Voice of Revolution

Days After United May Day Actions

Oppose Gestapo-Style ICE Raids Against “Undocumented” Workers

Voice of Revolution vigorously condemns the May 2 and May 12 Gestapo-style raids against workers by the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). We also denounce the ICE terrorism of school children and their parents. In their latest use of state terrorism, ICE is putting its prominently marked vans at public elementary and high schools and Head Start locations. The workplace raids also endanger hundreds of children whose parents are detained.

On May 2, more than 60 people were arrested in San Francisco at several locations of the El Balazo restaurant chain. Most of the workers had no criminal records and were arrested simply for working. From May 5 to May 23, more than 900 people were arrested in California in ICE raids in communities. More than 400 were simply present in a house without the ID the government demanded, when ICE raided the home with an arrest warrant for an individual. More than half were deported.

Then on May 12, the largest raid at a single plant took place in Iowa at the Postville Agriprocessors Inc. plant. It is northeast Iowa’s largest employer. ICE agents in their black storm trooper uniforms raided the plant, using two helicopters, busloads of agents, and more than a dozen SUVs and vans, all from out of state. More than 200 agents were used, including those from the FBI. They blockaded the plant and demanded that all workers show identification. They threatened to detain more than 600 workers who did not have what ICE deemed “adequate” identification. The racist character of the ICE identification was seen in the fact that all those initially detained had Hispanic-sounding names. ICE then arrested 390 people, including at least 12 juveniles.

While the raids were carried out in the name of “criminal worksite enforcement,” initially only 19 of the 390 people faced criminal charges. In the days since, the government decided to level the criminal charges of “aggravated identity theft,” and similar identification-related charges against 300 workers. This is the latest means the government has for criminalizing workers, although many of them have been working for many years with the same identification and social security number, without facing such charges.

Immigrant rights activists were alerted to the planned raid when ICE officials were seen in Waterloo, Iowa, about 70 miles away, leasing the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds. Those detained at Agriprocessors were bused to the Cattle Congress grounds and held there overnight. That workers were rounded up and detained like cattle was not lost on anyone.

This is the second time these grounds were used as a detention center, the first time being after the ICE storming of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant. Iowa Congressman Steve King is also notorious for his proposal to use electrified wire at the border. “We could electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody but would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do this with livestock all the time.”

Voice of Revolution applauds the hundreds who protested at the cattle grounds, with the demand “We Have Rights!” Their action was well received with many people honking in support and church leaders from Waterloo joining in. We call on all workers to denounce these fascist raids and all the hysteria branding “undocumented” workers as the problem. Coming days after the united May Day actions, these raids are meant to split that unity and criminalize fellow workers. Those who marched on May Day represented all — declaring that those who come to the U.S. to work are not criminals, whatever their status. The demand across the country was Legalization for All Now! The spirit is that everyone must be defended and no one is left isolated and criminalized. As the marches and response to raids in communities across the country emphasize, we are one together in the fight for rights. No One is Illegal!

Communities must also be defended and government efforts to terrorize all denounced. This collective punishment is a crime. In Postville, on the day of the raid, hundreds closed their shops, got their children from school and gathered in a church for sanctuary. They waited at the church for information about those detained, organized with school officials to ensure none of the children were abandoned and to get lawyers. Counselors were provided for youth whose parents were detained. Church officials handed out pamphlets explaining people’s rights. Others organized to get food donated by community members. This united action reflected the stand of the workers that An Injury to One is an Injury to All! We salute these efforts and urge all communities to continue to organize and together fight the raids.

Due Process Denied

Since the arrests in Iowa, ICE has made certain that many of the workers do not see lawyers — their legal right. According to lawyers, they had names of 147 people who were denied legal assistance. As court appearances began May 13, the lawyers had not seen a single client. The courtroom was also set up at the cattle grounds, with seating for only 30 people. A lawsuit was filed as part of defending the workers’ rights.

The government is also requiring lawyers untrained in immigration law to represent groups of 10-20 workers in mass hearings. The lawyers, already facing difficulties in getting translators for the workers, are being forced to provide counsel on complex cases within a seven-day “plea-bargain” deadline. The government is pushing for the workers to give up their right to immigration hearings and make guilty pleas. These actions are against due process and reflect the impunity of the government to unjustly attack and deport the workers.

