Minneapolis, MN – In a press conference held by video on April 14, several immigrant rights organizations announced a week of action happening this week to demand that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and elected officials at the state and county level take action now to free all immigrants held in ICE detention in the state.

Immigration detainees are detained on civil charges and ICE has broad leeway to release people. In the current situation with the rapid spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus, the conditions in Minnesota jails are ripe for the infection and death to spread quickly. Speakers at the press event pointed out the impossibility for people in detention to follow Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines to socially distance, wash hands frequently and wear masks. They also spoke about the inadequate health care available to inmates and the lack of testing for people detained who have shown symptoms of COVID-19.

Speakers included Daniel Romero of the Interfaith Coalition on Immigration, Nuria Arias of Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza, Sam Crossly of Minnesota Educators Against ICE, Brad Sigal of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Nekessa Opoti of the Black Immigrant Collective, Nicole Richards of Sanctuary and Resistance Against Injustice, and immigration lawyer Kim Hunter, whose law firm represents two of the 62 immigrant detainees in Sherburne County Jail who filed an emergency petition for release due to the danger of COVID-19.

All speakers echoed the main demand of the week of action: that all immigration detainees be freed now to avoid a catastrophic spread of sickness and death in the jails.

The week of action includes a daily fast by Antonia Alvarez of Pueblos de Lucha y Esperanza in front of Governor Tim Walz’s mansion in Saint Paul, as well as call-in days to Governor Walz, to Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections Paul Schnell and to county sheriffs and commissioners in counties that hold ICE detainees.

Additionally, Daniel Romero of the Interfaith Coalition on Immigration (ICOM) announced that the week of action will culminate on Friday with a car caravan and honk-in outside the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minnesota. That jail, about an hour outside of the Twin Cities, holds many immigrants in detention. 62 immigrants detained there have filed an emergency legal appeal for release due to the danger of COVID-19 in the jail.

#MinneapolisMN #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #US #Healthcare #PeoplesStruggles #ChicanoLatino #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE #Antiracism #DonaldTrump #COVID19 #FreeThemAll

ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has just announced that they would start to round up thousands of undocumented immigrants in cities across the United States. They plan to separate even more families and deport long-term U.S. residents whose only crime is to try to provide a better life for their families. Their purpose is to terrorize our communities and rally anti-immigrant support for Trump’s 2020 campaign. This is another outrage by the Trump administration. No raids, no deportations, no family separations!

There is a crisis at the border – one that the United States and the Trump administration has created. Years of U.S. free trade and regime change policies have been a disaster for Central American countries. Central American refugees, many if not most of them women and children, are fleeing violence so bad that even the U.S. State Department has advised U.S. tourists not to go there! Thousands of refugees, many of whom are children, are being held in concentration camps at the border, and more and more are dying in detention. The administration says that they lack resources to properly care for the refugees – but they have enough money to carry out raids throughout the United States. We say, “Asylum for refugees. End the border concentration camps. No increase in border funding for ICE/CBP [Customs and Border Patrol]!”

The typical undocumented immigrant has been living in the United States for 13 years or more. Millions of them have U.S.-born citizen children or immigrant children who have known no other home than the United States. They come to work and to better the lives of their children – just as other immigrants have done for generations. We support the legalization of the DREAMERS, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and others with temporary visas. We say, “Legalization for all!”

Trump is a bigot who is trying to demonize and dehumanize refugees, claiming that they are criminals, drug dealers and rapists. He is racist who has referred to Central American and African countries as “shitholes.” First he launched an attack on Muslims with his travel ban, now it is Central Americans and Mexicans who are his target. He claims that immigrants and refugees are coming to take jobs but the cities with the most immigrants have the lowest unemployment rates.

We ask you and your organizations to protest the planned raids and lend all assistance possible to those who are caught in the Trump administration dragnet.

Legalization for All (L4A) Network

NO RAIDS, NO DEPORTATIONS, NO FAMILY SEPARATIONS!

END THE BORDER CONCENTRATION CAMPS, ASYLUM FOR REFUGEES, NO INCREASE IN BORDER FUNDING FOR ICE/CBP!

LEGALIZATION FOR ALL!

