Posted on

Cameroonian 40 Hunger Strikes against ICE Continue

by A Scribe Called Quess?

Since March 3, some 40 African migrants, most Cameroonian, have been holding hunger strikes in an ICE concentration camp in Pine Prairie, LA. They’re protesting their extended detainment and inhumane treatment by ICE. The migrants paused their hunger strike when ICE agents said they would look into their cases. When this promise turned out to be a lie, the strike resumed. While some agents used deception to manipulate, others were more direct telling the men “for the 18 years I have worked for Department of Homeland Security, I’ve been trained to deport as many of you as possible,” threatening to deport them by October 7.

The migrants qualify for asylum under international law and have been incarcerated far longer than the law is supposed to allow. Still, Oakdale Immigration Court’s racist Judge Scott Laragy recently issued Final Orders of Removal to most of the men, resting his opinion on bogus “credibility” tactics, telling them that even if they appeal, he would still deny them asylum. Laragy has denied more than 85 percent of asylum cases that came before his court between 2014-2019, well above the national average of 63 percent. Since a large number of immigration judges are former ICE attorneys, it’s no wonder they uphold ICE’s mandates that support the ruling class. ICE uses racism to divide and conquer our working-class siblings nationally and internationally.

African migrants are twice as likely to receive deportations as their Latinx counterparts and are charged higher bonds due to their lack of family ties. But that lack of ties is a result of 400 years of racist U.S. foreign policy that barred immigration from Africa since the slave trade and even more so after the Haitian Revolution. This anti-Blackness permeates the practices of capitalist politicians of all races, so much so that the Mexican government is more likely to hand over African migrants to ICE than other immigrants. Meanwhile, African American politicians like Cedric Richmond, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, have failed to take adequate action by denouncing the modern-day slavery in Pine Prairie and demanding the release of all detainees immediately.

On August 14, the New Orleans Workers Group held a militant action in solidarity with the migrants and overwhelmed ICE officials with the power of the people. Only sustained direct action by the people to expose GEO Group, the $2.5 billion private company that runs the Pine Prairie ICE camp, will achieve the ultimate shut down of the camp and liberation of our working-class siblings. To support continued effort, email noworkersgroup@gmail.com and cameroon.american.council@gmail.com . We must fight until victory! Free Them All NOW!

Posted on

Stop Nazi-like Forced Sterilizations in ICE Concentration Camps and U.S. Prisons!

End Family Separation! Close the Camps! Free Them All!

The New Orleans Workers Group calls on all people of conscience to demand an end to the medical experimentation and forced sterilization of women and folks in U.S. ICE concentration camps. We cannot stand by as Republicans and Democrats attempt to minimize or conceal the atrocities occurring in so-called “detention” centers, jails, and prisons across the country.

We celebrate the brave stance of Dawn Wooten, a courageous Black woman who stepped forward to expose the horrific acts committed by a private for-profit concentration camp that cages migrants in Georgia. Similar human rights abuses have been documented in many other U.S. states.

Migrants are used as scapegoats so workers with papers will not recognize that the capitalist class is the real enemy. Migrants are workers just like us and we need to demand their release, family reunification, and full labor and political rights.

If any group of workers can be paid less, tortured, or discriminated against because of race, national origin, or gender, all workers will be hurt. To keep wages low and conditions poor for all of us workers, those who exploit us rely on reserve pools of labor, such as the unemployed, incarcerated, and migrant.

Lack of rights and fear of imprisonment and starvation have allowed bosses to pay migrant workers less money and the bosses are thrilled by that. The same process goes on in the prison system, making the U.S. the most incarcerated country in the world, with Louisiana and Arkansas as its most incarcerated states.

