Around the country communities and elected officials are calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that conducts immigration raids violating people's civil and human rights. As we continue this fight at the federal level, there are clear policies that could be passed in our city to take away the hold that ICE has on immigrant communities and abolish it from our city. The Welcoming City Ordinance, the ordinance that delineates how Chicago interacts with ICE, still allows for communication and collaboration in a set of broad cases - when people have been accused of a felony (regardless of whether they have been convicted), when someone has been convicted of any felony at any point in their life, and when someone has been added to Chicago's flawed gang database. These carveouts are not a matter of public safety, rather of politics. In addition, the Chicago Gang Database, which contains the names of 128,000 adults who are mostly Black and some Latinx, is consistently shared with federal agencies, including ICE, leading to immigration raids in the homes of people whose names are on the list. If Chicago elected officials are serious about the call to #AbolishICE, they must first commit to take action on local policies that address the city's relationship to ICE and policing of immigrant communities and communities of color.

On July 6th, 2018, Mayor Woodards stated, “I vow that I will continue to fight for the health, safety and success of immigrants and refugees.” At the same time, the City of Tacoma is building a fence to prevent activists from calling attention to human rights abuses at the NWDC. The fence is merely a symptom of the disease of detention and deportation that the city facilitates. This reveals the contradiction in Tacoma City government. How can Tacoma call itself a “Welcoming City” with people who fight for the health and safety of immigrants when city government fails to enforce health and safety regulations at the detention center? We say that it cannot. Amid long-term issues regarding a lack of nutritious food, clean clothes and drinkable water, the NWDC is right now experiencing a health crisis -- a chickenpox outbreak. GEO Group’s failure to manage the health and safety of the people there is currently on display, as even US Representative Derek Kilmer was unable to visit to investigate conditions due to health concerns in June 2018. El 6 de julio la Alcaldesa Woodwards dijo “Me comprometo a seguir luchando por la salud, seguridad y éxito de inmigrantes y refugiados.” Al mismo tiempo la Ciudad de Tacoma está construyendo una barda para prevenir que lxs activistas sigan llamando la atención a los abusos a los derechos humanos en NWDC. La barda es sólo un síntoma de la enfermedad de la detención y deportación que la ciudad permite. ¿Cómo puede Tacoma autodenominarse una “Ciudad Acogedora” con la gente quien lucha por la salud y seguridad de inmigrantes, cuando el gobierno de la ciudad fracasa en enforzar las regulaciones de salud y seguridad en el centro de detención? Nosotrxs decimos que no puede. Entre varios preocupaciones que han ocurrido por mucho tiempo con respecto a la falta de comida nutritiva, ropa limpia y agua potable, en el NWDC hay una crisis de salud - un brote de varicela. Es obvio que el Geo Group ha fracasado en manejar la salud y la seguridad de la gente, como el representante Derek Kilmer no lo dejaron entrar a investigar las condiciones debido a las preocupaciones de salud en junio del presente año.

