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ICE

Border Crossings, Government Harassment, And How To Protect Yourself

September 29, 2022 It's Going Down. , , , ,
Austin, Texas - Last weekend, an activist from Austin was detained at the Austin airport by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon reentry to the U.S. after traveling abroad. They were held for about 3 hours and questioned about their political beliefs and associations and their protest activities. CBP also searched their phone and likely copied the entire contents of the phone for later analysis. We are releasing this statement to shed light on this aspect of government surveillance, harassment, and repression, and to provide important lessons for other activists to better protect themselves, their loved ones, and their communities in the future. CBP is a large but seldom discussed federal law enforcement agency with broad powers at the border and ports of entry, including all international airports. The more notorious Border Patrol is a division within CBP, whereas ICE is a separate agency.

The App ICE Forces You To Download

September 27, 2022 Maurizio Guerrero , In These Times. , , ,
When you are in a process like this one, all of your body shivers, every bit of yourself shakes, because you do not want to make mistakes to be again at risk of being detained or deported,” says Carlos, whose name has been shortened to avoid affecting his immigration case. “It wears you out.” Carlos settled in Fontana, Calif., coming from Chimalhuacán, on the outskirts of Mexico City, in 2002. But after a misdemeanor in 2019, Carlos was subject to deportation proceedings. He was imprisoned for three months, electronically shackled for more than a year, and, in January 2021, ordered to install an app on his phone so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could check in on him. The app uses voice recognition and geolocation to verify that Carlos is at home, which ICE says helps ensure his “compliance with release conditions.”

ICE Prison In South Georgia Should Be Shut Down, Not Expanded

August 28, 2022 Meredyth L. Yoon and Azadeh Shahshahani, Prism Reports. , , ,
Neal, a Jamaican citizen who owned and operated a yacht servicing company for 25 years in South Florida, spent 17 months in a prison that’s been converted into a detention center for immigrants in Georgia. Speaking to us of his experience at the Folkston ICE Processing Center, Neal described a prison that lacks basic safety and care for the people detained there and overall conditions that reveal a jarring lack of regard for human life. “That place is not for safety or for human beings—it is just for money,” said Neal, who wishes to be identified by his first name only. “I thought this government was going to close down all of those private ICE prisons. Politicians say anything when they want votes.” On June 30, a government investigation of Folkston identified numerous violations that “compromised the health, safety, and rights” of detained immigrants.

Biden Is Expanding US Government’s Brutal Anti-Immigrant Machine

April 23, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. , ,
President Joe Biden and his top administration officials met on March 15 and signed a massive spending bill of $1.5 trillion into law. This package, which funds federal government agencies for fiscal year 2022, boosts military spending and increases discretionary spending for domestic agencies by $6.7 billion, the biggest increase in domestic discretionary spending in the past four years. The spending bill also expands the US government’s brutal deportation machine, with an additional $284.7 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This includes $57 million more funding for ICE’s contentious Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) office, which is responsible for detaining and removing immigrants. Overall, the Biden administration is funding ICE with $312 million more than the Donald Trump-era average.

Why Is The GEO Group Getting Paid To Fly Deportation Flights To Haiti?

October 9, 2021 Tom Ricker, Quixote Center. , , ,
Deportation flights are a big business. Typically these flights are managed by ICE Air Operations – yes, ICE has its own airline. The chain of responsibility runs like this: Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is the entity responsible for deporting people. ERO oversees ICE Air Operations. ICE Air Operations owns none of its own planes. So, ICE signs a contract with a private vendor to coordinate removal flights. The company that has the current contract is Classic Air Charter. For managing ICE Air Operations from October 2017 through the end of September 2022, CAC’s contract is potentially worth $739 million. Classic Air Charters doesn’t actually fly the planes either – that would be too easy.

National Shut’Em Down Demonstrations Kick Off August 21

August 20, 2021 It's Going Down. , ,
The purpose of the call is to center the 10 demands that Jailhouse Lawyers Speak and other inside formations have been pushing since the historic 2016 prison strike, encourage people to get involved in local abolitionist organizing, and also gain steam, while building towards the 2022 prison strike that JLS has just announced. So far, people have responded to the call by organizing everything from marches to free political prisoners, film showings, block parties, and noise demonstrations outside of ICE detention facilities, jails, and prisons.

Whistleblowers Step Forward With New Complaints Of Abuses At Site For Immigrant Children

August 10, 2021 Government Accountability Project. , , ,
Today, Government Accountability Project, filed its second complaint with federal oversight agencies detailing abuses at the Fort Bliss, Texas Emergency Intake Site (EIS) for unaccompanied immigrant children. Government Accountability Project’s first complaint, dated July 7, 2021, is attached as an exhibit to this second complaint. The Fort Bliss EIS is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The children are in the custody of ORR. Fort Bliss is one of several EISs holding them, ostensibly on a temporary basis. The information disclosed in the second complaint was provided by Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold, current career federal civil servants and attorneys who volunteered to support ORR’s work.

