Mass Deportations Quickly Became Wildly Unpopular

Welcome to our news segment: TL;DR of Immigration News, for when the news is Too Long and you Didn’t Read it.

This is a weekly collection of immigration-related news stories. These bite-size summaries will keep you up to date without overwhelming your inbox.
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The True Story behind the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting

Seven years after a white supremacist murdered 11 Jews during Shabbat services, many are still largely unaware of the shooter’s true motivation: xenophobia and the Great Replacement theory- the fear that Jews are orchestrating a plan to replace white Christians with people of color from other countries.

Luckily, one Pittsburgh journalist is determined to center the anti-immigrant sentiment of the October 27, 2018 tragedy, interviewing Never Again Action and Bend the Arc Pittsburgh members with close ties to the victims of the attack.

This massacre teaches us that solidarity must be truly grounded in the understanding that no matter who we are, we will always be targeted by the people in power who use our identities to exploit us. We can love our heritage without isolating ourselves. When we talk about antisemitism, let’s also talk about xenophobia, anti-Muslim hate, anti-Blackness. Let’s talk about American systemic oppression and cultures of violence, so we can see that lone wolf shooters are also victims of widespread propaganda designed to fuel race wars for profit and power.

Honor the memory of lives lost by donating to the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh, whose members stood guard outside of Jewish services for weeks following the attack, and who have received multiple threats of mass violence, especially since October 2023.

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LA TikTok creator streaming ICE raids charged with assault after being shot

As the invasion and occupation of LA by federal forces continues, ICE agents shot and wounded a popular TikToker last week while targeting him for arrest. They managed to wound a county sheriff’s deputy as well.

Carlitos Ricardo Parias has built a large following streaming ICE operations on TikTok. He is described by an LA City Council member as “a pillar of our community” and “a fearless citizen journalist.” ICE claims the shooting was as a result of Parias threatening them with a vehicle. The details are still unclear and contradictory, with Parias’ court date waiting on his recovery, though ICE has lied about this sort of incident before.
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Mass Deportations Quickly Became Wildly Unpopular

The morality of the deportation pipeline doesn’t change based on poll numbers. At Never Again, we will always argue that immigrants deserve human rights and full legal protection.

That said, it is notable that while the current federal administration seems to think it can treat immigrants however it wishes, recent polling indicates that the administration’s acceleration of the already-inhumane ways our country treats immigrants has caused a public opinion backlash, especially among Democrats and Independents.

A vast majority of those polled support DACA protections, pathways to citizenship, and due process for immigrants. Large majorities of those polled are against illegal deportations to foreign prisons, against the massive ICE funding push, against ICE officers concealing their identities, and against the administration’s handling and direction on immigration generally.

We can only hope the Democrats will take note of this in future election cycles and pivot away from their recent strategy of competing with the Republicans about who can be “tougher on the border”..
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These Dallas Residents Are on the Front Lines of Trump’s War Against “Antifa”

In Dallas, activists participating in a “noise demo” against ICE’s rampages in their city in July have now become the first protesters to be charged with terrorism for alleged membership in “antifa.” That’s right, “antifa,” the right-wing delusion of a leftist conspiracy, whose “membership” does not, in actual fact, exist.

The state alleges that someone shot at officers dispatched to protests at Prairieland Detention Center. Eleven activists have been charged with attempted murder, and some of those working to support them have been charged with complicity in “terrorist acts,” making a total of seventeen people, now known as the “Prairie Defendants,” facing severe consequences for the acts of protesting and supporting their comrades.

ICE and its affiliated forces of order have begun focusing on protesters as well as immigrants. “According to the government’s case, the defendants’ all-black clothing, handheld radios, and use of encrypted messaging apps serve as evidence, not of their being security-conscious protesters in a period of escalating political repression but, rather, of being members of a ‘militant enterprise.’”

We cannot accept such political repression. We keep each other safe.

Support the Prairieland 17: https://prairielanddefendants.com/

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ICE Agents Are Using Family Separation Tactics Central to US State Violence

Earlier this month, heavily armed ICE agents conducted operations in the Chicago area targeting elementary schools during dismissal. In one case they abducted a mother while she was picking up her child. At an apartment complex in Chicago, ICE agents separated minors from their communities, parents, and families.

Truthout reports that ICE has been separating minors from adults under the guise of ensuring their "safety” until they can be put in the hands of a “safe guardian or the state.” Besides the horror of separating a child from their family, Truthout’s editorial team emphasizes that “state care” has been shown to be “unsafe” and potentially severely harmful to children.

Resistance actions are ongoing, as “hundreds of community members” in Chicago participate in Whistlemania: “this ICE watch of orange whistles alerts and defends people at schools, parks, and community centers.”

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) concluded “that family policing system investigations are harmful, and less than 10 percent of all reports are substantiated.” In response to this the AFT has joined other organizations in advocating for a switch from Mandated Reporting to Mandating Supporting, a system meant to “support the caregiver to access material and necessary resources instead of reporting to the family policing system.”

ICE’s increasingly militarized actions and rampant family policing have shown that there is a need for more than just reform. Instead there is a dire need for reallocation of the billions of dollars the government uses to “investigate caregivers who are living at the margins, and to hire people to be masked ICE agents” towards actually supporting people in need of “housing, health care, food, and support for communities.”
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Action items:

Support the community in Chicago:

End Avelo Airlines’ deportation flights:

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Support Never Again Action’s organizing by making a donation today. You can make a tax deductible donation via our fiscal sponsor at this link, or you can donate directly to our 501(c)(4) organization at this link.

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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.

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