Immigrants resist state repression

As the government ramps up racism and state repression against immigrants across the country, immigrant rights forces are organizing resistance.

New York protest at Federal Plaza. Photo: Walter Sinche

Two weeks ago Homeland Security sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents throughout Long Island and arrested almost 200 immigrants. In an editorial entitled “Stop the raids,” the New York Times describes: “Armed squads bursting into homes in the dead of night with shotguns and automatic weapons, terrorizing families and taking away anyone who lacks identity papers, even if they have raided the wrong house. It may sound like Baghdad, but it is the suburbs of New York City, the latest among hundreds of communities around the country where federal agents have been invading homes and workplaces in search of immigrants to deport.”(Oct. 3)

On Oct. 12, El Día de la Raza, the New York May 1 Coalition held a press conference to denounce the raids. More than 25 immigrant rights activists spoke in favor of Víctor Toro, a Chilean revolutionary arrested in an ICE raid on an Amtrak train early last summer. Speakers included Nieves Ayres, founder of La Peña del Bronx, who was herself tortured by secret police in Chile; and Walter Sinche of Ecuador, who supported New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s decision to issue drivers licenses to immigrants. Participants noted that the raids in New York were a federal response to Spitzer’s plan.

A march with a sound truck through Detroit's Latin@ community ended with a speakout in Clark Park. WW photo: Cheryl LaBash

BAYAN leader Bernadette Ellorin condemned the raids and spoke of Filipinos targeted in their homes and businesses, fearing the knock at the door, much as they do under the brutal Arroyo dictatorship in the Philippines.

Carlos Canales of Long Island’s Workplace Project, which responded quickly to the raids in Nassau and Suffolk, noted that Nassau County police accused the ICE agents of acting like cowboys, who turned their guns on the police officers as well as innocent immigrants. The Workplace Project organized support and a press conference for the victims, most of whom were sent out of state, leaving children and families abandoned.

The same week Homeland Security raided homes and worksites on Long Island, ICE agents swept across Southern California, arresting 1,300 immigrants, five of whom were Filipino. (Balita News Service). In Los Angeles, the “We Are All Elvira” Coalition responded with a protest on Oct. 12 in front of ICE headquarters.

Meanwhile in the Dallas suburb of Irving City, Mayor Herbert Gears has turned over about 1,600 people to ICE in the past year. He said his office is delivering to ICE more than 300 people a month, “more than in any other city in the nation.” Following the last raid two weeks ago, 1,000 people poured into Irving City’s streets in a spirited protest to this tyranny. (monstersandcritics.com)

After ICE arrested scores of immigrants working at several McDonalds restaurants in Reno, Nev., a protest march in support of the workers brought more than 400 people together in solidarity with the deportees. (Associated Press, Oct. 3)

Last June New Haven officials complained that ICE raids against Latin@ workers in Connecticut appeared to be in “retaliation for the city’s new identification card program” for undocumented immigrants. (AP, Oct. 3)

The raids in New Haven and on Long Island followed legislation that favored immigrant rights. In the other areas, law enforcement and state officials enthusiastically support the federal authorities.

This type of legalistic repression has been tried in many states and municipalities, from Suffolk County, Long Island, to Pennsylvania to Tennessee.

In Prince William County, Virginia, Ku Klux Klan and Minutemen vigilantes support a proposed law that would require local police to enforce national immigration law, allowing local officials to deny county services to undocumented residents. Mexicanos Sin Fronteras in Northern Virginia has held marches, rallies, boycotts, car caravans and even work stoppages in opposition to the plan. On Sept. 2, more than 8,000 people turned out in a mass protest of the KKK and the law.

In a recent case, a lawyer with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund stated: “The real issue here is whether ICE has a right to do what they’re doing. ... This is a constitutional and legal issue.” (Newsday, Oct 6)

Yet the state has engineered a legalistic justification for the raids that have resulted, according to the New York Times, in the deportation of 195,000 people in the past year.

Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York, has said, “We don’t need warrants to make the arrests [of immigrants].” According to the New York Times:“The agents also have broad authority to question people about their immigration status and to search them and their homes. There are no Miranda rights that agents must read when making arrests. Detained immigrants have the right to a lawyer, but only one they can pay for.” (Oct. 14)

Now, Washington is claiming that the climate of fear and repression is exempt from constitutional scrutiny. Jan C. Ting, law professor at Temple University and former assistant commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said that because immigration laws are civil codes, not criminal, “A lot of constitutional protections that one would normally expect in a criminal case” do not apply in immigration cases. (New York Times, Oct. 14)

With the economy faltering, respect for the government nearly nonexistent, and the war in Iraq a disaster for the imperialists, Republicans and Democrats alike are encouraging racism and anti-immigrant hysteria. They would like to deflect the attention of nonimmigrant workers from the real threats to their lives: the crisis of health care, the housing catastrophe, and underemployment, not to mention inflation and indebtedness.

Homeland Security could never pursue the policies of raids and deportation if workers were united, and racism was seen for what it is and has always been: a tool to distract workers from their real enemies, the profiteers and the government that protects those profiteers.