Detaining undocumented immigrants by local police has been a form of targeting, criminalizing and eventually deporting undocumented immigrants, primarily people from Central America and Mexico. Police all over the country can use ICE Detainer Form I-247 (I-247) when conducting exchanges of undocumented immigrants with ICE. Under I-247, local police are never to hold an undocumented immigrant for more than 48 hours. But as we know with the recent Oregon case, Miranda-Olivares v. Clackamas County, the 48-hour rule is rarely honored.

“I had to bail out a friend who is undocumented from jail,” said Oscar Hernandez of Raíces en Tampa. “This friend was locked up over the weekend, which violated the 48-hour limit. Raíces en Tampa will continue fighting against deportations and this victory is only the beginning!”

ICE detainers have been a way for the local police to work as an extension of ICE to deport the undocumented. Every day, over 1000 undocumented immigrants are deported and there is no sign of an end to these massive deportations. Hillsborough County, home to many undocumented immigrants, is the third county in Florida to pass this policy change, which is a victory for the people. All over the U.S., the people are rising up to say, “¡Ya basta!” [Enough!].

“Today we are victorious, tomorrow we continue fighting against the growing deportations and against the attacks on immigrant families and communities,” said Norberto Gazga of Raíces en Tampa. Along with their campaign to fight against deportations, Raíces en Tampa has been pushing since 2013 for immigrants to be allowed to test and obtain a Florida driver's license. To sign their petition go here: http://raicesentampa.wordpress.com/sign-the-dl4all-petition/

#TampaFL #legalizationForAll #RaicesEnTampa #Not1More #StopTheDeportations

For over a century, the U.S. has exerted dominance over the region, both military and economic. The land for growing raw goods is often owned by U.S. transnational corporations, which ship the goods out of the country and keep the profits for themselves. In Honduras in the early 1900s, the private army owned by the United Fruit Company (UFC), today known as the U.S.-owned Chiquita banana company, led a coup and established General Manuel Bonilla as president. The U.S. also supported a right-wing dictatorship in Guatemala, one that secured land for the UFC rather than Guatemalan farmers. When Guatemalan Presidents Juan Jose Arévalo and Jacobo Árbenz began challenging the UFC’s control of the nation’s land, the CIA led a coup in 1954 to reassert U.S. control over the country’s resources. In 2001, El Salvador, which has a coffee export-based economy, and its then-right-wing government changed their national currency to the U.S. dollar, leading skyrocketing costs for basic goods and greatly aiding U.S. businesses, while leaving Salvadorans impoverished.

After decades under these violent U.S.-backed dictatorships, and then the successful example of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Central American struggles for liberation gained unprecedented momentum. However, so did U.S. repression. One example is El Salvador, where new mass movements and revolutionary organizations such as the FMLN sprouted up in the 1970s and 80s. To repress such groups, the U.S. funded and trained a vicious right-wing junta in El Salvador, which forced boys the age of 12 and above into the army. Death squads were formed at the U.S. School of the Americas. They massacred and even extinguished small towns like El Mozote. The U.S.-backed right-wing government of Guatemala also repressed their people, with a brutal emphasis on mass killings of the Mayan people. Even today, Guatemalan military officials are being charged with war crimes and genocide of indigenous peoples. There were over 200,000 known deaths in Guatemala and over 70,000 known deaths in El Salvador in the late 20th century, the vast majority killed by U.S.-backed forces, with countless more listed as “disappeared.”

A repressive right-wing government also existed in Honduras, and U.S. army presence was especially heavy there, as Honduras was the base for U.S. in operations in Central America in the 1950s. For instance, when the Sandinistas of Nicaragua succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the exiled members of that ruling class fled and trained with the U.S. military in Honduras in order to form the Contras, a group intent on counterrevolution. The U.S.-backed Contras caused misery, assassinations and disappearances in attempts to sabotage the leftist Nicaraguan government. As recently as 2009, the U.S. backed a right-wing coup in Honduras when its government began to move leftward, setting the country back. Now Honduras has become the nation with the world’s highest murder rate, leaving no question as to why children would flee in the thousands.