The right wing enforces the extreme exploitation of migrant workers by dehumanizing and caging. On any given day, more than 40,000 men, women, and children are in cages. Every migrant person caged in an ICE camp brings profits to the private owners of companies like Lasalle Corrections, GEO Group, and CoreCivic. These companies are addicted to this blood money and want more migrants incarcerated. For every person in ICE custody, these concentration camp companies receive about $65/day from the federal budget, totaling about $1 billion of our tax dollars every year.

Louisiana ranks second in ICE camps with at least 12 in the state. Some of these, such as River Correctional Center are unlisted facilities serving to disappear migrants. These camps are run in secret to hide torturous solitary confinement, lack of protection from COVID-19, inadequate food and healthcare, and everyday denial of legal rights.

This summer, the U.S. deported 8,800 unaccompanied minor children. A policy of supervised care for deported children to prevent trafficking has just been stopped by the U.S. government. Amidst COVID-19, these ongoing deportations have been a murderous act of biological warfare, spreading COVID-19 to over 11 countries and deporting over 159,000 people since March.

Forced sterilization, medical experimentation, and separation of children from families is part of the history of the U.S. These heinous acts have been overwhelmingly perpetrated against women of color, the disabled, and the extremely poor. Forced sterilization or forced childbearing and rape was common under slavery. It has been practiced in all U.S. colonies, especially Puerto Rico, and was a tactic of the genocide against Indigenous people.

The U.S. legacy of genocidal racism and torture of women continues. Studies show that Black women in Louisiana are four times more likely to die giving birth than white women. Every day, women are shackled during childbirth and denied pre- and post-natal healthcare in ICE concentration camps and U.S. prisons.

WORKING CLASS WOMEN UNITE AGAINST OUR TERRIBLE CONDITIONS

The current economic depression has hit women, folks, and families harder and driven us deeper into poverty and insecurity. This will eventually bring an explosion from working class and oppressed women. Women are 50% of the workforce, are more likely to join a union, a protest, oppose racism and poverty and become revolutionaries. Our ability to shut down production terrifies the ruling class. Impoverishment, violence, rape, incarceration, and attacks on reproductive and workers’ rights are being enacted to control us.

By fighting back, we can end the torturous cruelty inflicted on migrant women in the name of capitalist profits, just as we can end the police terror that took the lives of Breonna Taylor, Namali Henry, and Sandra Bland. We are clear that it is only through struggle that we can win, not by relying on the on the Supreme Court or any politician in office. We can and we must close all concentration camps including U.S. prisons and jails. None of us are free until all of us are free! End the capitalist war on women! End our impoverishment! Working women of all backgrounds unite! Free Them All!

Posted on

Abolish ICE, Relocate the Honduran Consulate

by Aminta Zea

As we stand in solidarity with the protestors in Portland who have been subject to fascist, white supremacist terror imposed by the U.S. government, we also remain cognizant that militaristic kidnappings are nothing new. For decades, the undocumented have been violently kidnapped and removed from their communities by ICE (Immigration service) agents and Border Patrol.

New Orleans has the largest Honduran community in the United States and has been besieged by ICE terror. Yet the Honduran consulate, representing the government put in by an illegal U.S. coup in 2009 (by Obama and Clinton) is now in an ICE Field Office at 1250 Poydras St. We demand it be relocated.

We recognize the parallels between the functions of the police and ICE, and we actively work towards abolishing these systems of racist oppression that continuously harm Black people, both migrants and U.S. citizens. We recognize that if we wish to abolish the police, we must also abolish ICE. ICE has only been around since 2003; there was a world before it and there can be a new world without it and without the police. From Portland, to New Orleans, to Tegucigalpa we remain firm in our rebellion against the capitalist class that is relentless in its genocide of Black and Brown people. Los pueblos de Honduras y los pueblos de Louisiana se mantengan firmes en su autonomía y su libertad.

