Austin demands no local police collaboration with ICE
Austin, TX – On Sunday, February 22 at 3 p.m., around a dozen people gathered in front of Austin City Hall to demand that the city create a policy preventing local police from collaborating with ICE. People driving by honked and shouted in support as they saw the group holding a banner reading, “ICE out! Legalization for all.”
Jesse Valdelamar of La Frontera Unida said that the group showed up “to protest against the collaboration taking place between the Austin Police Department and ICE.”
On February 5, the Austin Police Department (APD) held a community meeting concerning policy changes over how APD officers will interact with ICE. Valdelamar called this meeting “nothing more than a PR stunt,” and he said, “Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis knew that no reordering of her words will ever change the fact that APD, and the city council, have capitulated completely to the racist and Republican-controlled state legislature without a fight.”
Valdelamar continued, “The city of Austin ended its contract with Flock, a company that sells license plate reader technology and is known to give its surveillance data to ICE. Despite this, APD continues to use Flock cameras maintained by two neighboring agencies in Round Rock and Sunset Valley.”
La Frontera Unida, the organization that called the protest, is starting a campaign to prevent this and other collaboration between APD and ICE.
Jake Holtzman of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization said, “At the end of the day, as we continue to fight against ICE terror and Trump’s racist agenda, we also recognize that Trump represents an entire rotten system – the system of monopoly capitalism. This whole system must be overthrown!”
Holtzman continued, “So let’s unite to stop the deportations, and stop the raids. Let’s build the mass movement together to kick ICE out of Austin, ICE out of everywhere, and win legalization for all!”