This past weekend I attended the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. One of the films I chose to watch was a documentary titled “Everyone to Kenmure Street.” The documentary covers a protest that took place in Scotland in 2021 when two men were nearly deported by the government. I picked the documentary specifically for the subject matter and its relevance to America today in order to see what I could learn from it.
In a recent press release by the Department of Homeland Security, it’s stated that since the Trump administration took power, more than 675,000 people have been deported from the United States. That’s 675,000 mothers, fathers, students, children and community members who’ve been ripped from their homes and sent back to a country that many of them haven’t called home in decades, if at all. Many politicians will argue that they’re all violent criminals or something of the sort, but the data simply doesn’t support these claims one bit.
A report created by the American Immigration Council in October of 2024 took crime data from the past few decades and examined the trends. The report found that as the foreign-born population grew, property crime, violent crime and the total crime rate fell. The report also found that immigrants are arrested and jailed less when compared to U.S. born citizens with immigrants being 50% less likely to be arrested for violent crimes and 26% less likely to be convicted of homicide. While I don’t have access to every piece of data compiled in this report, it’s not the first to come to this conclusion when examining the numbers.
A different report from the National Institute of Justice, a part of the Department of Justice in the United States government, published in January 2025 found that undocumented immigrants had a lower crime rate compared to U.S. born citizens as well. The report was built on data only from Texas, but it’s another example of the data clearly stating that legal and undocumented immigrants commit significantly less crime when compared to U.S. born citizens.
The data makes one thing very clear, the statements made by President Donald Trump and many other Republican politicians saying that undocumented immigrants are a danger to American citizens are straight-up lies. They might point to a few specific cases of crimes, but they completely ignore the actual data that tells the full story.
I believe that those statements are meant only to stoke fear in Americans and cause a distraction to stop us from focusing on the problems actually facing our society. After all, fear is powerful. If people are afraid and you promise to stop the threat, they’re going to vote for you, data be damned.
“Everyone to Kenmure Street” covers a community wide protest that stopped the immediate deportation of two men who lived in Scotland for years. The Guardian reported that the U.K.’s home office stated that the two men were only being detained for immigration offences shortly after the protest took place. They were going to be deported simply because they were there, not because they committed a dangerous crime.
Neighbors of the two men quickly noticed the immigration raid taking place and they sprung into action. The protest began with only a few people standing in front of and behind the van stopping it from taking the two men away. One protester even dove underneath the van and put himself in danger by grabbing onto the drive shaft of the van to stop it from driving off. He laid there for over eight hours. As the day went on, the protest grew rapidly.
Tons of footage exists of the protest and what started as six people blocking the van from moving ended with over a thousand people covering the entire street from both sides in only a few hours. The crowd chanted “These are our neighbors let them go”, making it clear that the community wanted them to stay.
The two men weren’t living in secret either. They both had active court cases within the immigration system fighting for their right to stay in their home. Their cases weren’t over, their due process wasn’t complete but the Home Office still chose to try to deport them. That day, they failed. The protest was a success and after about eight hours of growing protest the two men were released into the custody of a lawyer.
That day ended in success, and admittedly that’s rare. Even so, the lessons learned from the Kenmure street protests are still true. Community activism matters. If those first few people hadn’t stepped up, those men would have been taken. If those next dozen neighbors hadn’t joined in, those men would have been taken. If the hundreds that followed hadn’t taken action, those men would have been taken.
Even though protest rarely results in immediate change, it has an impact and it’s essential for change. With the increasing severity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids all across America, it’s our duty as citizens to stand up for those in our communities who do nothing but help. It’s our first amendment right to make our voices heard. The American people are reaching a tipping point. With recent protests taking place against ICE across the nation, Americans are saying, “Enough is enough.”
How much longer must we witness community members ripped from their homes before the rest of America stands against this state sanctioned violence? If the entire community hadn’t rallied together in Glasgow in 2021 those men would have been deported.
Peacefully protesting doesn’t mean being quiet. Being peaceful doesn’t mean accepting the way things are. If our governmental system carries on as it has been, people will be disruptive. If people are quiet and accept the way things are then injustice will never end. That was true for the last hundred years and it will continue to be true for the next hundred years. Change requires action from everyone who wants it.
It took decades for women to win the right to vote, decades for the civil rights act to be passed and decades for gay people to earn the right to get married but change did eventually come. Without protest and people making their voices heard those changes would have never happened. Even if the protests taking place all across the country don’t change the Trump administration’s immigration policies we still need to try.
