EMERGENCY RALLY: ICE OUT OF BLOOMINGTON
ICE agents have been spotted in our community this week. We’re calling a rally at the Courthouse Square Friday 5/2 at 6:30pm to oppose ICE’s actions. Join us -Bring signs, bring friends, and stand up for all us.
At the end of this article, there are some resources about your rights when interacting with ICE, how to protect yourself, and how to get legal help. Familiarize yourself with these resources so you remember them if you need them, or you can help other access it. We can keep our communities safe if we take active steps and stay prepared.
The Trump Administration has made it crystal clear that our struggles for a free Palestine and against oppressive border surveillance are one and the same. From the patchwork of checkpoints and special administrative zones that perforate the West Bank, to the infamous prison wall that encircles Gaza, israel’s system of apartheid in Palestine is in effect a system of borders that break up space, impede movement, and create special zones where the law can be suspended. The US border industrial complex is not just similar, but is part of the same technical and legal system. As Anthony Lowenstein wrote in The Palestine Laboratory, many of the technologies that the European Union and the United States use to police border zones were developed and tested in the occupation in Palestine. That includes things like drones and surveillance sensors as well as ways to hack smartphones and intercept communications. The border regime is also a two way street. Some of the most valuable companies in the US provide key services for israel’s surveillance activities while also supporting the US Customs and Border Patrol, including Google, Microsoft, and Palantir. Palantir is a particularly important player in the most recent crackdown as they build databases with improperly acquired private and government data to find locations of immigrants and let ICE abduct them. Such open collaboration underscores the importance of immediate disclosure and divestment from these and similar companies.
In the last couple months, Trump’s ICE and CBP have committed acts of extreme cruelty.
They are arbitrarily throwing people into detention when they enter the US. ICE agents in plain clothes have swept across the country, abducting people and terrorizing them, often without regard to immigration status. CBP even deports people to a prison so bad it may as well be a concentration camp in El Salvador, CECOT, and has refused to return even people they admit they deported by administrative error. These excesses have brought attention to a system that was already a disaster for human rights and dignity. Since the creation of ICE in 2003 and the expansion of the border patrol regime during the war on terror, the number of deportations have increased under every presidential administration, immigrants have been continuously dehumanized, and their rights have been undermined.
The Trump administration has taken advantage of how precarious immigrant protections have become to attack pro-Palestine organizers. Most famously, Mahmoud Khalil was taken from his home and ferried off to a facility in Louisiana that was notorious for human rights abuses. This was despite the fact that he had permanent residence in the US and the government does not accuse him of committing any crime. In similar fashion, plainclothes ICE agents wearing masks seized graduate student Rumeyza Ozturk off of her college campus, again only for expressing solidarity with Palestine.Several other organizers have faced abduction or harassment under similar circumstances. These arbitrary and outrageous actions clearly demonstrate that in order for your government to support israel, it has to extend the same kind of police state at home to keep the project going.
This isn’t the end of the story however. Thousands of immigrants and activists are fighting back every day, sharing resources, protecting each other, and fighting cases through the court system.
Despite Trump’s attempts to flood the zone and shock the country into preemptive compliance, people everywhere are standing up and fighting back. None of the pro-Palestine organizers have walked back their solidarity with Gaza. Each time organizers and activists have succeeded in rallying and highlighting these excesses, ICE has failed to justify their actions, shaped up in some ways, and even suffered setbacks. Just yesterday, Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student who was seized in retaliation for his encampment organizing, was released from prison after his community stood up for him. His powerful words on release are an inspiration to all of us. What we do right now matters. Our communities are counting on us for solidarity. A better world is possible, where people can live free from fear both in Palestine and the US.
Resources:
Resource index for IU Bloomington affiliates (useful for others as well). https://linktree.com/btownrights4intlstudents
What to do if ICE raids your house (17 languages)
https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/know-your-rights-with-ice/
Volunteer to help community watch in Bloomington, ask questions, get live updates: Join BloomAIR Public Chat