New Yorkers appear to foil ICE raids before it begins
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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New Yorkers Appear to Foil ICE Raid Before it Begins
For the second time in just over a month, a large-scale raid by dozens of immigration agents in New York City was met with a similarly large-scale counter-protest which thwarted the authorities' plans before they began.
Multiple arrests were made on Saturday as hundreds of protesters faced off with federal agents, eventually supported by the New York Police Department (NYPD).
Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition and member of NYC mayor-elect Mamdani's transition team, said the protests this weekend were a sign that the city would put up fierce resistance to federal immigration operations.
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How Employers and Labor Groups Are Trying to Protect Workers From ICE
Across Los Angeles, employers, labor unions, and local organizations are working together and apart to make sure that people targeted by ICE are kept as safe as possible from raids, as well as being informed of their rights.
As LA moves into month seven of near daily ICE kidnappings, labor organizations and employers, even those who might have been resistant to this sort of thing during another era, are working together to strategize for worker safety.
In the fields, United Farm Workers have been blocking gates and using vehicles to block entrances to where people are working. At garment factories in downtown LA, both employers and the Garment Workers Center have been providing know your rights materials, and GWC provides financial support to workers who feel the need to stay home and hide.
At restaurants, employers have been putting up signage to make sure ICE understands that their businesses are private property and agents can’t enter the premises without a warrant. Business owners in LA have lost a lot of profit from the loss of their workers, which has prompted them to join with labor to fight back.
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ICE deploys tear gas in residential suburb
Over the weekend in Elgin, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, citizens responded to armed, masked agents trying to kidnap one of their neighbors by gathering to protest en masse. ICE spokespeople claim some of them were throwing rocks and bricks, though ICE often lies.
What is well-documented is the fact that ICE agents then began indiscriminately spraying tear gas and smoke in a densely populated residential area. One of the residents, Audrey Lehman, told reporters, “...it was very sudden, and I was able to get everybody off to one side, and then realized my 3-year-old was gone, and she was in the middle of the tear gas."
Another witness, Christina Chandler, said "I saw ICE drag people to the ground… I saw ICE spray people in the face. I mean they literally threw a smoke bomb right in front of my house, three of them in front of my house with my daughter in the house."
‘Tinted windows and out-of-state plates’: How ICE watchers look for agents in their neighborhoods
Around the country, regular people have come together to resist ICE. These efforts include tracking ICE vehicles, patrolling streets, and being present in vulnerable locations like schools and churches. ICE watchers stay in touch, share information, and support one another on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
In Minnesota, where “Operation Metro Surge” followed a racist rant by the sitting president (read those last seven words again!) against the Somali American community, many joined in the effort to resist ICE’s ability to detain and arrest people, some activating localized chats organized during the 2020 George Floyd protests.
ICE watching activities are wholly legal, though ICE doesn’t like to see observers show up. In Minneapolis, officers threatened and scolded one volunteer, who persisted in spite of feeling intimidated. “It just reminds me that people can and will show up, and that there's a lot of us. There’s more of us than there are of them,” she said. “I have a meeting later this afternoon, so I'm not going to be out driving on the streets, but other people will be — that feels powerful.”
There are thousands of us, people who don’t want to see our coworkers, friends, and neighbors brutalized by ICE and placed in its concentration camps. Find a local ICE Watch and join in: whatever your abilities are, they are necessary. We all protect each other!
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Anti-ICE, Anti-DHS protesters kicked out of New Orleans City Council chambers
The number one rule of resistance to authoritarianism is do not obey in advance. Make the bastards fight for every inch. Throw everything you can at the machine to make it stop its horrible machinations.
On December 4th, the people of New Orleans showed the city, the state of Louisiana, and the world exactly what this principle looks like in practice. Dozens of protestors inside city council chambers spoke out and demanded the city council do more to stop ICE from kidnapping members of the community.
“We came here today to take a stand against the [Department of Homeland Security] and ICE and all these goons who have come to arrest our neighbors and put us in fear ... We are not in fear,” one activist said.
The Council president suspended public comment, yet protestors persisted. They continue to demand more be done in the face of the Trump Administration’s targeting of New Orleans in the so-called “Catahoula Crunch” operation. The City Council protest was but one facet of a massive resistance, city-, state-, and nation-wide.
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Action items:
- Join Never Again Action on Monday, December 22nd at 1pm Eastern to demand that our friend Alejandro Guizar can come home for the holidays. Register now.
- Help Vince Rebuild After Deportation -- Vince Jobo, whose story we have featured previously, was deported recently after months of detention in horrible conditions in ICE facilities. This page will help him raise funds to start a new life.
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If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for next week’s roundup, drop us a line at neveragainaction@gmail.com.