Why families of those killed, maimed, and detained by ICE need to be a leading force in the movement against the mass deportation machine
In the past two weeks, we’ve seen a surge in shootings and murders at the hands of ICE, from the executions of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine, to the killing of Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran who was hit by a semi while trying to escape ICE in St. Augustine, FL. At least 23 immigrants have died in detention centers just this year, and conditions are only getting worse. Just last week, Jesus Manuel Arenas-Silva died while being transferred from the Irwin County Detention Center to the Folkston Processing Center in Georgia.
In the aftermath of these murders, more and more families have been stepping out to speak about and demand justice for their loved ones. Even families with mixed status who have every reason to fear retaliation for speaking publicly have seen the necessity of coming forward.
As we see more and more families stepping out, we have to ask ourselves: how can we sustain support for these families when the spontaneous energy dies down and the cameras go away? And what role can these families play in a movement demanding justice for their loved ones?
We believe that immigrant families are not just passive victims, but have the potential to be a fighting force providing political leadership to a mass movement. We’ve seen that the courage of these families can inspire others; when one family demands justice for their loved one boldly and publicly, it can inspire others to do the same.
A deep-seated fear of ICE is often the primary factor holding these families back from taking these courageous steps. But there are usually other forces at play such as lawyers who don’t see the necessity of a political battle outside of the courtroom and who advise their clients to stay quiet, non-profits who steer immigrants away from confrontation with their oppressors and towards meaningless ‘Know Your Rights’ trainings, and other activist organizations who tell immigrants that the best they can do is keep their heads down, take whatever handouts they can get, and hope that ICE never comes for them.
The aforementioned forces see families as clients or charity cases, not as people with a deep understanding of their situation and the potential to lead the fight against the mass deportation machine. We need to flip this dynamic on its head, cut to the heart of what’s holding people back, connect families going through similar struggles, and find ways for immigrants who are unable to be on the frontlines of every protest meaningfully contribute to the struggle in other ways.
We’ve seen from our work around detention centers and with immigrants families (while also taking lessons from our work with Families Demanding Justice) that the pieces of political organization amongst immigrants are all there. There are many people who want to fight, but just don’t know how. There are many second-gen immigrants with citizenship who were taught that keeping a low profile would protect their undocumented family members, and who are now realizing that this has always been a lie. There are undocumented people who have ideas and experience but no clear way to contribute. There are dozens of Facebook groups with thousands of members each where families do their best to provide emotional support to strangers, and answer questions about opaque legal processes based on their own experiences with the system.
People are grasping at collective responses to the horrifying, confusing, and isolating experience that is having a loved one detained or shot by ICE, but have no visible political force or organization to turn to with their problems. It is a stain on the state of the movement against ICE that so many people feel their best option for seeking help—whether with relationship problems involving a detained partner or filing a habeas corpus petition—is to cast their questions into the algorithmic void.
It is our responsibility to put the pieces together, and cohere them into something with strategy, direction, and a revolutionary political line. It is our responsibility to be visible so that families who want to speak out but don’t know how, or don’t feel that they have people to back them up in the fight, have a place to go and people to struggle alongside. We can’t underestimate the real, well-founded fear that people have, nor the lengths that ICE and the feds will go to repress those who dare confront them. But we also cannot underestimate the potential power of these families to change the political situation in front of us. Here are a few reasons we think families can play a decisive role in the fight against ICE and the mass deportation machine:
Families can and should speak for themselves
Families don’t need anyone appointed to speak on their behalf, whether it’s a more ‘polished’, media-trained lawyer, or leftists who can speak the ‘right lingo’ to appeal to the ‘right people’. Families who are going through this struggle day in and day out are the ones best positioned to speak on their experiences and the experiences of their loved ones. Deferring to lawyers or leftist trains people in thinking that you need a years of school and a law degree to speak on basic facts about how ICE is operating or the torturous conditions that immigrants are facing inside detention centers. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and it’s also based in anti-immigrant, anti-masses sentiment that sees immigrant families as passive victims (or again, as clients), not as potential leaders in the struggle against the mass deportation machine. Seeing families themselves speak out is often what’s most inspiring to those sitting on the fence waiting to get involved, especially other immigrant families. Many people we’ve gotten to know through our work first reached out because they saw families of those detained joining and leading protests or posting videos about their loved ones online.
Families have a direct line to the inside
The past few months, we’ve seen resistance led by immigrants spread in detention centers across the country, from Delaney Hall in NJ to Adelanto in CA. Detainees have stuck out their necks to expose the torturous conditions inside in the face of brutal repression from guards and ICE agents.
Families and friends of those detained are often the first to hear about these abuses, and have played a critical role in bringing them out into the light for the whole world to see. They have also helped spread the word about how their detained loved ones are leading the fight from the inside. Some of the most powerful moments we’ve seen are those of coordinated resistance on the inside and outside, like protests led outside Delaney Hall by Gabriela Soto at the same time as her husband, Martin, was leading hunger strikes on the inside. Leadership from families is what will make this type of coordinated resistance more possible and more powerful.