Honduras, like many countries in Latin America subject to U.S. imperialism, has undergone massive state repression after the 2009 US backed coup against democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya’s policies included raising the minimum wage by 60 percent, free education for all children (including free lunch to the poorest children), reducing poverty by 10 percent during his first two years in office, and working towards an expansion of the reproductive rights of women. Because he put the Honduran people’s welfare above the interests of transnational corporations, he was removed from power by U.S. backed military forces. If we want to understand why so many from the northern triangle of Central America choose to flee to the United States, then we must realize that it is U.S. imperialism that pushes these people out of their homes.

The ruling elite continue to impose themselves on Latin American countries that say NO to capitalism and NO to a life where basic needs remain unmet. The current conditions of Honduras mirror the same state repression and violence we see here in the U.S. As millions of Americans march for Black Lives Matter, let’s remember that this fight does not stop at the borders of the United States. In the month of July alone, six Garifuna — Black Indigenous people — were murdered in Honduras under the dictatorship of Juan Orlando Hernandez. Garifuna people are fighting against their fascist regime in order to protect their ancestral lands and the rights of Afro-Indigenous and Indigenous people amid encroachment by the capitalist class.

The only way to combat racist exploitation, transmisogyny, and patriarchy is to overthrow capitalism. Imperialism — when the United States imposes violence and corruption on another country for profit — is the highest form of capitalism. Workers in the United States can play a crucial role in active solidarity with workers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, who continuously fight U.S. imperialism and exploitation. We, too, are now seeing acts of war imposed by imperialism here at home.

Workers of all countries should stand up firmly to oppose to the illegitimate government of Juan Orlando Hernandez. We oppose the Honduran consulate being held at an ICE Field Office. The racist, discriminatory policies that occur at that office at 1250 Poydras St. prevent Hondurans from accessing services from the consulate for fear of arrest.

We oppose and aim to abolish ICE, to abolish the police and all forms of colonial subjugation and oppression. No more to the capitalist bosses who continue to steal our wealth. No more to the U.S. politicians that let them carry out this theft.

It’s time we workers say enough is enough. We will not stop fighting until all of us are free.

Posted on

Free the Cameroonian 40 Now!

Aug. 14: People in ICE detention at Pine Prairie, LA hold signs reading “HELP” and “WE ARE INNOCENTS”

by A Scribe Called Quess?

“We are like a slave under a master with no place to go. The master[…] is ICE.” So said some of the 43 Cameroonian men detained in an ICE concentration camp in Pine Prairie, LA in a video published on Juneteenth this year. The men have been locked up by ICE for as much as 19 months with no end in sight. Racist Judge Scott Laragy has dismissed or “lost” evidence presented by the men while abusively telling them to shut up and trying to intimidate them into signing voluntary deportation during trials, adding to the 20% rate of African migrants facing deportation versus other immigrant groups with larger populations in the US. In response, they waged a 10-day hunger strike that landed them in solitary confinement where they were forced to drink toilet water. All this in a concentration camp where one out of five detainees have tested positive for COVID. The treatment of the men is illegal, as they qualify to seek asylum in the U.S., a right guaranteed by the Constitution for non-citizens fleeing political persecution in their homelands.

In their native Cameroon, a civil war has been waged by the dominant French-speaking government against the Southern, English-speaking region of Cameroon since 2016. This genocidal war is rooted in 55-year-old tensions between the two regions that have existed since British Cameroon established independence in 1961 and joined French Cameroon. Colonization left a deep divide that has festered over time as the French-speaking majority has tried to dominate the English-speaking minority to control their oil supply. This type of capitalistic oppression born of European colonization is all too common in the motherland. And its effects lead to refugee crises and migrants seeking safety in the U.S., the very country that helps perpetuate the oppression that led to the migrants’ crisis in the first place.

Aug. 14: New Orleans Worker’s Group leads protest of the illegal and brutal detention of migrants at GEO Group’s for-profit ICE detention center in Pine Prairie, LA.