These latest raids are part of a systematic campaign by the government to terrorize communities and create an atmosphere where mass arrests and detention are to be accepted as “normal.” Before the government launched its current campaign of raids, civil immigration violations did not involve arrest and workers were usually given time to solve whatever the problems were. Now, despite how minor the violation, the standing of the individual at work and in the community, or lack of any criminal record, people are being deported.

ICE deported 260,000 people over the last year, 120,000 of them in the last six months. Many have lived and worked in the U.S. for many years, with their children born and raised here. Families are being brutally separated. These government crimes are being done to terrorize everyone. It does nothing to solve immigration issues, which could readily be done by immediately providing legalization for all.

Government Terrorism is the Crime

The government hopes that given the ailing economy and mass layoffs of industrial workers, the attack on “undocumented” workers will act as a means to split the workers. The problem is not the workers. It is the failure of the existing economy to provide for the people, including their rights to jobs, housing, education and healthcare. These are rights for all human beings, whatever their status.

The use of state terror against the “undocumented” workers will not bring economic recovery, let alone help to alleviate the precariousness of the workers’ lives. Far from it, it is a means to force them to remain in this impossible situation and to use the lowest and most vulnerable workers to drive down the wages and conditions of the rest.

The “undocumented” workers are at the bottom in terms of working and living conditions. It is reported that many of the workers at the Postville plant were forced to take wages of $5 and $6 an hour, below Iowa’s minimum wage of $7.25, and far below most unionized meatpacking plants. No action has been taken against the plant’s owners for imposing these illegal wages.

The “undocumented” workers are also just one of many categories of workers that are being rapidly developed, from “undocumented” workers, to “guest” temporary workers, to temps, casuals and individual contractors of all types — many of them former unionized workers — that constitute an underground network of workers who live and work largely without even the minimal protection of labor laws.

The disinformation of the government that the “undocumented” workers are a threat to security and a likely source of “terrorism” must also be rejected. In the name of this security, the federal government is organizing to require government-issued biometric identification cards not simply for new immigrants, but for all workers, for all families receiving Medicare or Medicaid, for all voters. It is the security of the people that is at risk, as the government strives to put in place arrangements whereby it can decide who does and does not get the identification required — and thus who does and does not work, vote, receive benefits, even simply enter a federal building.

The united May Day actions defending the rights of all showed the way forward. Speaking out and organizing support is vital whenever any section of the people is singled out for attack. Join the efforts across the country to Stop the Raids and Deportations! All for One and One for All!

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Emergency Call to Action

No Raids in Our Community!

On Friday, May 2, the day after thousands of Bay Area residents marched for immigrant rights, immigration agents conducted a large-scale raid at taquerias across San Francisco and the East Bay. Agents arrested about 60 workers at several locations of the El Balazo chain. Some of the workers have been released, but forced to wear electronic ankle bracelets while they await deportation hearings. Others are still imprisoned. Many were interrogated without legal representation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claims that it targets those involved in criminal activity and doesn’t do random enforcement. But most of the Balazo workers had no criminal records. They were arrested for working to support their families.

Join unions, faith leaders and community groups in an emergency action outside the ICE detention facility. Let ICE know that our community is united for the rights of all workers and human beings, and that we will not let them punish our co-workers and neighbors.

Sponsored by: Bay Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, East Bay Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Bay Area Labor Coalition on Immigration, SF Organizing Project, Progressive Jewish Alliance, SF Immigrant Legal and Education Network. For more info, contact Evelyn Sanchez at 415-572-0639 or Sarah Norr at 510-435-9475.

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ICE Raids Are Violating Laws and Attacking Our Rights

Justice for Postville! ICE Must End Raids, Cease Detentions and Deportations

National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR) condemns the latest Department of Homeland Security immigration raid carried out on Monday, May 12, by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against immigrant workers at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. ICE has committed a flagrant injustice under the cover of law and must be held accountable.

ICE’s actions have left the people of Postville in a state of shock, as its very social and economic well being has been called into question, threatening the future of its residents. After the ICE raid, scores of immigrant workers and their family members sought sanctuary at St. Bridget Church.