#UnitedStates #International #OppressedNationalities #US #Americas #PeoplesStruggles #ChicanoLatino #deportations #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE #LegalizationForAllNetwork #DonaldTrump

Saint Paul, MN – On May 11 at 8:18 a.m., a video was posted publicly on Facebook which shows a brief clip of plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents terrorizing a local family in St. Paul when, according to witness accounts, their unmarked car swerved in front of a vehicle with four Latino men and stopped and detained them. A man from El Salvador and a man from Honduras were detained. Family members arrived on scene but could not get answers from ICE agents about who they were or why the men were being detained – instead they were shouted at and one of the detained men's wife had a gun pointed at her. Neither man had any criminal conviction.

In response, the MIRAC (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee) No More Deportations Campaign together with several allied organizations called an emergency response protest, sending a text blast asking people to protest the same day at 4:00 pm at the Whipple Federal Building, where ICE operations are housed. On about an hour’s notice, more than 25 people came to the Federal Building to protest, joining together with family members of one of the men who had been detained, holding signs saying “no more deportations!”

A call-in campaign to ICE has been initiated, demanding the release of the two men detained in the incident on the east side of Saint Paul, as well as another local man who was also detained in a separate case. Details on the call-in campaign are here.

#SaintPaulMN #MIRAc #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE #NoMoreDeportationsCampaign

For several years, immigrant rights activists have said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is systematically carrying out mass deportations of immigrants who have done nothing wrong, resulting in well over 1 million deportations during the first four years of the Obama administration. This has caused the separation of untold thousands of families and the tearing apart of Chicano and Latino communities around the country – simply to fill arbitrary deportation quotas. ICE officials and the White House denied such allegations. On February 15, 2013, USA Today newspaper broke the story in a front page article based on newly released documents that verify what activists have been saying – that ICE has in fact been intentionally targetting 'low-priority' immigrants for mass deportations, through methods such as mass searches of drivers license databases and checkpoints set up near workplaces and neighborhoods thought to have many immigrant workers. One checkpoint referenced in the USA Today article was near Asheville, NC. Here Fight Back! News has an exclusive interview with Bobby Sullivan, who was stopped repeatedly at a checkpoint near Asheville, North Carolina – likely the same checkpoint referenced in the USA Today article. Woodfin, NC – Bobby Sullivan goes to work every day from his home near Asheville, NC. One day something strange started happening on his way to work: he kept getting stopped at a police checkpoint. What was going on? The police, along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had set up an immigration checkpoint on a road near his home.

This is the face of ‘immigration enforcement’ in the U.S. today – checkpoints in our neighborhoods, racial profiling, all for the purpose of finding people to deport, leading to the cruel separation of families who have done nothing more than try to work and survive. In this interview Bobby tells about what he experienced. This is just a small window into the human impact of increased ‘immigration enforcement’ in our communities. Stories like these make it clear why we must oppose proposals to increase immigration enforcement, be it in our workplaces, in the streets, or at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Fight Back! News: You were pulled over 13 times within a month at an ICE checkpoint on your way to work. Where and when did that happen?

Bobby Sullivan: It was about 2 ½ years ago. My family and I were living in Woodfin, NC on the edge of Asheville, the city I work in. Here's a little history on Woodfin law enforcement.

In the 15 years I've lived around Asheville, the Woodfin police have always been known as an on-the-prowl force and it's by far, the easiest place to get pulled over speeding. My wife one time noticed an old woman changing her tire herself, right in front of a Woodfin police officer who was just sitting in his car trying to catch speeders. These guys lost the “serve & protect” part a long time ago.

Needless to say, once moving into their sector I drove accordingly and rode my bike as often as possible. Unfortunately though, my job changed and I had to do a lot more driving. That's when I ran into a little difficulty.

Fight Back! News: Who was doing the checkpoint?

Bobby Sullivan: The checkpoint was done by the Woodfin cops and one time I saw a guy there with an ICE jacket on. He was clearly in charge.

Fight Back! News: Why did they have a checkpoint there?