As U.S. citizens, we can use our privilege to raise up the voices of our oppressed workers overseas. When interviewed by WV, Divine of the Cameroonian 40 encouraged folks on the outside to help the world hear their cry by contacting them for interviews, sharing their story on social media, and waging demonstrations on their behalf as New Orleans Worker’s Group comrades did on August 14th when they drove a motorcade to Pine Prairie and raised their voices in solidarity with the men. To learn more ways to support, email neworleansworkersgroup@gmail.com.

Posted on

Trump’s Storm Troopers Target Immigrants

In cities across the U.S. people have democratically decided to show solidarity to migrants and immigrants. These sanctuary cities have directed the police not to check immigration status, to racially profile undocumented workers, or to call in ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) to imprison our brothers and sisters in detention camps. New Orleans is one of several so-called sanctuary cities.

The ultra-racist Trump, just like the Louisiana legislature, refuses to accept any local decisions to raise wages, get sick pay, or deny corporate tax exemptions and more. Both rule solely to provide millionaires and billionaires with profits at the expense of the entire working class.

These anti-working class, racist politicians want to bring U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Units into sanctuary cities, armed to the teeth to arrest immigrants. These units are like the storm troopers of the Nazis. If they are allowed into our city, they will not stop with immigrants: the militarization and super weaponry will be used against the entire working class.

Anti-immigrant Attorney General Landry Has Got to Go!

Like Trump, Louisiana Attorney General Landry has been one of the loudest and ugliest voices in Louisiana against undocumented immigrants and migrants. This vicious racist and anti-immigrant millionaire opposed raising the minimum wage and initiated a lawsuit to stop Medicaid expansion and to destroy beneficial features of the Affordable Care Act. His lawsuit, which threatens the lives of 700,000 adults and children, was never decided by the workers of Louisiana.

Landry wants to divide workers by pitting citizens against immigrants. In 2017 he led a group of Attorneys General who threatened to sue Trump if he did not cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which protects 800,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation. Yet when it comes to making profits, Landry is only too happy to exploit migrant workers as part of a “guest” worker contract that his business rigged in order to get skilled and unskilled labor for cheaper than he could get it locally.

Guest workers work under conditions of semi-slavery. This program requires workers to sign contracts stating they will not complain or organize, or they will be deported immediately. Many “guest” workers are forced to live in horrid conditions, and their pay is deducted for food and housing. There is no path to citizenship. The racist-in-chief Trump has overseen an expansion in guest worker programs. There are more short-term migrant farm-workers being exploited as “guest” workers than ever before.

This goes to the very core of why the capitalists, and their media, are beating the message that we should blame immigrants rather than the super-rich. The purpose of the anti-worker, anti-immigrant and migrant hatred is to divide us while they laugh all the way to the bank. They want to lower the wages and benefits of all workers.

We need to tear down the prisons which make Louisiana the world’s prison capital for citizens and immigrants alike. Private prisons for profit, eight of them, are now operating to cage immigrants and take their children away.
All workers should reject the storm troopers and view an attack on immigrants as an attack on all workers. ICE and storm troopers out of New Orleans or anywhere! An injury to one is an injury to all!

Posted on

Stop Caging Workers!

Photo: Christina Tareq

On Friday, September 27, dozens of hospitality workers and supporters gathered in Congo Square for a Workers Unity Rally called by the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance. Organizers stressed the urgent need for workers to resist police and ICE terror in the workplace. Speakers included Eugene Grant of the Slow Rollas Brass Band who spoke on behalf of street musicians who have been targeted for harassment by the police who take their orders from gentrifiers and real estate developers. From Congo Square demonstrators marched through the French Quarter, calling on their fellow workers to come together to fend off cops and ICE agents who are attacking workers on behalf of greedy, racist bosses. Demonstrators chanted “Lift the wages, no more cages!” Grant summed up the attitude of the marching workers best, chanting “We gotta fight to get it!”

Posted on

Resistance to ICE is Growing. Stop the War on Migrants!

Protesters block ICE headquarters in Philadelphia, PA.

