One of the country's most ingrained and destructive tropes about immigrants is on display in a Los Angeles City Council debate this month: There are good immigrants and there are bad immigrants.
The bad ones are the rapists, the criminals, the "bad hombres," who deserve to be deported without a second thought.
The good ones are those who work harder than everyone else: the "Dreamers," "essential workers," and other superheroes who hold us up. In theory, they deserve protection. In practice, they're exploited and expelled, too — reduced, like the "bad hombres," to caricatures.