Workers at the Postville plant were reported to be in a labor dispute with employers. Despite policy prohibiting immigration police interference and ignoring union organizers’ pleas, ICE amassed a small army and proceeded to carry out a massive operation in the early hours of the day. ICE used two helicopters and brought in more than 200 federal, county and local police agents including from ICE, the FBI and other federal and local agencies, and dozens of vehicles and buses to haul off workers.

ICE began unleashing a series of raids in different parts of the country that started right before and continued after the national May 1 mass mobilizations. In mid-April, ICE immigration enforcement raids struck Poultry Pride plants in five different states, another meat processing company, arresting more than 300 workers. Then on May 2 in northern California, ICE took action against a small family-owned restaurant chain in six cities, arresting more than 60 workers. Then during May 5-6, ICE stationed themselves in front of one elementary public school and one high school in Oakland and Berkeley, California, arresting at least four persons and scaring students, parents and workers.

ICE arrests hundreds of documented and undocumented immigrants every day in border and non-border regions of the country, incarcerating as many 30,000 immigrants on any given week, through raids and other means.

Biggest Raid to Cover Up Immigrant Jail Abuses?

ICE’s timing of the Postville raids is also questionable. In the days leading up to this raid, major newspaper reports were exposing the harsh conditions ICE subjects persons to in immigration detention, including the revelation that dozens of immigrants have died in detention over the last few years from abusive treatment and lack of medical care.

Then ICE delivered a devastating blow to Postville, a small town with 2,273 residents. By calling the Postville the largest raid in history, ICE was drawing attention away from the on-going exposé of the harsh conditions in ICE jails. While ICE has arrested more workers in previous sweeps, in Postville, 390 out of 900 workers (more than 40 percent) were arrested at the plant.

ICE gave the Postville immigrant community no warning of this monstrous assault. In the weekend before the ICE raid, community members were aghast at the preparations they were witnessing: Department of Homeland Security began amassing police agents and the resources to carry out this crushing blow against workers, including setting up a temporary jail at a nearby “Cattle Congress” facility, where the men were jailed. Women were put in the local jail.

After the raid, ICE blocked the immigrant workers access to legal counsel. In the days and weeks leading up to the raid, in a multi-agency collaboration, DHS investigations included getting addresses, social security numbers and other private information about the workers’ families, youth and students from the local school district.

Stop the ICE Raids, End Detentions and Deportations

ICE wields raids for their multiple political and social impacts, sweeping up more immigrants than are usually named on their warrants. Intimidating and terrifying, work-site and other immigration raids account for about 2 percent of all immigrants who are detained and deported yearly. Almost 5,000 immigrants were deported through raids, out of more than 260,000 in fiscal year 2007. ICE deliberately uses raids to send shock waves through immigrant communities, to repress rights and suppress organizing efforts, as well as to promote and showcase new enforcement policies and strategies. The results are devastating: families are separated, communities are traumatized and the economic losses caused by immigration enforcement are almost exclusively borne by immigrants and their communities.

ICE’s actions against Postville were a deliberate attack on the rights and well being of immigrants everywhere. ICE raids expose workers to further exploitation and undermine labor rights and unions; they help perpetuate abuses and act as a cover-up mechanism for other violations that go unpunished. After an ICE raid, parents stop sending their children to school, they stop going to work, to church and avoid shopping and similar public spaces out of fear. ICE makes communities vulnerable to abuse, crime and violence.

Demanding Justice and Human Rights for All

We can stop ICE raids and other ICE abuses by demanding accountability as part of organizing for justice and human rights. Immigration laws and enforcement are destroying the rights of immigrants and workers, and spell a disaster for workers and the economy. ICE immigration raids, detentions and deportations are causing untold hardships on immigrant families and their communities.

ICE claims that its policy of releasing women who may be pregnant or a parent with children with electronic ankle-bracelets is humanitarian. A humanitarian policy would ensure that all immigrants are protected from abuses, are able to work at a job with a living wage and have their labor rights upheld — not being held in a virtual jail and forbidden to work or live without fear, to provide for their families here and abroad.

ICE policies are not humanitarian and inflict great harm on our communities. NNIRR demands that all the workers be freed and that ICE take true humanitarian actions by:

• Providing work permits to all these workers so they are not abused or exploited while their cases are pending;

• Complying with the U.S. Constitution, upholding their due process rights with full access to legal counsel and access to the courts; and,

• Ending the policy of “No-Match” letters, which ICE uses to criminalize workers and allows employers to abuse immigrants, undermining the civil and labor rights of all.

