Sign the petition to demand ICE stop targeting immigration activists!

PUT ICE BACK ON ITS LEASH

We must protect both our immigrant communities and our right to dissent without retaliation.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement - the agency known as ICE - is out of control. ICE has long been a cruel engine of this country's deportation machine. But now a growing number of immigrants' rights advocates and outspoken members of the immigrant community are facing detention, deportation, or criminal charges.

Coincidence? No chance. When immigration activists face harsher penalties in increasing numbers, it sends a clear signal to the rest of an already targeted immigrant community: keep quiet, or you'll be next.

The Trump administration is deliberately creating a climate of fear and uncertainty, fomenting panic among immigrant communities. Over the past year, many immigrants have decided to steer clear of courthouses, hospitals, and other public spaces, for fear of arrest and deportation. Imagine being too afraid to seek lifesaving medical treatment or to seek justice against an abusive partner because of the threat of ICE agents lurking around the corner.

Trump's racist targeting of immigrants isn't the only pattern at work here. From arresting and brutalizing Inauguration Day protestors, to labeling U.S. senators with racial epithets to screaming "fake news" at every New York Times story, the Trump administration attacks people who don't agree with its policies.

Enough is enough. We have the backs of immigration activists like Ravi Ragbir in New York, and we're not afraid of a fight. Stand with us and stand up to ICE's bullying, predatory hunt for activists.

Sign the petition to demand ICE stop targeting immigration activists!

https://action.aclu.org/petition/put-ice-back-leash

- Our Revolution 

Saturday in Tucson: National Day of Action to Resist Trump's Racist Immigration Agenda

This Saturday, people across the country are rising up to protest Trump's criminalization and mass incarceration of immigrant families. RSVP now to attend the event in Tucson. Click below to RSVP:

The Trump administration's racist and inhumane treatment of immigrants is immoral and unacceptable. On June 30, people all over the country are fighting back.  Here are the details: What: Families Belong Together event When: Saturday, June 30, 2018 at 9 - 11 a.m. (local time) Where: Armory Park, Tucson, AZ Note: Please wear white to show you stand in solidarity with immigrants. Massive public pressure forced Donald Trump to address his cruel family separation policy last week, but his latest executive order has created another crisis. Instead of stopping DHS from ripping children from their families, Trump's new directive gives DHS the power to detain children and parents in family prisons indefinitely.1 Exchanging one humanitarian crisis for another is not a solution. We must keep up the fight to protect our immigrant family members, friends and neighbors from these vile attacks. CREDO is joining MoveOn, National Domestic Workers Alliance and other progressive allies to protest these egregious violations of immigrants' civil rights and demand that the Trump administration stop criminalizing, locking up and separating immigrant families. There are more than 500 events happening on Saturday – it is a crucial moment for us all to speak out. - Nicole Regalado, CREDO Action Click below to RSVP: Reference: Mark Joseph Stern, "Trump Fixed Nothing Today," Slate, June 20, 2018.

Tell Greyhound to Stop Aiding Trump's Deportation Machine!

Greyhound is aiding in the criminalization of immigrants and the racial profiling of Black and Latinx people. In a move that evokes memories of Arizona’s “show-me-your-papers” law, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents are boarding buses and questioning passengers about their immigration and citizenship status. If a person is unable to provide documentation on the spot, they are removed from the bus and detained. By allowing CBP to conduct warrantless searches on their buses, Greyhound is aiding in Trump’s deportation machine that’s tearing apart families and wrecking communities.

Tell Greyhound: stop driving passengers into the prison-to-deportation pipeline!

Border Patrol agents have the legal authority to do immigration checks within 100 miles of a U.S. border as long as they have probable cause and/or a warrant.1 In the case of the Greyhound searches, CBP agents are boarding buses indiscriminately and racially profiling passengers to target them about their immigration status. American Civil Liberties Union chapters in 10 states have written a letter to Greyhound asking them to adopt policies banning these citizenship checks as they violate passengers constitutional rights against illegal search and violate Greyhounds own policies of not allowing non-ticket holding passengers to board buses.2 More than 3 million Americans don’t have a government-issued ID,3 leaving them at risk of possible arrest and detention when they ride a Greyhound bus. According to the ACLU, Greyhound is within their legal right to refuse warrantless searches by federal agents unless the bus is at a border crossing.

