Alerta Michigan Antifascists! February 3rd!
RALLY & MARCH to Free All Iraqi Refugees from I.C.E. Detention NOW!
On the night of Sunday, June 11, 2017, protesters boldly confronted the police and I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), clashing on the street as the I.C.E. agents attempted to drive away in a bus with dozens of captive immigrants. The protesters threw themselves in the path of the bus to halt its departure, and the ensuing struggle shut down all six lanes of East Jefferson Avenue, slowing the bus to a crawl for several blocks as the police tried haplessly to shove the protesters aside. It was Detroit’s most valiant struggle to date against Donald Trump’s racist regime of deportations.
The protesters were, in their majority, comprised of the family members of the refugees. Earlier that day, they had suffered the shock of I.C.E. agents breaking into their homes, witnessing as the I.C.E. agents brandished guns toward their families and seized their loved ones—fathers, uncles, brothers. It was as if the horrors of war-torn Iraq suddenly spilled into their living rooms. They had grown up believing that the United States would protect them, but they now faced the gruesome reality that the Trump administration would condemn their loved ones to a death sentence.
The families of the refugees gathered outside the Detroit immigration office at East Jefferson and Mount Elliot, where I.C.E. agents were holding captive roughly eighty to one hundred Iraqi-Americans who had been rounded up from across the Detroit area in a single, massive sweep. From outside the metal fence, the families watched and screamed as the chained refugees were loaded onto buses. Daughters cried out to their fathers. As a bus began to move out, the crowd raced to the driveway to blockade the exit.
Over and over, the police formed ranks and shoved aside the protesters, only to find that more people swarmed in front of the bus after it had traveled just a few yards. Some passerby local residents joined forces with the protesters, and the people in the cars on East Jefferson shouted curses against Trump and against the police. This continued for almost an hour, and even though the bus was finally able to gain enough momentum to speed away, the brave stand by protestors that night set the standard for what it means to stop deportations, by any means necessary.
After almost 8 months, many of our loved ones who were detained in June are still imprisoned, and I.C.E. has started another wave of arrests of Iraqi refugees. They will continue to carry out Trump’s policy of deportations and racial purge until we stop them.
On January 2, Judge Goldsmith ruled in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit Hamama v. Adducci, ordering that some section of the class be granted bond hearings. Many people had hope that finally there would be some justice and people would be freed. But his order put everything back into the hands of the immigration court. Immigration judges and I.C.E. are acting with the arrogance and impunity of a police state, circumventing every step forward to get people released. The few people who have been granted bond have been given a $20,000 or $40,000 bond, which almost no family is able to pay. Many have been given no bond, many more have not been granted bond hearings because they do not have legal representation and have been excluded from the Hamama class. Each court hearing is a reminder that we cannot rely on the legal process.
We urgently need to remobilize our mass movement now in the streets. We need bold collective action with the militance of that first night of struggle on June 11 and the mass demonstrations in the weeks that followed, and the mass airport shutdowns that defeated the first Muslim ban. Only this can shift the power to our side to win a definitive victory to free our people. If we don’t, then Trump, his I.C.E. thugs and Jim Crow courts will become even more emboldened to terrorize our immigrant communities and deport our family members, friends and neighbors to their deaths. We can win. It’s time to finish this fight the way we started it, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!
Alerta Michigan Antifascists! February 3rd!
RALLY & MARCH…
SOURCE: antifainternational.tumblr.com