Stop Breaking up Families, Devastating Our Communities and Destabilizing the Economy! Express solidarity with the Postville immigrant workers and families by sending letters and funds. Organize a vigil, a community meeting, call and fax your Congressional Delegation and other elected officials, talk to your neighbors and co-workers, to speak out against ICE immigration raids and call for an end to all detentions and deportations! We can prevent abuses from taking place by organizing and demanding justice and human rights for all.

St. Bridget Church
ATTN: Sr. Mary McCauley
PO Box 369
Postville, IA 52162
Tel. (563) 864-3138

For more information on the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, visit: www.nnirr.org

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Solidarity Statement Concerning Guatemalans in Detention after ICE Raid in Postville, Iowa

Amalia Anderson, Carlos Ariel, Axel Fuentes, Reginaldo Haslett Marroquín, Ana Nájera Mendoza

“No one should be subjected to arbitrary arrests, detention or exile.”
— Article 9, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

“Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.”
— Article 9, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

As Guatemalans (by birth and by family origin) living in the United States we strongly condemn the Postville, Iowa raid — the largest single-site enforcement operation of its kind in the history of the United States. Of the 390 workers reportedly detained, nearly three hundred are from Guatemala.

According to statistics from the United Nations, more than 125 million people throughout the world live and work outside their countries of origin. Human migration is a global phenomenon fueled by war, persecution, economic and social inequality, environmental disaster, and poverty. International migration will continue until the underlying causes forcing people from their homelands are eliminated.

As Guatemalans, we are too familiar with human rights violations and their lasting effects. During our country’s 36-year-long civil war, 200,000 people were killed or disappeared and as many as 1.5 million people were displaced internally or forced to flee the country. U.S. funding and training underwrote the war — leaving the country in shambles and forcing many to leave. Those of us able to publicly sign this letter and our brothers and sisters sitting now in detention centers and unable to sign this letter, came to this country fleeing the effects of the U.S.-funded civil war. As more than three hundred Guatemalans now sit in detention in Iowa, we ask you to grieve with us and protest the obvious irony.

According to the U.S. Constitution, all people residing in the United States, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to due process of law. The United States is committed to principles of democracy and fairness, yet hundreds of people are detained, frequently without access to counsel and without contact from their families. Many are terrified at the possibility of being returned to a home they may no longer know, or where they will be unable to earn a living wage. In the case of Guatemala, we must not forget the additional challenges of returning to a country devastated by decades of civil war. The U.S. policy of detaining and deporting people does not address these realities.

The recent Postville Raids raises questions about the continued role the United States government plays in the lives of Guatemalans. On behalf of our brothers and sisters in detention-we call for transparent, fair and humane treatment in accordance with our U.S. constitutional norms of due process and equal protection. We believe that all human beings in this country have a right to be treated with dignity and respect, even in situations of detention and arrest. Though nothing can undo the destruction caused by the civil war in Guatemala, we are currently presented with an opportunity to stand up and not allow the legacy of our government’s past to continue in the present and the future. Fellow Guatemalans, join us!

For more information, or to add your name please contact:

Regi Marroquín: regimarroquin@hotmail.com
amalia anderson: amalia1609@gmail.com • 651-269-1781
Project Director, Main Street Project amalia@mainstreetproject.org • 612-879-7570 (office) 612-280-4730 (cell)
www.mainstreetproject.org

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ACLU Demands Government Restore Legal Protections to Meatpacking Workers

Americen Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sharply condemns the denial of basic legal protections to immigrant workers arrested in Postville, Iowa meatpacking raids last week and calls on the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to eliminate arbitrary and unreasonable deadlines for mass plea bargains. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and DHS have implemented a troubling system that appears to be designed to undermine fairness and due process by criminally prosecuting the more than 300 immigrant workers for identity theft and fraud and rushing them through criminal proceedings with insufficient legal representation.

“The tactics of the prosecutors, the arbitrary plea deadlines, the complexity of the cases, the overwhelming number of cases per lawyer and the language barriers that make representation especially difficult suggest that the government is more interested in getting people deported without hearings than in achieving justice,” said ACLU of Iowa Executive Director Ben Stone. “Instead of concocting a system that violates fundamental American values of due process and fairness, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and DHS must ensure fair procedures and effective legal counsel under the bedrock principles that govern our legal system.”