With the repression of the popular movements of Central America came immense migration and deportations. Many Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans fled during this time across the border into the U.S. Many poor, undocumented immigrants settled in urban centers, such as in Los Angeles, in order to find work. Many undocumented youth joined gangs due to poverty and racist conditions in the inner cities, made particularly hostile by the anti-immigrant sentiment in American media. Then in the early to mid-1990s, with the end of the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, the U.S. government carried out mass deportations that included many of these youth. U.S.-based gangs then spread to Central America where they hadn’t existed before. Economic livelihoods were shattered, families were separated and communities were destabilized by poverty and a broken legal system in the aftermath of brutal civil wars. The emergence of global drug trafficking, spurred on by the Reagan administration (as exposed with the Iran-Contra scandal), also gave strength to drug trafficking syndicates in Central America, which now are working with the large Mexican cartels and fomenting a high level of violence, to feed the appetite for drugs in the U.S.

A good question is why children have not been immigrating from Nicaragua in large numbers. Nicaragua, unlike 1980s’ El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, had undergone a revolution that replaced its U.S.-backed government with one that put in policies to combat inequality, illiteracy and poverty. Coming out of the years of U.S.-backed Contra counterinsurgency of the 1980s, and then subject to austerity measures in the 1990s after the Sandinistas lost power, Nicaragua has not been able to avoid poverty or harmful U.S.-imposed measures like the Central American Free Trade Agreement – same as the rest of the region. However, the absence of the gang life cultivated by U.S.-backed repression, coupled with the legacy of the 1980s Sandinistas and new anti-poverty policies instituted by the Sandinistas since they returned to electoral office in 2006, have made Nicaragua one of the most peaceful countries in Central America. Its homicide rate is only 8.7 per 100,000 people in 2014, as compared to Honduras’ 92 per 100,000 people.

Often, anti-immigrant organizations and racist U.S. media cite the association between crime, drugs, poverty and Central Americans as reasons undocumented immigrants should not receive drivers licenses, legal rights, equal pay, or protection from deportations. However, they obscure the fact that U.S. imperialism in Central America is the source of the repression of popular movements, mass poverty, deportation and then, gang violence. Without U.S. imperialism, there would be no children fleeing across the border, running for their lives. These voices do a foul injustice to the Central Americans who were massacred by the U.S.-backed juntas and whose lives fell into shambles because of U.S. foreign policy. This narrative turns history on its head, and now countless Americans regard children as criminals without ever understanding why.

It is time to call for protection, not deportation, of the border children who have fled from Central America. President Obama has requested $3.7 billion more from Congress to build more detention centers instead of placing children with their families or other custodial care. We should say no.

President Obama, #StoptheDeportations! Protection, not deportation, is what the children of the border deserve!

#JacksonvilleFL #StopTheDeportations

Tampa, FL – Immigrant rights activists across the country will be participating in a national call-in day, Feb. 14 to demand, “Stop deportations and legalization for all!”

A statement for event organizers says “On Feb. 5 President Obama was asked if he would edit his immigration policy to include stopping the deportations; President Obama refused. We will not accept this! No human being is illegal! This Valentine's Day, immigrant rights groups and allies across the nation will be having a national call-in-day to tell President Obama and the White House to ‘Stop breaking our hearts! Stop the deportations!’”

Hugo Sanabria of Tampa Dream Defenders says, “I will be calling in on Valentine's Day because as a community we owe it to each other to call in and attempt to make a difference in a family's life that might be in danger of deportation.” Sanabria and his family emigrated from Mexico many years ago and like the 11 million other undocumented immigrants, could be deported at any minute.

Organizers of the call-in day say, “In 2012 over a record 409,000 immigrants were deported. The 'Senate bipartisan framework' isn't good enough – we want to push for genuine, progressive immigration reform.”

In recent weeks, immigrant rights and other progressive organizations from around the U.S. have signed on to a public statemen t about what should be in a plan for immigration reform. The statement urges: Legalization for all; no second-class guest worker programs; no to more militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border; and no increased workplace repression – everyone should have the right to work with dignity and labor rights.

Groups that have signed the statement include Centro CSO (Los Angeles, CA), Dream Defenders (Tampa, FL), Dream Defenders (University of Florida, Gainesville, FL), Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (Minneapolis, MN), Southern California Immigration Coalition (Los Angeles, CA) and Students for a Democratic Society – National Working Committee.

Organizers of the call in day are urging people to:

• Call the White House at 202-456-1111, Feb. 14, starting at 9:00 a.m., Eastern Time
• Follow this link and submit your demands: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments
• Tweet this message: #StopTheDeportations #LegalizationForAll, no 2nd class ‘guest worker’, no border militarization! @BarackObama @WhiteHouse

For more information, click the Facebook event here:

http://www.facebook.com/events/157261074427320

Or email LegalizationForAll@gmail.com

#TampaFL #deportations #legalizationForAll