For the past two months our Latinx migrant community has experienced tremendous amounts of physical and emotional trauma. Thousands of migrants have arrived at the U.S. border after traveling through several countries to ask for asylum, only to be denied entry. They find themselves in despair and limbo, overwhelmed by the thought of the long treacherous journey back home. For the thousands who have been able to enter, they have been captured and imprisoned. Unjustly criminalized, they face charges that will forever impact their ability to live in the U.S. free from fear and persecution. Their children have been forcibly taken from them and incarcerated in migrant prisons across the country. We have yet to understand the emotional and physical toll of this latest assault on our community. For over twenty years, migrant adults have been mandatorily detained with countless accounts of abuse and death, including the detention of entire families (American Civil Liberties Union, 2016). This crisis, though not new, has taken a new form of brutality—to incarcerate children and youth by the thousands. For years, unaccompanied minors have been incarcerated for months at a time. Few in the U.S. are aware that a growing number of migrant youth are being locked up in detention, accused of gang affiliation. We are deeply concerned to learn that medical staff, including mental health professionals, are being used as tools of the state to further control and oppress these children and youth (Nilsen, 2018). The Trump administration continues to fund and funnel children newly separated from their parents to Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas. Shiloh was recently sued by the Center for Constitutional and Human Rights for administering a cocktail of psychotropic medications, including antipsychotics with limited FDA approval. It has been found that these drugs have had severe effects on the bodies of the unaccompanied minors being held in these detention centers (Reuters, 2018.) Migrant youth and children are suffering detained across the country. At the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Detention Center in Virginia, youth as young as 14 years old say they were beaten while handcuffed and left shivering naked in solitary confinement (AP, 2018). Recent victims of the current zero-tolerance policy are showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctors throughout the state of New York who have treated migrant children say many of them have begun to hear voices after being separated from their parents and detained. Additionally, a recent investigation showed that therapy notes of counselors working with detained children are being used in court to further criminalize and incarcerate them (Nilsen, Vox). We denounce this unethical practice by the Trump Administration. As Latinx mental health practitioners, we will not to be used as tools of oppression nor will we sit idle as our communities are caged, abused and traumatized. The photo and video images of children crying, standing by U.S. Border Patrol Officers and their mothers as well as the audio of dozens of children screaming in tears asking desperately for their parents, has created tremendous grief and anxiety among Latinx living in this country. The levels of dehumanization and violence we are exposed to on a daily basis can cause secondary trauma at a mass collective scale. Millions of people in our communities are migrants who are undocumented. Many of us have lived in fear for years. Many of us have suffered abuse at the hands of police and ICE agents. Many of us have been in deportation proceedings or have served time inside migrant prisons. These images in the media are haunting reminders wreaking havoc on our nervous systems. American Civil Liberties Union, D. W. (2016, February). detentionwatchnetwork.org. Retrieved from www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/sites/default/files/reports/fatal%20Neglect%20ACLU-DWN-NIJC-pdf AP. (2018, June 21). www.cnbc.com. Retrieved from cnbc.com: www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/young-immigrants-detained-in-virginia-center-allege-abuse.html Nilsen, E. (n.d.). Vox. (K. w. them., Ed.) Retrieved from Vox.com: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/18/17449150/family-separation-policy-immigration-dhs.orr-health-records-undocumented-kids Reuters. (June, 21 2018). NBC News. Retrieved from nbcnews.com: https://nbcnews.com/health/kids/u-s-centers-force-migrant-children-take-drugs-lawsuit-n885386

Across the country, activists are coalescing around the demand to #AbolishICE, a fundamentally racist agency which exists in order to terrorize, incarcerate, and deport immigrants and people of color as well as political opponents of the administration. This cruel reality has only become more clear in recent weeks, as the President has released an Executive Order that sets up a network of military-run internment camps to indefinitely detain immigrant families on the border, including families caught up in raids here in the interior of the country. In Nashville, doing our part means no longer offering our local institutions as resources for ICE's ethnic cleansing and family separation campaigns. CoreCivic is the largest private prison company in the world, and uses its influence and fortune to lobby for longer prison sentences, fewer rules governing the treatment of detainees, and anti-immigrant laws that have forced tens of thousands more immigrant parents into prison, such as the racist “show me your papers” law (SB1070) in Arizona in 2010. CoreCivic has publicly stated that any reduction in the prison population will hurt its profits and hurt its business model, and spends tremendous amounts of money lobbying for increased prison budgets and giving campaign contributions to politicians, political action committees, and nonprofit organizations with influence over prison policy. CoreCivic currently operates dozens of private prison facilities for adult immigrants, including the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the T Don Hutto Family Detention Center, where many mothers whose children were taken from them at the border have been imprisoned. A group of those mothers released a public letter to our movement in late May asking for our support in seeking their freedom from the CoreCivic prison in San Diego and in holding those responsible for their incarceration accountable. CoreCivic also operates the largest family detention center in the country, the “baby jail” in Dilley, Texas opened in 2014, which CCA intended to make the first of many government-funded, privately-run internment camps on the border for immigrant families. In their prisons, CoreCivic is notorious for two particularly heinous practices. The first is intentionally cutting corners on emergency medical care for detainees, which has resulted in numerous deaths in detention, most recently of a trans woman who died of pneumonia after spending time in CoreCivic’s Cibola Detention Center in New Mexico. Here in Nashville, detainees know all about CoreCivic's medical negligence, and the public found out about it through the scabies epidemic in CoreCivic's Harding facility last year. CoreCivic also uses threats to force detainees to participate in a supposedly voluntary work program, in which detainees are paid $.25 an hour for six-hour shifts doing maintenance and other work inside the prison. The company has been sued by thousands of detainees for forced labor and trafficking in the last several years.Doing our part in Nashville means cutting off the spigot and refusing to allow CoreCivic to use Nashville's public funds and local jail as a gold mine off of which to get rich and to continue abusing immigrant families and other people in their custody. ----------------------- Español------------------------------------------------------- En todo el pais, activistas están juntando para exigir la abolición de ICE, una agencia racista que existe para terrorizar, encarcelar, y deportar a inmigrantes y gente de color y los que se oponen a la administración. La realidad cruel se ha revelado más claramente en semanas recientes, con el Orden Ejecutivo del Presidente que pretende formar una red de campamentos de concentración manejados por el ejército para detener a familias migrantes sin límite en la frontera, incluso familias que son atrapadas en redadas aquí en el interior del país. En Nashville, necesitamos rechazar el uso de nuestros recursos locales para las campañas de ICE de limpieza étnica y separación familiar. CoreCivic es la compañía más grande de cárceles privados en el mundo, y utiliza su influencia y riqueza para pasar leyes que mantienen la gente encerrada con sentencias más largas, menos reglas contra el maltrato de detenidos, y leyes contra inmigrantes como lo de Arizona (SB1070) en 2010. CoreCivic ha pronunciado públicamente de que cualquier disminución de la población encarcelada va a bajar sus ganancias y dañar su modelo de negocio, y ellos gastan cantidades tremendas de dinero donando a políticos y organizaciones comunitarias que tienen influencia sobre políticas de encarcelación. Actualmente CoreCivic está manejando docenas de cárceles privados para inmigrantes adultos, incluso el Centro de Detención Otay Mesa (San Diego) y el Centro de Detención Familiar Hutto (Tejas), donde muchas mamás cuyos hijos les fueron quitados en la frontera actualmente se encuentran encarceladas. Un grupo de estas mamás publicaron una carta a nuestro movimiento en Mayo, pidiendo nuestro apoyo en su lucha buscando libertad de la cárcel de CoreCivic en San Diego y denunciando los responsables. CoreCivic también maneja el centro de detención para familias mas grande en el país, la “cárcel de bebés” en Dilley, Tejas, construido en 2014, lo cuál CCA pensaba hacer el primero de muchos campamentos de concentración, pagados por el gobierno y manejados por compañías privadas, en la frontera sur. En Nashville, tenemos que cortar los fondos públicos de que CoreCivic sigue aprovechando, y rechazar que esta corporación sigue usando la cárcel local como una mina de oro con lo cual pueden enriquecerse y seguir abusando de las familias migrantes y otros bajo su control.