Groups of more than 20 meatpacking workers are typically represented by a single defense lawyer who for each group must decide complex immigration issues, assess criminal liability and counsel clients who do not speak English. The lawyers, who do not specialize in immigration law, must complete this task under the pressure of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s arbitrary plea bargain deadline of seven days. Within this deadline every lawyer and client must make a potentially irrevocable decision to plead guilty and go to jail and lose any immigration rights, or fight the criminal charges and face up to two or more years in prison for allegedly engaging in “identify theft” in order to work.

The groups of immigrants are rushed through mass hearings that last only minutes and during the hearings are required to waive their right to an immigration hearing in exchange for better criminal plea agreements. Workers with legitimate claims to remain in the country legally — including immigrants with family members who are U.S. citizens or with legitimate claims of asylum or political persecution — are ostensibly barred from pursuing those claims under the criminal plea agreements.

Law professor Bob Rigg of Drake Law School said, “Instead of ensuring sufficient time to analyze complex immigration and criminal law issues, the prosecutors are issuing arbitrary ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ demands to lawyers who are overwhelmed with clients, language barriers and devastating immigration consequences that require careful consultation with experts. Nothing forced the government to steamroll the process, overload the attorneys or impose arbitrary deadlines. The tactics seem clearly designed to force these workers to give up their legal rights under the immigration system.”

Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Jeanne Butterfield said, “It is deeply troubling that the government is using its vast power to coerce countless individuals to abandon their rights under the immigration system without allowing time for a careful assessment of each case. These are complicated issues that cannot be decided on the fly. It is inconceivable that among the 300 workers arrested none has meritorious claims to be in this country under our country’s immigration laws.”

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Raid a “Complete Disaster”

Iowa School District Left to Cope with Immigration Raid’s Impact

Mary Ann Zehr, Education Week

School officials in Postville, Iowa, were still working last week to cope with the logistical and emotional aftermath of a raid on a local meatpacking plant by federal immigration authorities last week, where 390 people were arrested. The raid left some students’ parents in custody and tensions high in the local Latino community.

David Strudthoff, the superintendent of the 600-student Postville Community School District, said the raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began at about 10 a.m. Monday, and he spent the whole rest of that day — until midnight — trying to ensure that the children whose parents worked at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant had someone to care for them.

“If you have ever been to a natural disaster where people lose their homes — the only difference was that it was a man-made disaster, not a natural one,” Mr. Strudthoff said. “People were in shock. Children were without parents.”

He added, “All of the Latinos [from the school district] were impacted.” About 220 students in the Postville school system are from immigrant families, he said, and many children were separated from parents or siblings employed at the plant. Mr. Strudthoff said about 150 Latino students were missing from school on Tuesday, and he was planning to send faculty and staff members to their homes to tell parents that it was safe to send their children to school. He characterized the raid as a “complete disaster,” noting that “we had about 10 percent of our community incarcerated for 10 hours.”

Mr. Strudthoff is also pondering the fact that more than a month ago, his district was served with a subpoena from the Iowa Division of Labor Services to provide detailed personal information about Postville students and some school employees.

In addition to demanding Social Security numbers, addresses and telephone numbers of all current students and all students from 2005-2007, the subpoena sought names of children who worked at two apartment buildings once owned by a school guidance counselor, who had sold those apartments to Agriprocessors’ chief executive officer. The district complied with the subpoena, and two employees of the state labor department spent two full days poring over student records and collecting information, Mr. Strudthoff said. [No explanation was given as to why all the student records were required, rather than just those involved in working at the apartment and plant. In addition, the subpoena required names of bus drivers from 2005-2008; complete school records for 35 students identified only by last name; all work permits for current students and those enrolled between 2005-07; contracts for Superintendent Strudthoff and guidance counselor Ron Wahl; names of youth who worked for Wahl; all records on Wahl’s school computer relating to the students, records which by medical standards are private and confidential.]