Bobby Sullivan: This was on a side street, right at the bottom of the hill the house we were renting sits on. There was a small trailer park there with some Latino families and a factory nearby, that had been raided by ICE. [See here for more info]

The factory was not off my street however, so it was clear their target was the residents living in the trailer park or in the neighborhood. They would not answer any of my questions. As a resident of a few blocks away, I would expect to be able to find out why a checkpoint was set up. Was there something that happened that I should be concerned about? Are my wife and kids safe? They wouldn't say. “Just show me your license, if you have one!” My license had my Woodfin street address, so it was clear I was there for a reason.

Fight Back! News: Describe what happened to you when they pulled you over? Why do you think you were pulled over so many times? Was everyone pulled over that many times or do you think you were targeted for some reason?

Bobby Sullivan: Each time they asked me to pull over and then waved me through after some hard looks and a perusal of my license and the inside of my vehicle. One time I drove by before they were set up and they followed me up to my house, pulled me over there and were quite hostile as they checked my credentials. I then asked the officer his name, introduced myself, reached for his hand to shake and reminded him that we were on the same team. He got very flustered.

So all in all I was pulled over 13 times in one month, as was everyone who happened to drive by. The thing that got me, was that some folks were recognized and waved through, but I had to stop every time, even though they surely recognized me and my car. There was no other Rasta living around there at the time. Twice they asked me to step out so they could search the car. Once I complied and the other time I respectfully refused.

Fight Back! News: Do you see this as an example of institutionalized racism or targeting of oppressed people?

Bobby Sullivan: What struck me the most was there seemed to be a complete lack of humanity in these people. They wouldn't look me in my eyes and wouldn't respond to any gestures of friendliness. Keep in mind, this was my local police force, sworn to “serve and protect” me. Institutionalized racism, targeting oppressed people... absolutely. It was as clear as day. If I had one piece of paperwork out of order, or not up to date, I was going to pay for it. Leave-It-To-Beaver-looking folks, no problem. I knew that if I acted nervous in any way I'd be asked to step out of the car.

When working in the divestment movement surrounding the issue of Apartheid in South Africa in the '80's, we used to talk about the conditions down there. “Yeah, they have checkpoints you have to go through. Everyone's got to show their papers.” It sounded like Nazi Germany. Now unfortunately, it sounds like America.

#WoodfinNC #ICE #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE

Recently controversy around 287(g) has grown. In 2010 Kennesaw State University student Jessica Colotl, who at the age of 21 was targeted for being of Mexican origin, by being pulled over by a university police officer and arrested for driving without a license. Jessica's family, friends and members of the community decided to stand up and fight back – their efforts resulted in Jessica having an extended stay in the U.S.

Other immigrants have not been as fortunate. ICE and local agencies using 287(g) are out of control and are directly responsible for thousands of children, who are U.S. citizens, being thrown and forgotten in foster care when their parents are deported. These families may never again have the opportunity to reunite. Mexicano, Central American and Chicano families have been especially hard hit.

When many of us heard 287(g) was going to go up for renewal in 2013, many of our own towns and cities decided to spread the word and come together against it. Enough was enough! The pueblo (people) united and together we fought against the racist oppression 287(g) had brought upon us and we won! ICE announced on Dec. 21, 2012 that it would not be renewing 287(g).

While we are very happy to hear our direct efforts against 287(g) led to its scrapping, we know that this law itself is not what oppresses us. As always, our oppressors find ways to continue oppressing us and it is up to us to continue fighting back.

One way in particular that police and racist community members continue their targeting against immigrants and oppressed nationalities is Secure Communities (S-Comm). While 287(g) gave local police the power to ask people about their immigration status on the streets, Secure Communities just moves that profiling into the jails, forcing local jails to act as ICE agents by scanning everyone who’s booked into a jail for any reason through a national database. As 287(g) has been phased out, Secure Communities has ramped up dramatically and is now being imposed in local jails in the whole country.

S-Comm is responsible for a large number of deportations now, as local jails have been turned into deportation assembly lines. So now if racist local police want to harass immigrants, they just have to arrest someone (for whatever reason or even without a reason), and once they’re booked into the local jail and scanned in the national database, ICE can get their hands on them and the person can be deported even if they are never actually charged with or convicted of any crime.

Our battles are not over. And while we are celebrating the demolishing of 287(g) today, the struggle continues to end the Secure Communities deportation program and all similar programs that continue to tear apart immigrant communities.