Families share many of the same struggles and can support each other through them
Having a loved one killed, maimed, or kidnapped by ICE is a horrifying, confusing, heart-wrenching experience that anyone should be able to empathize with, but that only other families going through it can fully understand. Families whose loved ones have been killed by ICE see their family member’s murderers walk free and their executions justified by fabricated criminal allegations. Families with detained love ones have to live in a near constant state of fear that their loved one is facing severe medical neglect, beatings, isolation, or any number of torturous conditions inside–all while continuing to hold down a job, take care of children, and make ends meet.
While media narratives often paint a rosy portrait of relationships between people detained and their family members or partners on the outside, the reality is often much more complicated. For immigrants who are locked up, severe isolation, lack of access to vital medication, abuse at the hands of staff inside, and resulting depression and mental health struggles all put a strain on their relationships with family and friends on the outside. Many families have told us that their detained loved ones barely have enough energy to hold a conversation, have become deeply depressed and resentful, and have changed their overall demeanor dramatically. Others face daily conversations where they have to convince a loved one not to self-deport, in spite of the torturous conditions they face.
Our social lives are hard enough as it is; the struggles that people are facing on the inside and outside only make these relationships harder. Connecting families going through these same emotional struggles to each other can be a lifeline that keeps them sustained in the fight for their loved ones.
Beyond this vital emotional support, many families provide each other with concrete answers about navigating everything from getting a real person on the line at the detention where their loved one is being held to finding lawyers that aren’t just in it for the money.
Families can put a face to the name
All immigrants killed, injured, or detained by ICE, but especially those involved in high-profile cases, have been immediately criminalized in the wake of ICE’s attempts to detain them. Carlos Mendoza, who was shot by ICE at least seven times in Patterson, CA in April was labeled an 18th Street gang member within hours of his near-murder, despite zero evidence to back it up.
Years of propaganda against immigrants has convinced not only die-hard conservatives but also many US-born proletarians that the well has dried up for them because immigrants are ‘coming in and taking all the welfare and good jobs’. Making immigrants out to be criminals only drives the wedge deeper. While we shouldn’t waste time trying to convince the most reactionary elements in this country of immigrants’ basic humanity, it is worth trying to cut through the propaganda and bullshit to win over people whose outlook should align them with the fight against ICE terror.
By humanizing and filling in important context about the lives of their loved ones, families can play a decisive role in winning over these sections of the population. This does not mean attempting to portray a loved one as a ‘perfect victim’, but rather painting a picture of their lives that feels familiar to other proletarians, especially of Black and other oppressed people. Doing so can help redraw the battle lines of the social war the ruling class has created to shift the blame for social problems onto immigrants and keep them isolated from people who should have their backs. It can also start to chip away at the good immigrant / bad immigrant narrative that has been used to keep immigrants divided amongst themselves.
Families understand the stakes and have the fire to sustain the fight
Families of those detained will go to the ends of the earth for their loved ones, and they understand on an emotional and molecular level that the stakes of this struggle are life and death. It is their sense of urgency, and their energy and fire that helps sustain their loved ones inside, and the movement outside. Families also understand, on this deeper level, that the struggle is not over if and when their loved one is released. Whether it’s years more of the legal battle to keep their family member from being deported, or dealing with the ongoing impacts of physical and mental health problems from their time in detention, the fight can be lifelong. This is most obviously the case with people who have been dealt life-threatening injuries in their encounters with ICE, but is true of pretty much anyone locked up in detention centers.
Many immigrants have a broader, more internationalist view of the struggle
Many immigrant detainees and their families have seen and felt the motions of US imperialism from both sides: in their home countries, which have been decimated by US-engineered wars, coups, structural adjustment programs, and environmental devastation, and in the US, where large sections of the population are bought off by the spoils of this imperialism but immigrant and US-born proletarians continue to suffer. Though many immigrants see the opportunity for upward mobility for the first time in their lives upon arriving to the US, few ever attain anything close to the ‘American Dream’, and many end up in poverty, working the worst jobs, and facing the threat of deportation. While their countries of origin are plundered for resources, immigrants in the US are trapped in conditions of extreme precarity, so the US ruling class to exploit their labor.
These experiences of dispossession can give immigrants a sharper understanding of how the mass deportation machine operates, not just in the US, but in relation to dispossession and migration on a global scale. This understanding, coupled with connections to and memories of a different way of life in their home countries (eg. less rancid social relations, and stronger social movements) has the potential to inoculate immigrants against selfish “me-first” attitudes encouraged by American culture and instead encourage a sense of internationalism that sees those facing the worst of this system as part of the same class with the same interests. Immigrant families and their detained loved ones who hold this broader perspective should be brought forward as leaders in a mass movement against ICE—one whose strength will depend on rejecting paltry reforms and staying focused on the bigger picture.
This is a call, to anyone whose family or friends has been killed, injured, or kidnapped by ICE, get in touch and let us know how we can support you. Whether it’s dealing with the emotional pain, exposing the torture your loved one has faced in detention, holding protests with other families, getting information, or finding lawyers who aren’t just in it for the money. Let’s come together and figure out these challenges and struggle for justice for all our loved ones.