Mr. Strudthoff said the state employees told him they were investigating possible violations of child-labor laws at the Agriprocessors plant, which employs about 600 Postville residents, many of them Latino. He said that two employees of the U.S. Department of Labor visited the school district on April 3 — the same day that the two state employees handed the district the subpoena and began examining student records — but that the federal officials left after one hour. [No charges have been made against the owners of Agriprocessors, by ICE or the Labor Department, despite their use of illegal wages below Iowa’s minimum wage and, “Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Hiring and Continuing to Employ Undocumented” workers.]

Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe ruling in 1982, undocumented students have the right to a free public education, and school employees are not permitted to ask students about their immigration status. But tensions have arisen between federal immigration agencies and school districts when immigration authorities have visited school campuses, learned that a student is undocumented, and detained a student.

The state and federal labor officials made no mention of an impending immigration raid, Mr. Strudthoff said, and he does not know if any student information was handed over to U.S. immigration authorities.

Gail Sheridan-Lucht, a lawyer for Iowa Commissioner of Labor David Neil, said she issued the subpoena to the school district as part of a joint investigation by the Iowa Division of Labor Services and the federal Labor Department of various labor practices of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, including possible violations of federal and state child-labor laws. Because the investigation is still going on, she said she could not divulge whether any information from the district was turned over to federal immigration officials.

Pat Reilly, a spokeswoman in Washington for ICE said that information is sometimes shared between state and federal agencies or between federal agencies in investigating “criminal matters.”

‘No Plan for Raids’

Mr. Strudthoff said that before Monday, the district had “no plan for raids.” When the district learned about the raid, he and other school employees met with Latino high school students and asked them for the best course of action to make sure their younger brothers and sisters were cared for.

The Postville district has only two buildings, located 10 yards from each other. Mr. Strudthoff said he paired each high school student with an elementary or middle school teacher, and they worked together to contact family members to make sure that children had somewhere to go when school was out at 3:30 p.m. He said that if both parents of a child were detained, the child was sent to St. Bridget Catholic Church, in Postville.

Mr. Strudthoff, who went to the church at about 4:30 p.m. Monday, said about 400 people concerned about the raid had gathered there. Some parents were with their children but did not want to go home because they were afraid ICE agents might show up there, he said. Mr. Strudthoff said representatives from the Red Cross provided bedding and other necessities. He went home at midnight, after he felt that each child from his district was accounted for.

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Government to Block Evacuation for Those Without ID
Texas Activists Reject Government Plans for Identification Checks During Hurricanes

Right while the U.S. government proclaims itself interested in humanitarian relief and uses this excuse to try and intervene against the people in Myanmar, the government’s Border Patrol in Texas announced that in the event of a hurricane, they would refuse to evacuate anyone without identification showing their citizenship. People found out about the plan when a reporter was taking pictures of the Border Patrol humiliating seniors by forcing them to show ID verifying citizenship in a mock-evacuation. The reporter was forced to stop taking pictures and leave. The mock-evacuation took place in the Rio Grande Valley border area that includes Brownsville, Texas.

Border Patrol said the estimated 130,000 area residents that would be evacuated by bus in the event of a hurricane, will all be checked for citizenship papers. Anyone who could not prove citizenship or permanent residency status would not be allowed to board the bus. The Border Patrol was also going to check any shelters and detain those without the identification Border Patrol required. Everyone without ID would be sent to government detention centers. It is likely that the policy will be implemented in all the hurricane areas, from Florida to Texas, when hurricane season begins June 1.

The action is coming from a government notorious for the crime of leaving the people of New Orleans on their roofs to die. Now, documentation will be used to block people from evacuating and to terrorize families from even attempting to evacuate. How dare the government separate families at a time of natural disaster when people are doing everything to guarantee the safety and well-being of families and communities!

Border Patrol spokesperson for the area said, "We've been charged with securing the borders of the U.S. I personally do not want to be the one who says, okay, I'm not going to screen this bus because I've got to get them out of here and have somebody on that bus be linked to terrorism or be a terrorist and do this country harm."

This claim of terrorism is a sham, promoted to justify rounding people up like cattle and putting them in detention camps. In all the many years of migration into the U.S. and the long-standing immigrant populations in the area, there is not a single case of terrorism by the people of any kind. This fact was admitted by U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, of Texas, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. He confirmed that there have been no officially documented cases of terrorists crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. There are many documented cases of state terrorism by the Border Patrol and the military, including not only raids but racist killings of individuals guilty of no crime. The hurricane evacuations are mandatory, so people also see this policy as yet another means for the government to justify rounding up and detaining people who refuse to comply.

