ICE

This morning, tea-party prankster Robert Erickson - who last week infiltrated a right-wing "Tea Party Against Amnesty" at the Minnesota State Capitol, sparking an internet sensation - attempted to turn himself in for self-deportation at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Bloomington.  Along with seven other illegal European immigrants wearing orange jumpsuits and about 25 supporters, the pranksters chanted "Columbus go home!" and "Deport us now!" to stubborn ICE officials.

Video and editing by Twin Cities IMC w. help from Bluestem Prairie and I Don't Hate America. (6:06)

Text of "Robert Erickson's" Speech at ICE | MIRAC (More) | Unsettling Minnesota | Earlier: Anti-Racists Steal the Show at Tea Party (video) | May 11: Hearings about Postville | Apr. 26: MIRAC ICE organizing | Robert Erickson Facebook & Twitter | Youtube (8:50) (3:30) | Related Event: An Evening of Reparations Dec. 6

On the morning of Friday, May 22, 2009 Immigrant and Indigenous Rights activists disrupted an event organized by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held at Fort Snelling in St. Paul, MN. Present at the meeting were representatives of several local and federal law enforcement agencies including, but not limited to, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Minneapolis and St. Paul police, the FBI, and the ICE Office of Detention and Removal.

Also present were representatives from local human rights groups, immigration lawyers and other non-profit advocacy organizations. Members and supporters of the Dakota community and the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition (MIRAc) demanded answers to human rights abuses perpetrated by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. Among the abuses mentioned were the 92 documented deaths of detainees under ICE custody due to physical and psychological abuse and lack of medical attention, the deplorable and inhumane conditions at detention centers, the illegal deportation of U.S. citizens due to racial profiling, the separation of children from their parents as a direct result of ICE raids and deportations, and the lack of due process and legal representation.

NOTICE OF DEPORTATION.pdf

One year ago, on May 12, 2008 the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  389 workers were arrested, most from Guatemala.  After arrest, they were taken to the local fairground and held in shackles for three days without significant access to lawyers.   Under those circumstances, 297 signed plea bargains despite the speed and dubiousness of their arrest.  These were not arrests for undocumented status but for criminal charges of fraud due to the use of false social security numbers.  The fact that these were criminal charges was used by law enforcement to justify the speed and opacity of the raids.

During the hearings, workers were shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles.  They were processed in groups of ten.

Account by interpreter of hearings after Postville raid

If Obama doesn't shut ICE down, community members will.  Local immigrants' rights activists demands that Obama issue an executive order to stop all immigration raids, detention and deportations by the end of his first hundred days in office.  Failing that, they call for civil disobedience backed by a large legal protest on May 6 at ICE Headquarters in Bloomington.