“A mayor can’t do much when it comes to immigration policy,” Pete Buttigieg wrote in his memoir, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future.
But in his two terms as mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg has found creative ways to navigate within the strictures of local office to bring undocumented immigrants and their families into the city’s fold, running a city with a growing immigrant population under a president who has made the deportation of millions of undocumented people his signature issue.
Partnering with local nonprofit organizations, Buttigieg has instituted a “Community Resident Card” program to help undocumented South Bend residents open bank accounts and fill prescriptions, led “Know Your Rights” events for residents in South Bend’s Latino-heavy West Side to prepare them in the event of federal immigration operations, and even helped create a phone tree to alert local families in the event that ICE raided the homes or businesses of city residents.
“We, along with several other community organizations, lead a process of coming up with our local response plan to the rumor of, or actual ICE raid in our area,” Sam Centellas, executive director La Casa de Amistad, told The Daily Beast. La Casa coordinated with representatives of Buttigieg’s office to set up a roster of the best people to contact in the event of a federal immigration enforcement operation, Centellas said, and for advice on the best ways to communicate.
Genevieve Miller, deputy chief of staff and policy director for Buttigieg’s mayoral office, described the effort to The Daily Beast as a collaboration with community groups “to identify community members who can be contacted if there is an immigration event.”
The group—composed of members from local faith-based organizations, several local nonprofits and a few attorneys and community leaders who volunteered time—was the result of the “first scare of the Trump era,” Buttigieg wrote in his memoir. Rumors of impending immigration raids in South Bend had swept through the city’s West Side last month, and several small businesses had shuttered for days as families took refuge in a local church.
“Parents had grabbed their kids from Harrison Primary Center and small shops closed for the day,” Buttigieg recalled in Shortest Way Home. “After that day working the phones to verify this was all a false alarm, my staff and I added to our mayor’s office to-do list the creation of a phone tree in the event of immigration raids.”
Buttigieg, now an upper-tier candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is now proposing that some of his immigration initiatives be taken nationwide. On Tuesday, Buttigieg’s campaign released a sweeping set of policies intended to strengthen rural America—a key component of which is the creation of a location-based “Community Renewal visa” to encourage working-age immigrants to relocate to U.S. counties facing a shrinking population.
“Immigrants can and should be essential players in the growth of our economy, and it’s time we start recognizing that when we expand our lawful immigration system, everyone benefits,” the policy paper states, proposing that the new visa designation would target counties that have lost prime working-age populations. In return for three years of residence and employment in such communities, the visa would fast-track visa holders for a green card, and would allow the admission of spouses and children “to preserve family integrity and foster community integration.”
Increased immigration to the heartland also forms a key component of Buttigieg’s rural health plan, released last Friday, which would expand a waiver program that allows foreign doctors training in the United States to work in rural or medically underserved areas instead of returning to their home countries for two years, as currently required.
Although Buttigieg’s campaign has not yet put out a comprehensive immigration plan, the immigration-related proposals in the candidate’s other white papers are an extension of his approach to immigration in South Bend, where he has made welcoming immigrant residents to the region a key component of the city’s economic growth strategy.
“Pete is proud of the strong immigrant community in South Bend, which has helped the city grow, contributed to the economy, and enriched the city’s social fabric,” Marisol Samayoa, the Buttigieg campaign’s deputy national press secretary, told The Daily Beast. “Pete has worked to adopt policies that help immigrants feel welcome in South Bend, creating a phone tree in case of immigration raids, and helping jumpstart initiatives like the Municipal ID program so that immigrants in South Bend can live without fear.”
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