The Young People's Resistance Committee has discovered that Anselmo Villarreal, CEO of La Casa de Esperanza, one of Wisconsin’s most important Latino community organizations, sits on the Board of Directors of the Southwest Key Program, the non-profit running child internment camps on the U.S.-Mexico border. La Casa de Esperanza is an important resource hub for the Waukesha Latino and immigrant community. We find it disturbing that Mr. Villareal would associate himself in any way with an organization that is complicit in the inhumane act of separating children from their families. Several organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Public Health Association have denounced this policy. Mr. Villareal, there is no humane way of separating children from their families. Southwest Key Programs is complicit in this violation of rights; we urge you to step down from its board and renew your commitment to the humane treatment of immigrants everywhere. ---EN ESPAÑOL--- Recientemente, el Comite de Resistencia Juvenil ha descubierto que Anselmo Villarreal, director ejecutivo de La Casa de Esperanza, una de las organizaciones de la comunidad latina más importantes de Wisconsin, forma parte de la Junta Directiva del Southwest Key Program, el cual mantiene campos de internamiento sin fines de lucro en la frontera EEUU-México. La Casa de Esperanza es un importante centro de recursos para la comunidad inmigrante y latina de Waukesha. Nos resulta inquietante que el Sr. Villareal se asocie de alguna manera con una organización que es cómplice en el acto inhumano de separar a los niños de sus familias. Varias organizaciones, incluyendo la Asociación Estadounidense de Psicología, el Colegio Americano de Médicos y la Asociación Estadounidense de Salud Pública, han denunciado esta política. Sr. Villareal, no hay una forma humana de separar a los niños de sus familias. Southwest Key Programs es cómplice de esta violación de derechos; le exigimos que renuncie a su puesto en esta junta directiva y renueve su compromiso con el trato verdaderamente humano de los inmigrantes en todas partes.

Today news broke that the Trump administration is significantly escalating its “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to immigrants seeking refuge in the U.S. and plan to introduce a “fast-track” mass prosecution program. Akin to the already existent Operation Streamline in southern Texas and Arizona, the program means that immigrants will be moved through the criminal system in mass hearings, from arraignment to sentencing - up to 150 migrants per day - in just a few hours. From children being torn apart from their parents to chained groups of people being prosecuted en masse it is clear we have a human rights crisis. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is throwing the book at people without regard or discretion and this latest move will exponentially increase family separation and the prosecution and incarceration of migrants simply for the act of migration. This in addition to more money going to fund sentencing and private prisons.

