Immigrant-rights activists defy ICE raids

In a show of resistance and solidarity more than one thousand people marched through the streets of New Haven on June 16 as part of the continuing protest of racist and retaliatory arrests of immigrants by the Department of Homeland Security/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Large contingents from the labor unions Unite Here

Protest in Hartford, Conn., June 17. WW photo: Heather Cottin

and SEIU Local 32B-J, along with broad participation from the Latin@ community and active support from progressive non-immigrants made Saturday’s march a lively response to the ICE raids.

Two weeks earlier, the New Haven Board of Aldermen voted 25-1 to become the first city in the U.S. to issue ID cards to residents irrespective of their immigration status. The demand for “City ID” came from the immigrant community itself and is widely viewed as a way of bringing undocumented residents out of the shadows. The ID card makes it possible for residents to open bank accounts, access city services, and identify themselves to health-care providers, schools and landlords without disclosing their immigration status.

But only two days after the law was passed, ICE agents went on the attack, rounding up at least 33 residents in a show of force that Mayor DeStefano has described as “retaliatory.” Facing a barrage of demands from community leaders, both of Connecticut’s U.S. senators and Congressperson Rosa DeLauro have called for an investigation into the motivation and manner in which the raids were carried out.

In addition to evidence that the raids were in retaliation for the passage of the City ID law, there is also evidence that ICE used racial profiling to identify its victims and repeatedly violated its own rules. In one instance, ICE officials bragged about how agents had stayed with a boy whom they found home alone until his father returned, but neglected to mention that they entered the house illegally in order to do so. Then they arrested the boy’s father and took him away.

City officials also charge that ICE agents illegally failed to notify the New Haven police about the raids until they were already underway, because ICE knew that individual police officers would tip off residents in the largely Latin@ Fair Haven neighborhood where the raids occurred.

The passage of the City ID and the subsequent raids are raising the level of popular resistance to ICE. Many New Haven residents are expected to seek the new ID cards in order to show solidarity with immigrants, while there has already been discussion about similar measures being passed in other Connecticut cities. It is significant that after the harsh criticism directed at ICE, the regional director announced that the agency would “temporarily suspend” its operations in Connecticut. No one knows if this means that the raids will stop for a day, a week or a month, but activists are relying on solidarity, not government promises, to keep the people of New Haven safe from the racist attacks.

The protest on June 16 followed a press conference two days earlier that local immigration rights organizers held in front of the Connecticut State Courthouse in Hartford. Dozens of activists from churches, schools, community groups, unions and immigrant rights networks from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Long Island gathered to challenge ICE’s bail hearings for the immigrant detainees taking place that morning.

The workers were brought in to the courthouse handcuffed and chained at the waist. None of them could raise the $15,000 to $25,000 bail set, and supporters were working to lower the bail for the detainees, whose sole crime was working to support their families. Yale University Law School sent lawyers and students from their legal clinic to help.

Teresa Gutierrez and Walter Sinche of New York’s May 1 Coalition joined the local activists at the press conference. “It is amazing to see such community support for immigrants,” Gutierrez said. “It is clear that in Connecticut, from Danbury to Hartford to New Haven, the entire community is standing up to resist these horrible ICE raids.”

At the press conference in Hartford, Joel Rodriguez, a union organizer of Puerto Rican/Mohawk heritage from Local 108 Carpenter’s Union in Springfield, Mass., said that ICE had made sweeps across Massachusetts, and that some of the New Haven 33 were in jail with workers arrested in Springfield. “I spoke to an 8-year-old boy who asked me, ‘How can they call this the land of the free in school if they took my daddy away from me forever?’”

Atlanta: Thousands say, ¡Sí, se Puede!

The parking lot at Plaza Fiesta, a mall in the heart of the Latin and Asian immigrant community in Atlanta, was filled with thousands of workers and their families on the evening of June 18.

The emotion-filled rally was initiated by Georgia Latino Association for Human Rights (GLAHR) and called for “fair and comprehensive immigration reform.”

Speakers addressed the common desire of immigrants to make a better life for themselves and their families and challenged the political leadership of the U.S. to stop scapegoating immigrants for the problems caused by big-business practices and inadequate social programs.

Former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney roused the crowd of 8,000 to cheers with her call for Black-Brown unity. She recalled how African slaves fleeing their brutal masters had found sanctuary in Mexico and urged active solidarity among all communities against a common enemy.

As darkness fell, thousands of candles were lifted high in memory of all those who have died crossing the border and a chorus of voices, declared “si se peude” in the struggle for immigrant and worker rights.