The recent murder of two men at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has again mobilized people to demand the end to this para-military force that has been terrorizing communities around the country.
On July 7, in Houston, Texas, ICE forces, in their unmarked black SUVs, descended on Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who was driving to work with his brother and two other people. His van was cut off and rammed, and Araujo was fatally shot. Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero’s car was rammed by an ICE vehicle, and shots fired through the windshield of his car killed him.
In a lesser-known incident, the day after Durán Guerrero was murdered, ICE agents ambushed a group of men in St. Augustine, Florida, who were sitting in a car in a parking lot. Four of the men ran from the car, one attempted to run across a busy street and was hit by a tractor trailer and died at the scene.
The same day Araujo was shot dead, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, 45, died in ICE custody while he was being transferred from one so-called detention center to another in Georgia. He had been kidnapped by ICE at his home four days before and denied access to critical medication. There have been at least 21 deaths in ICE custody this year. There have been at least 29 shootings with at least eight people being killed.
Some of these killings brought thousands into the streets in Houston, Biddeford, and other cities. People expressed their sorrow and rage over the murder of members of their communities.
ICE has been spreading terror across the country as its masked, heavily armed forces invade cities and towns, assaulting, kidnapping, and murdering people who look like immigrants to them. Trump has ordered ICE to hunt and capture 2,000 people a day.
The so-called detention centers, 90% of which are privately owned, are for-profit concentration camps. Some have $500 million dollar contracts. They keep people in horrific conditions, forcing them to work and live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. More than 70,000 people are being held under these conditions. Eight mega-prisons, each capable of holding 10,000 people, are planned for construction. The number of people abducted, imprisoned or deported to their countries of origin, or sent into exile in centers around the world, is not being reported.
In the aftermath of the most recent murders there are again demands for ICE to be accountable, to wear body cameras, and follow legal procedures. This is not what ICE was created for. Congress created an unregulated military force that that is now the 13th highest funded military force in the world. It carried out a massive hiring process offering signing bonuses of up to $60,000 for new recruits, and salaries around $100,000. Those heavily armed forces have been unleashed across the country.
When ICE invaded L.A., Chicago, and small cities and towns across the country, they were met by widespread resistance. This past December, the government decided to make a show of force in Minneapolis. Trump waged a propaganda campaign demonizing the Somali community there. Operation Metro Surge sent 3,000 heavily armed paramilitary ICE forces, soon followed by another 1,000.
People responded, mobilizing to defend the most vulnerable members of their communities. They provided food, rent money, safe travel for children to and from school. They organized neighborhood and city-wide patrols, tracking ICE and warning people of ICE presence. In a mass mobilization on January 23, people shut down much of the city in protest, including its schools and businesses. In response, the majority of ICE forces were withdrawn.
The people of Minneapolis showed that it is possible to resist, and with enough of us, we can win. We can organize in our neighborhoods and link those groupings together if ICE appears. We can talk with friends, co-workers and others and help them do the same. We can organize on the job, to protect people who could be targeted as workers in a number of hospitals have done, resulting in people being freed from ICE custody; as some bus drivers have declared they will do, to carry out their responsibility to protect their passengers; as teachers and school staff have done around the country to protect their students.
The choice is ours. We stand together or fall separately. Abolish ICE!