By Ashlee Pintos and Adam Pedescleaux

In an act of resistance against the racist, capitalist state, a Nashville community came together to protect an immigrant father when two plainclothes ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle came to arrest him. The neighborhood of Black and white workers formed a human chain surrounding the car and ensured the father and son had food and water during the whole ordeal. After four hours, the agents finally left having terrorized the immigrant father and child. Without community support, the father and son would have been separated and thrown into one of the government’s concentration camps.

Protests against anti-migrant terrorism have been taking place all over the country. Over 1,000 activists in Washington, DC, blocked the entrances and exits to the national ICE offices. Led by Jewish activists, this action blocked traffic and ended only when 11 protesters were arrested. At an earlier protest in DC, the activists staged a sit-in at the same offices. In Phoenix, AZ, 16 people were arrested in a similar protest. In Colorado, protesters replaced the U.S. flag at the ICE offices with one of Mexico in act of symbolic solidarity.

They also destroyed a racist Blue Lives Matter flag. And in Rhode Island, a protest outside a concentration camp was attacked by an ICE employee when he drove his truck into the crowd, injuring several people.

In acts of solidarity across California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, hospital staff are being trained how to use their bodies to stop ICE agents from entering hospitals.

In recent months, there have been multiple incidents where sea captains were arrested for saving migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean Sea. Pia Klemp, a German sea captain with an organization called Sea Watch International, faces 20 years in prison for rescuing people fleeing from Libya, a country which was destroyed by U.S. bombings and a right-wing coup a decade ago. While she and her crew are being investigated by Italian authorities, the French city of Paris offered her a medal for her bravery. She declined, denouncing the hypocrisy of the Parisian city government who order their police to oppress migrant workers daily. In June, the German ship captain Carola Rackete brought migrants she had rescued into port in defiance of the Italian police. She now faces charges similar to Klemp’s.

Every act of resistance against ICE and other anti-migrant forces in capitalist countries is a victory for the working class. We must all stand together against the Gestapo-like tactics of these agencies. As attacks on workers worldwide are increasingly violent, it is easy to feel defeated. However, all throughout the world, there are countless acts of resistance that are demonstrating workers’ power.

Posted on

Free the Children, Free All Immigrants, Workers of All Countries Unite!

by Ashlee Pintos

Last June people gathered by the thousands to take action against the internment camps set up by ICE that were holding children in cages and separating families. While Trump signed an executive order claiming to stop the separation of children and families, nothing has put a stop to the violence or terror. The situation of our migrant community clearly shows the importance of all workers demanding to Abolish ICE.

Countless cases have been shared detailing abuse of migrants of all ages at the hands of ICE agents. The most recent case to hit the news is the murder of a 7-year-old Guatemalan child, Jakelin Caal Maquin. As of December 8, 2018 Jakelin, would never again see a world outside of Federal custody. This child spent the last of her limited days under incarceration, denied water, and neglected as she got deathly ill. Jakelin and her father were two of over 160 migrants who were apprehended by ICE on December 6. They were taken to an area at the Border Patrol’s Bound Operating Base in a remote part of New Mexico. These areas where hundreds were detained only had a couple port-a-potties; no running water or access to bathing— and lacked necessities to sustain life.

Jakelin started to become increasingly ill as the migrants were forced on a 90-minute bus to Lordsburg. Only once the child was near death, was she flown to a hospital in El Paso. Following her passing, border patrol agents exploited her father’s grief by forcing him to sign documents in English while his native language is Q’eqchi (a Mayan Dialect).

In the name of Amerikkka, ICE is going about “business as usual” as Jakelin’s murder is one of many who have died in ICE prisons, at the hand of border patrol agents, or when agents dump water in the desert meant for migrant travelers. This child’s death is one among many. The capitalist class can cross borders to carry out business and make profit. Artificial borders and discriminatory immigration laws are enforced only upon our working-class sisters and brothers who only want a better life.