Greyhound needs to stop aiding Trump’s deportation machine

We know from videos and witness accounts that CBP agents are specifically targeting racial minorities for these searches, fitting in with Trump’s rhetoric that demonizes Black and Latinx people. From only checking IDs of “people who had accents or were not white”4, to stopping someone because their “shoes looked suspicious”5, to arresting a Jamaican woman who entered the country legally to visit her granddaughter,6 Greyhound is giving CBP free range to put people of color in the prison-to-deportation pipeline and separate children from their parents. 82% of the people stopped by CBP in Michigan at bus stops were Latinx7 and between 2006 to 2010, CBP erroneously arrested 300 legal immigrants in western New York state.8

This is 2018, not 1818. We don’t have to carry “passes” or “freedom papers”9 in order to travel from one location to the next. Over 50 years ago, Freedom Riders rode Greyhound buses into the Deep South to fight for Black civil rights, now Greyhound stands on the wrong side of history. Cities like Spokane, Washington are now accusing Greyhound of violating their anti-discrimination laws by allowing these illegal searches.10 With anti-immigration policies becoming more extreme each day, it’s only a matter of time before other municipalities start fighting back. Greyhound still has time to do what’s right. Join Color Of Change in telling Greyhound to ban Border Patrol agents from boarding their buses and performing illegal searches.

- Color Of Change team

---

 References:

1. "The Constitution in the 100 Mile Border Zone", American Civil Liberties Union https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63541?t=9&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
2. ACLU Affiliate Letter to Greyhound, ACLU Maine, 21 March 2018 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63542?t=11&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
3. "Why Millions of Americans Have No Government ID", NPR, 1 February 2012 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63543?t=13&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
4. "Primary Source: Border Patrol - and Scaramucci - Tied to the Valley", Valley New, 2 August 2017 http://act.colorofchange.org/go/63544?t=15&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
5. "Border Patrol stopped an undocumented man at the Indio Greyhound station because his 'shoes looked suspicious'", The Desert Sun, 21 March 2018 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63545?t=17&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
6. "Trump said he'd round up 'bad hombres'. How did a Jamaican grandma get on that list?", Miami Herald, 23 January 2018 http://act.colorofchange.org/go/63546?t=19&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
7. "NYCLU, ACLU tell Greyhound to reject Border Patrol raids on buses", New York Civil Liberties Union, 20 March 2018 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63547?t=21&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
8. "Report: Border Patrol wrongly arrested hundreds in N.Y." USA Today, 14 February 2013 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63548?t=23&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
9. "Slavery, Institutional Racism, and the Development of State Surveillance as Response to Resistance", Privacy SOS, 29 July 2014 https://act.colorofchange.org/go/63549?t=25&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP
10. "Stuckart: Greyhound may be in violation of Spokane law by allowing Border Patrol searches", The Spokesman-Review, 20 June 2018 http://act.colorofchange.org/go/63550?t=27&akid=14705%2E3510445%2EjuomyP

Children jailed with parents!

Yesterday, thanks to public pressure from hundreds of thousands across the country -- including thousands of Courage members like you -- the Trump administration has been forced to shift its inhumane child separation program. Trump's executive order doesn't mean the cruelty stops, it just means families will now be jailed together INDEFINITELY -- with no real solution or response to the thousands of children who have already been separated.

All the while, Congress still plans to use these families as bargaining chips to pass two anti-immigration proposals by Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Bob Goodlatte TODAY! Both of these bills fail to bring separated families back together, and could actually lead to more children living in jails.(1)

• Speaker Ryan's bill doesn't ensure families stay together and allows children to be jailed indefinitely. After adults get out of jail, nothing in this bill actually says Trump can't still keep their kids separated. Parents could even get deported while their kids remain in the U.S., separating them by law permanently. This bill would also override current law to allow ICE to hold kids in immigration jail run by private prison companies indefinitely with their parents.⁴

• Rep. Goodlatte's bill targets black immigrants by eliminating the diversity visa program; drastically cuts family immigration; further militarizes the border; harms low-wage immigrant workers already vulnerable to abuse and exploitation; and wants automatic detention and deportation of anyone who comes in contact with authorities.⁵

Now it's time to turn up the pressure. 

We need to make sure our elected representatives hear us loud and clear: Congress must take meaningful action to stop these awful anti-immigrant bills, and not blow up the immigration system, as the Ryan and Goodlatte proposals would. Can you call your representative, Martha McSally, and tell them to vote NO on the Ryan and Goodlatte immigration bills? 

Call 1-844-336-0046 and tell Rep. Martha McSally to vote NO on Ryan and Goodlatte immigration bills.

Tucson Office: (520) 881-3588

Here's a call script that you can use as guidance when you get on the phone with the representative:

"Hi, my name is __________ and I live in Tucson. I'm calling to ask you to vote NO on the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2018 by Speaker Paul Ryan, and to vote NO on the Securing America’s Future Act by Rep. Bob Goodlatte. These bills do nothing to address the crisis at the border, and they go against American values. Thank you." 