Immigrant Leaders Shut Down ICE ‘Black Site’

July 20, 2021 Movimiento Cosecha. , , ,
Newark, NJ — Immigrant leaders and immigration justice organizers chained themselves together and blockaded the entrance of the Newark SAC office in response to escalating abuses by ICE. Protesters are calling this unidentified office located in a desolate industrial neighborhood in Newark, NJ an “ICE black site”; and are demanding #ReleasesNotTransfers as detainees continue to be transferred out of New Jersey jails to detention centers across the country and away from their families. Advocates say this Homeland Security Investigations office is where unmarked vans bring detainees and ICE processes all deportations and transfers in the state, a “transfer roulette” brought to a halt by the blockade today.

New Report: ICE Records On Gynecological Abuse

June 17, 2021 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. , , ,
Washington — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to properly monitor informed consent protocols used by a doctor accused of performing non-consensual gynecological procedures on women detained at Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, according to a new report published today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the National Immigration Project and Project South. The report also highlights other longstanding problems and systemic oversight failures that are currently the focus of several federal investigations of the facility. For years, advocates raised concerns about the mistreatment of immigrants detained at ICDC, a county-owned prison run by LaSalle Corrections that has contracted with ICE to detain immigrants since 2011.

New Jersey Activists Halted Two Deportations

June 13, 2021 Sam Carliner, Left Voice. , , ,
The Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey has been the site of recurring actions in solidarity with detained immigrants. On Tuesday, June 8, one such action ended with cops arresting 14 protesters who were trying to peacefully stop a deportation. The 14 people arrested had camped out at the Bergen County Jail the previous night to try and stop the deportation of Marvin Jerezano Peña, a father from Red Bank, New Jersey who migrated from Mexico to the United States as a child. He had been arrested by ICE and was being held for marijuana possession, something now fully legal in the state. Nevertheless, ICE planned to deport Peña. Protesters at the jail Tuesday bravely blocked an ICE van that afternoon in an attempt to stop the deportation.

End To ICE Contracts In Bristol County, Massachusetts

May 20, 2021 FANG Collective and Steve Ahlquist, UpriseRI. , , ,
The FANG Collective is happy to announce that ICE will be cancelling all contracts with Bristol County, Massachusetts. This includes their 287(g) contract which trains deputies to collaborate with ICE and perform immigration agent duties, and their IGSA contract which turned the Bristol County House of Correction into an ICE detention center. See: Biden administration ends ICE contract with Bristol County Sheriff’s Office amid federal probe into alleged excessive force against immigrant detainees In the summer 2018, FANG launched its Shut Down ICE campaign in Bristol County with a nonviolent direct action that blockaded, and effectively shut down the prison for several hours.

In The Spirit Of Abolition, Let’s Shut’em Down!

April 9, 2021 Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, Hood Communist. , , ,
A call to action. National “Shut’em Down” demonstrations August 21st and September 9th. Originally published on the Jailhouse Lawyers Speak blog. Over the last year prisoners across the country have been holding the longest and largest spontaneous demonstrations in response to covid. With approximately 300,000 (the number is possibly as high as 800,000) people in prison having been infected by covid prisoners have continued to demand basic human rights protections. These demonstrations have been sporadic and largely ignored by the public as prisoners and supporters demanded covid safety and precautions be enacted in prisons. In a number of states, these covid demonstrations have turned into widespread and hard fought successful court battles for releasing prisoners.

San Diego Protesters In Solidarity With Migrant Caravan

March 15, 2021 Huitzilopochtli Marron, Liberation News. , , ,
On March 13, the Party for Socialism and Liberation hosted a march and banner drop beginning at Larsen Field, in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego, next to the Tijuana-San Diego border. Other organizations in attendance included Socialist Alternative, Immigrant Justice League, San Diego Sunrise Movement, ANSWER San Diego, and other supporters in the community. The demonstration was held in solidarity with the migrant caravan making its way to the border through Mexico. Thousands of migrants are currently fleeing violence and persecution that are a direct result of U.S. intervention in Central America.  Just miles from San Ysidro is the Otay Mesa Detention Center. The OMDC is the site where the first Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee died from COVID-19. 

Biden Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants

February 19, 2021 Tina Vásquez, Prism. , , ,
In the days it took to pull together this Q&A with two leaders in the immigrant rights movement—Haitian Bridge Alliance’s Guerline Jozef and the UndocuBlack Network’s Patrice Lawrence—the federal government deported more than 70 asylum-seekers to Haiti, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children. Haiti is in the midst of political turmoil and advocates are calling these deportations “death flights.” Soon, hundreds more Black immigrants are expected to be deported, including 135 Haitian immigrants. Most of them are families. While the coverage of these deportations hasn’t been extensive, what does exist largely frames the large-scale deportation of Black immigrants as an example of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operating as a “rogue agency” that is refusing to comply with the Biden administration’s orders...

Portland Indigenous Land Defenders Address Targeted Violence

February 15, 2021 Carissa Dez, Village Portland. , , ,
On the early morning of February 5th in downtown Portland, members of Oregon’s Indigenous Tribes held a press conference at Portland City Hall among a large showing of community. They addressed the violent targeting and violations of their right to protest and practice religious ceremonies by federal ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and Portland police officers. This targeting took place while Tribal members were holding an Indigenous religious ceremony to honor ICE detainees and commemorate the lives of those lost while in federal custody. A press release from Indigenous Bloc quoted an unnamed Oregon Tribal who said that it is their constitutional right to protest— but also their duty to keep a vigil “as a community striving for liberation together”.
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