Protesting Detention for Activist Leaders, Asylum Seekers, and ICE victims

 

 

Last week was a big week for protest, but we are just beginning! We have to keep on, keeping on. Immigration as we are all focusing on, is the foundation of our country. On the eve of this 4th of July, I want to speak of some of the powerful support that immigration is receiving from we the people, at the same time that the administration is gaining more power every day. We have to stay in the streets as much as we can. Everyone.

 

So our first protest was to support Maru Mora Villalpando, who is the articulate and generous spirited leader of the Northwest Detention Center Resistance. She was served with a notice to appear at a Deportation hearing at her home in Bellingham, not long after the beginning of the year. It was during the time that the Dept of Licensing was cooperating with ICE.

 

One of Maru’s great strengths is that she constantly reminds us of all the people who do not have her prominence, who are suffering the threat of deportation, the nightmare of detention, and the separation of their families. We need to stand up for every one.

 

This was her second hearing, in a nationwide policy to deport leaders of the resistance to illegal actions.

Almost 200 people gathered on the street outside the building in which ICE holds their hearings for deportation. Maru spoke to us before she went in, with no idea if she would come out.

As her hearing was going on, we heard from local activist leaders, who held a People’s Tribunal and  spoke of the evils of ICE, suprematist racial profiling, the public private partnerships of ICE, the for profit dehumanization of people of color throughout our history ( slave trade, Indian removal, Asian American detentions- which were about grabbing valuable farmland), They reminded us that the first detention center was created in 1882 to hold migrants from China (Angel Island),

 

They reminded us the gigantic profits that GEO, the private company that runs so many detention centers and prisons makes, from 42 to 144 million increase in one year and even the “alternatives” to detention are for profit ( ankle monitors have to be paid for with a monthly rent, foster care generates income also)

 

Our local campaign against spending millions on a new youth jail is connected to this opposition to incarceration for black and brown children.

 

The People’s Tribunal demanded the close of NW Detention Center  and all detention centers and found ICE guilty of  violating basic human rights. They called on Martin Selig to stop renting space to ICE and Governor Inslee to stop all collaboration between state agencies and ICE.

But in fact, we are all guilty, because any money we have in retirement accounts is probably invested in GEO ( look into it)

 

When Maru came out, she had a good result, her case was continued until January 2019 and because her daughter will be 21 in July, she can apply for a green card. But her words addressed the families in the hall awaiting hearing, the children crying, those who do not have a lawyer, or any opportunity for relief. As the ghastly administration tightens or eliminates all options for asylym ( Recently domestic violence and gang violence were eliminated as grounds for asylyum) , the situation requires our constant protest.  We need to think of all of the undocumented immigrant families who give so much to our country and are now being so horribly torn apart.  Here are a few children’s drawings.

 

s

 

 

 

On Saturday, we joined 10,000 people at the Federal Prison near Sea-Tac, to protest detention, some of the thousands of parents  separated from their children are being held there ( although they said if they are transferred to the Northwest Detention Center, they are treated much worse). And of course there were thousands and thousands protesting all across the US, although barely reported in the media except for Democracy Now. 

 

 

And on Sunday we joined the extremely energetic protest outside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. It was led by the Northwest Detention Center Resistance. We heard from a mother of five children whose husband was in the detention center, leaving them in financial straits. He has very serious health problems that they delayed in treating causing more health problems.

We heard from a brave mother who had an “ankle monitor” speak of the nightmare of conditions there and we heard from a Cuban, ( they no longer have special status), who was detained inside for many weeks.

 

I have been to many of protests at the Northwest Detention Center, and this was the most successful in chanting long and loud outside the center ” you are not alone” ( in spanish), challenging employees entering to quit their jobs, and staying for a long time.

 

The Occupy movement is still alive and well,  and is now Occupying ICE, in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and nation wide, particularly successful in Portland, where they managed to shut down ICE for several days.

 

KEEP ON, WRITE LETTERS, PROTEST