#TampaFL #deportations #287g #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE #SecureCommunities

Tucson, AZ – “Tucson today is the moral equivalent of Birmingham, Alabama in 1961,” said Mike Wilson, border rights activist and Tohono ‘O’odham tribal member, at a rally at the Federal Building here, April 15. The rally was held in response series of raids that took place the same day in Phoenix, Tucson, Rio Rico and Nogales, and in the Mexican city of Nogales, Sonora. The raids targeted people traveling on shuttle services, but whole neighborhoods were affected, with traffic brought to a virtual standstill while agents occupied urban areas in the biggest such operation in the seven-year history of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE).

Although the rally was organized as an emergency response, with calls going out only a couple of hours before it took place, some 75 people showed up in a diverse crowd of all ages and nationalities. Rally-goers vowed to end the system of racist laws in Arizona with a popular fight back, just like Jim Crow laws of racial discrimination were defeated in the civil rights struggle in the U.S. South in the 1960s.

The raids involved over 800 ICE officers and law enforcement officials from local to international levels. Immigrant rights activists fear that the operation signifies a new wave of anti-immigrant repression and border militarization.

According to ICE officials, the raids targeted narco-traffickers and human smugglers. In reality, the raids targeted shuttle service owners and operators and community members who evoked suspicion because they looked Latino or indigenous. Scores were arrested and 50 vehicles and seven vans were confiscated. Vidal Ramirez, owner of Sahuaro Shuttle (whose service was not raided), responded to the news saying, “I don’t have the right to ask for papers. I sell the ticket and that’s it. It’s a big, big circus.”

Andrew Provencio, however, lost the shuttle van that he runs to and from Nogales, Arizona. The van was being driven by his son, Ricardo Gomez, who was questioned, but not arrested by ICE agents. Provencio said he was just beginning to pay the $22,000 loan he had gotten on the van, remarking, “You are not even involved in what’s going on and they seize everything.” Gomez agreed that shuttle drivers are not allowed to ask passengers regarding their immigration status.

Border rights activists are concerned about the timing of the raids, coming just two days after the Arizona House passed Senate Bill 1070, which would be the harshest anti-immigrant legislation in the country. Among other things, the bill would require local and state police to enforce immigration law and investigate anyone they suspect of being undocumented. The law also gives citizens the ability to sue police agencies for not enforcing immigration law aggressively enough. Some present at the rally wondered if the timing of the raid signified an endorsement of this new approach.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Senator Russell Pierce, claims that there are already ten states ready to adopt similar measures.

Making a comparison with institutionalized racism in the Jim Crow South, Wilson noted that Arizona is an epicenter in the development of racist laws – laws that are often picked up by other states. In a later statement, immigration lawyer and Coalición de Derechos Humanos co-founder Isabel García noted, “We have permitted Arizona to be the engine for the creation of laws and politicians that will impact every person living in this country…with copy-cat legislation appearing across the states.”

Because of the ‘papers on demand’ provisions for anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant, the bill implies that everyone, resident, citizen or not, must have identification on their person at all times to verify their immigration status. Anyone who lives near the border knows what this means. English speaking whites who travel between the border and further inland are virtually never asked to provide proof of citizenship when crossing ICE roadblocks or casually coming into contact with law enforcement. But this requirement is routine for Latinos and indigenous persons, especially if Spanish is their first language – which means the law codifies racial profiling.

The Arizona Puente Human Rights Movement released a statement comparing the legislation to the passbook laws of Apartheid South Africa: “If and when Governor Brewer signs [SB 1070], Arizona will have effectively become the first Apartheid State in the United States. Despite heavy opposition by business interests, clergy, religious associations, police chiefs and League of [Arizona] Cities and Towns, the bill passed the Arizona House of Representatives, moving Arizona closer to becoming the first police state in the country.”

The bill defines any undocumented worker as being in violation of state criminal trespassing laws simply by virtue of being in the state, with mandatory jail time for infractions. It also forbids churches from providing sanctuary to undocumented workers and stops cities from adopting policies that prevent police from enforcing immigration laws. It makes illegal the solicitation of work from, or the hiring of, day laborers. It intensifies the requirement that state agencies demand proof of citizenship for all those seeking services, including those calling for police in the event of domestic violence or other crimes.

