Immigrant workers in this town, estimated to number 2,000 to 3,000, mostly Brazilian and Ecuadorian—out of a population of 8,000—were scapegoated by local officials, who demagogically talked about driving them out of town as they campaigned for office.

In November, however, township voters overwhelmingly rejected those policies and threw Hilton and his running mate out of office. “There was an amazing turnout,” Ed Robins, a music store owner on the town’s main street, said in an interview. “This was a big statement from the ‘silent majority,’ the ones that didn’t come to the protests.”

Passage of the ordinance was met with a public protest in August by 300 supporters of immigrants’ rights and an aggressive countermobilization of 400 rightists carrying U.S. and Confederate flags, chanting “U.S.A.” and “Scram!”

In the months since the ordinance was adopted, township council meetings became a mobilizing center for hundreds of vocal rightists and other opponents of immigrants rights, where speakers against implementation of the ordinance were shouted down and told to leave town.

“I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, and I remember the smashing of the Jim Crow laws,” Robins said. “That’s why I was doing what I could to help the immigrants get their rights.”

“After the law was passed, we lost 40 percent of our business,” said Everaldo Souza, a Brazilian-born worker at the King Chicken restaurant. “Now people who left are coming back, and this gives more confidence to the people here.”

While some workers who had left Riverside fearing harassment after passage of the ordinance and the racist mobilizations have returned, the ordinance is still on the books. The township has revised the ordinance and is not currently enforcing the act’s provisions.

The ordinance faces two legal challenges, one brought by the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, and the other by the Riverside Coalition of Business Owners and Landlords, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund.
 
 
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