the-bovino-boys-terror/#sdfootnote62anc
Dare to Struggle 