People in the area, including civil rights organizations and church activists immediately denounced the government. Activists are demanding that the Border Patrol be removed from all evacuation centers. They said they would organize to keep people away and develop their own collective evacuations. Said one priest, "I can tell you right now that 'mandatory' evacuation orders will be ignored by half the Valley — since no one will leave behind the aunt or uncle or grandmother — and certainly would not trust the Border Patrol with them." Another activist rejected the government plan as unconscionable. Expressing the outrage of many, another organizer said, "At a time of natural disaster we would like to think that the preservation of life is superior to whether people have paperwork. It's a case of basic humanity." He added, "When you call the Fire Department to report a fire they do not check your immigration status before putting out a fire.” Government has a responsibility to the people to guarantee their safety.
Everyone agreed that Border Patrol should be removed from the hurricane emergency preparedness task force and from any presence at evacuation points and shelters. Many also denounced the racist profiling that would necessarily be involved. Another activist said, “If Border Patrol wants to help in the event of a hurricane they could be out there putting sandbags on top of the levees their vehicles have damaged. We have a terrible threat of floods because of the state the levees are in."

Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid (TRLA), the largest provider of legal aid in Texas, also denounced the government plans. The group said the policy would especially jeopardize the poor, elderly, and those with limited English-speaking ability. “In the event of an evacuation, time will be of the utmost importance in minimizing a humanitarian disaster,” said a TRLA attorney. “Putting lives at unnecessary risk is not acceptable.”

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DRUM Youth Win Immigrant Education Victory

Drumnation.org

On Thursday, May 15, 2008, Desis Rising Up & Moving’s (DRUM) YouthPower! won the signing of the first immigrant safe zone in a New York City public school. Hillcrest High School in Jamaica, Queens, with more than 3,500 largely immigrant students, became the first school to create protections and needed services for immigrant students to access education without fear.

DRUM YouthPower!’s Education not Deportation campaign, launched in 2006, will keep organizing to declare more schools across the city as Immigrant Safe Zones.

Since 2005, South Asian immigrant youth leaders of DRUM have been surveying hundreds of immigrant students about the fears and access barriers they face in schools, particularly for undocumented students and their families.

In 2006, DRUM released a ground-breaking report called “Education not Deportation: Impacts of New York City School Safety Policies on South Asian Immigrant Youth.” The report found that:

• 51 percent of youth reported exposure to harassment by authorities

• Nearly half the youth (45 percent) reported being asked about their immigration status by authorities

• Most NYC public schools, which are already under funded and over-policed, have little to no ability to deal with undocumented students

• Undocumented students do not get financial aid nor most scholarships, so many can never afford college

The Immigrant Safe Zone at Hillcrest High School will:

• Ensure city and DOE laws are actually being followed to protect immigration status information of students and their families — that immigration status is not being asked, compiled, or reported at all

• Train school workers in the full rights of immigrant students to education and to better serve immigrant youth

• Create services for immigrant youth and families within the school in partnership with community organizations.

DRUM will begin regular programs for youth and parents at Hillcrest High School this year including immigration and deportation advocacy and Know Your Rights trainings. This first victory would not have been possible without the fierce organizing of our South Asian immigrant youth members of DRUM and their families across the city and: the students and administration of Hillcrest High School and the Community Development Program of the Urban Justice Center.

The following endorsing organizations also endorsed this effort: Adhikaar, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), Each One Teach One, FIERCE, Families United for Racial & Economic Justice (FUREE), Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOP), National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), Queens Community House. Prison Moratorium Project (PMP), Teachers Unite, Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (Filipino for Linking the Children of the Motherland), Urban Justice Center (UJC), Urban Youth Collaborative (UYC), VAMOS Unidos, YA-YA Network.

Inquilaab Zindabaad! [Long Live the Revolution]
Immigrant Youth Power Zindabaad!

Come Out & Support:
Wednesday, June 4th at 3:30pm
Press & Community Signing Of Immigrant Safe Zone Declaration
Hillcrest High School, Jamaica Estates, New York 11432

Thursday, June 5th
Youth Rally against Education Budget Cuts, City Hall
Organized by Urban Youth Collaborative & NY Student Union

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