Since January 2025, police raids on massage parlors have risen significantly, focusing on immigrant women suspected of sex work. Many of these women express fear of going to work, as they are often targeted by law enforcement. Raids in various locations, including Baton Rouge, have led to detentions where the individuals' names and locations remain undisclosed. Despite the national outcry against ICE, these workers face a lack of community support or defense, leading to increased isolation and vulnerability in their labor sector.
"I'm scared to go to work," a migrant massage worker in New York City told Red Canary Song, a New York-based collective of Asian and migrant sex workers. "Police cars, plainclothes cars, we all hide when [we] see them ... we'll be arrested as soon as we go out."
They disappeared into ICE's sprawling detention system, with facilities from the U.S. to El Salvador and South Sudan. Yet not a single organization called for their release.
In Sanctuary Cities, ICE exploits legal loopholes to deport people through administrative channels, without judicial oversight, masking the true scale of its operations.
Our undocumented sex worker fam are terrorized and without resources," wrote Cocoa Makati, coordinator of DecrimSexWorkCA. "Sex work is migrant women's day labor; massage parlors are their 'Home Depot.'
Collection
[
|
...
]