Up until today, immigration agents have snatched over 11,000 children from their parents this year -- even those asking for political asylum after escaping horrible human rights abuses.(2)

Trump and the Republican leadership are still using these children as leverage to force Democrats and moderate Republicans to support two GOP immigration bills by Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Bob Goodlatte up for a vote as early as TODAY. If they pass, it will basically end immigration as we know it -- and will do almost nothing to reunite the children that have been stripped from their parents' arms. 

Call 1-844-336-0046 and tell Rep. Martha McSally to vote NO on the Ryan and Goodlatte immigration bills. 

- the Courage team

Footnotes:

1. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/18/17467624/immigration-bill-congress-2018 

2. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/shelters-undocumented-children-nearing-capacity-trump-immigration-policy/story?id=55882840

3.The House GOP says their new bill bans separating families at the border. That's a lie., Vox, June 15, 2018
4. Ibid
5.  The 4 Worst Parts of the Securing America's Future Act, Center for American Progress, June 7, 2018

More information:

Times article: Children 'Don’t Need Jail.' Immigration Advocates Say President Trump's Executive Order Creates Even More Problems

ICE arresting breadwinners and leaving families destitute

Less than two weeks before he was elected, President Donald Trump told the country, "We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out."

Jorge is not one of them. But just five days after the birth of his daughter, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents came to "get him out" anyway.

Without him, Jorge's wife, Rita, has no income – no way to pay rent, buy food, or provide for their three children. ICE agents left Jorge's family alone when they arrested him without so much as making a call to domestic support agencies, which is routine for local police.

In May, SPLC staff writer Will Tucker traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to talk to a priest who has been advocating for Jorge's family and others like them. Father Michael McAndrew knows that Spanish-speaking families in the area are "soft targets" for ICE.

"Throughout this case, I have been upset that ICE could pick up a person and not address the care of a five-day-old child," wrote McAndrew in a letter to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. "I call what they did child endangerment."

In addition to Thompson, McAndrew has contacted lawyers and ICE agents about putting a hold on Jorge's deportation. But, as Tucker writes,

Arrayed against Jorge, Rita and their children is the force of the federal government, embodied by agents impervious to appeals for decency and seemingly determined to drive the family into poverty – or, at least, out of the country.

And as McAndrew notes, "What's happening to Jorge [and Rita] has happened to so many other people."

That's why we recently launched the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative. SIFI aims to ensure that skilled attorneys are available to represent detained immigrants pro bono, protecting their due process rights and — simply by giving them counsel — making their cases far more likely to succeed. We know families are depending on it.

- Southern Poverty Law Center 

Tell immigration officials not to target agricultural communities.

A recent wave of immigration arrests has vocal farmers and farmworker activists concerned that they will face retaliation for daring to speak out against harsh anti-immigration policies.1  A New York Farm Bureau spokesperson said that some farmworkers are even afraid to leave the farms on which they live and work.2

It's bad enough that farmworkers lack the basic workplace protections and labor rights that most American workers enjoy. Many are exposed to pesticides and victimized by wage theft; now they have to face the persistent terror of deportation.

Without immigrants, the agricultural sector would collapse. Put immigration enforcers on notice that we won't stand for the targeting of peaceful farmworkers and outspoken farmers.

A new report shows that deporting every undocumented immigrant in New York would decrease the state's agricultural output by 24 percent and reduce overall economic activity by $8.5 billion.3

And that's just one state! Extrapolate that across the nation and you've got a serious threat to our economy and our food security. Stand up for farmworkers and farmers: get immigration agents off their backs.

The recent spike in immigration arrests also jeopardizes the environment. Without migrant farmworkers, monoculture and development would run roughshod over our agricultural landscape.

Farmers would likely switch from labor-intensive fruits and vegetables to highly-mechanized commodity crops like corn and soybeans.2 Or they may get out of the agricultural game entirely, converting their land to other interests, like housing developments.3

If farmers pivot to overused crops, they will need to clear more land and till more soil. This drives erosion and deteriorates soil and water quality.4 With increased monoculture comes less biodiversity, harming wild plants and animals. Pollinator health in particular could be compromised.

Targeting agricultural communities with harsh immigration enforcement is bad for people, bad for the economy, and bad for the environment. Tell immigration officials to back off.

In it together,
The SierraRise team

References:

1. Valencia, M. (26 March 2017). "Hundreds in Boston will protest Vermont ICE arrests." Boston Globe.

2. Goldensohn, R. (24 March 2017). "ICE arrests New York farmworkers, alarming industry and advocates." Crain's New York Business.

3. (March 2017). "The Farm Labor Issue: Economic Impact in New York State." Farm Credit East.

4. Nink, E. (5 June 2015). "Monoculture shows financial, environmental costs to US." The Christian Science Monitor.

USDA photo by Lance Cheung