Martha Ojeda, Director of the Coalition for Maquiladora Justice in San Antonio, has little patience either for Arizona’s pioneering policies of racism (and the tendency of other states to follow them) or for the hypocrisy she sees in the treatment of undocumented workers. She notes that the North American Free Trade Agreement lead to a huge spike in immigration, granting free access for big corporations to cross borders, but not for workers to do the same. She notes that undocumented workers have become an indispensible part of the U.S. economy and that they pay more in taxes and Social Security than they receive in social services.

Ojeda feels that the Obama administration was on the right track with initial calls to renegotiate NAFTA, but that his calls don’t go far enough: “A renegotiation is indispensible that not only includes labor and environmental accords…or…studies and statistics to measure the increases in poverty. This doesn’t help anyone. The market must be regulated and NAFTA must be annulled…”

Asked about Arizona’s example, Ojeda doesn’t mince words: “Arizona has made itself stand out for being a racist state that pursues and criminalizes human beings that come contributing to the economic growth of the United States. Without the day laborers, waiters, cleaners – the U.S. economy would be in more critical shape…Many politicians are worried by immigration but it is obvious that it’s only rhetoric to dress up the nationalist racism of the political conservatives that even now are controlling power.”

The raids also coincide with revelations that ICE policy for agent evaluations has recently changed to emphasize caseload quotas and that it is trying to drive up statistics for successful operations by expanding the populations it targets for deportations. In a statement blasting the Obama administration’s immigration and border policies, the International Executive Vice President for the Service Employees International Union, Eliseo Medina, said that the Department of Homeland Security (which oversees ICE) needs to “stop these crazy, irrational policies.” According to Medina, “They said they were going after criminals. They need to do that. They said they were going after bad actor employers to take away the profit motive. They need to do that. But instead, they are still going after meatpackers, janitors and cooks.”

“There has been a failure with this strategy, and so there's a lot of anger within our union, because we look at and see the everyday impact of these policies, and it’s the complete opposite of what they said they were going to do.”

During the raids in Arizona, not only were individuals questioned and arrested, but whole neighborhoods were subjected to a military-style deployment.

Kat Rodriguez, also of Derechos Humanos, said, “There was a massive show of force, with helicopters, dozens of agents, police vehicles and weapons, assaulting our community in a fashion never seen before…This action clearly demonstrates what we have predicted, that we would all be living in a police state here in Arizona. How can the Obama administration permit these actions while espousing a commitment to ‘change?’” She added, “We demand an immediate response from the president and Secretary [of Homeland Security] Janet Napolitano, as this community is already scrambling from the Jim Crow-type laws coming from the extremists in the Arizona legislature.” Napolitano was the previous governor of Arizona before taking her current position.

Derechos Humanos’ Garcia added, “Instead of bringing in the Department of Justice to investigate the immigration abuses and uphold our rights, the Obama administration sics the ICE police on our communities.”

Meanwhile, Coalition for Maquiladora Justice’s Ojeda believes border militarization and immigrant laws are an attempt to shift the blame for the many crises plaguing the United States and represent a reactionary assault doomed to failure:

I definitely believe that immigration has turned itself into a boomerang for political conservatives…their greed was limitless and did not take into account the consequences. They opened the market and paid hunger wages, obligating people to immigrate. They thought with their invited workers program – the bracero program – they could continue slavery with legitimacy, robbing people of their passports, not paying them [Specific cases like this have been uncovered recently in the states of Florida and Mississippi], thinking that they would have no other alternative than to suffer the oppression. But they were wrong, simply and sincerely because the necessity to survive was bigger and millions of undocumented people broke the frame and didn’t follow the paradigms of slavery.

Ojeda continued, “They came and demanded the right to work, to live and the right to migration that is consecrated in the Universal Statement of Human Rights of the United Nations. And now the results are in – whether they like it or not. A crisis in banking, in housing, in nutrition in the environment, with a crisis in manufacturing and a crisis in the automotive industry and with unemployment at high levels not seen since the Great Depression in the ‘30s. The result is that the U.S., whether it likes it or not, depends on an undocumented labor force.”

#TucsonAZ #ImmigrantRights #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #CoalitionForMaquiladoraJustice #ImmigrationAndCustomEnforcementICE