On May 7, 2018, Luis was arrested by the Town of Cicero police after an altercation with his friend. Now he is at risk of deportation. A few hours after the police arrested Luis, they turned him over to ICE who took him to a detention center a few hours from Chicago. Luis is currently detained and is now in removal proceedings. He is the primary caretaker of his three children and has lived in the U.S. for more than 14 years. The details of his arrest do not negate the fact that Luis has established a life here and deserves to remain here with his family! Officials at the Town of Cicero have publicly claimed that the suburb, located to the west of Chicago, does not turn people over to ICE and have cited a 2008 resolution as proof that the Town is a “sanctuary” suburb. Yet Town officials turned Luis over to ICE even after Luis was given a $150 bond to walk free. Luis is now in deportation proceedings and at risk of being separated from his children, his family, and his community. Luis is a fun and caring father who loves taking his daughters to the park. He works selling carpets to financially support his three daughters and to send money on a weekly basis to his family. He loves sports especially baseball and has even coached adult soccer teams for fun. The Town of Cicero, IL should not have turned Luis over to ICE, help us stop his deportation by signing this petition!

Every year, the city council votes on a budget. This year, there has been overwhelming amount of participation from community, especially people of color and allies. People left work early, shared rides, coordinated child care, knocked on doors and broke fears to participate in the budget process to have their voices heard in favor of community demands to address police violence and police/ ICE collaboration. However, despite the overwhelming support and participation, the revised budget does not include the community demands. Join us to tell members and the city manager to listen to the community! Demands: 1) City of Phx to create a legal defense fund for immigrants pushed to ICE custody by Phoenix PD. Context: Phoenix PD has been separating our families through criminalization and partnership with ICE and MCSO. 2) A compensation fund for the communities impacted by police violence. For resources to go to counseling, trauma support, therapy needed after incidents of police violence. Context: Phoenix PD is one of the deadliest police departments in the nation. In 2016 they killed 18 people, one less than LA, a city double our size. Thank you! --------- Todos los años, el concilio vota por un presupuesto. Este año, hubi mucha participación de la comunidad, especialmente personas de color y aliados. Las personas salieron temprano del trabajo, coordinaron el cuidado de los niños, tocaron puertas y rompieron los temores de participar en el proceso presupuestario para hacer oír sus voces a favor de las demandas de la comunidad para abordar la violencia policial y la colaboración policial / ICE. Sin embargo, a pesar del apoyo y la gran participación, el presupuesto revisado no incluye las demandas de la comunidad. ¡Únase a nosotros para decirles a los miembros y al administrador de la ciudad que escuchen a la comunidad! Demandas: 1) City of Phx para crear un fondo de defensa legal para los inmigrantes presionados por la policía de Phoenix ante la custodia de ICE. Contexto: Phoenix PD ha estado separando a nuestras familias a través de la criminalización y la asociación con ICE y MCSO. 2) Un fondo de compensación para las comunidades afectadas por la violencia policial. Para que los recursos se destinen a asesoramiento, apoyo de trauma, terapia necesaria después de incidentes de violencia policial. Contexto: Phoenix PD es uno de los departamentos de policía más mortíferos de la nación. En 2016 mataron a 18 personas, una menos que Los Angeles, una ciudad que duplica nuestro tamaño. ¡Gracias!

Alderman Cardenas and Chris Frominos, the cafe owner of Sip22, are furthering the gentrification of Little Village by colluding to replace a popular community square in front of the café with a patio area exclusively for customers. Cardenas has already removed the benches from the community square. The public plazita that Cardenas is willing to give away to Frominos is located in Little Village, on the corner of Marshall Blvd and Cermak Rd. This space and the benches are used by people from the community to chill, catch up with friends, take a breather as they take their groceries home, and rest while they walk their pets around the Boulevard. Also, this plazita is used every morning by a beloved Señora who brings us some of the most delicious tamales en el barrio. According to sources inside the Alderman's office, Cardenas called the Chicago Department of Transportation to ask that the benches be removed, allegedly so that they could be repainted. But when community members in the 12th Ward asked for more information, they were told there is no date or deadline for when the benches will be put back. They also said that if the café patio permit is accepted, the benches would be relocated outside of the former community square. The owners of Sip22 are gentrifiers. Sip22 is in Little Village, but they market their building as an extension of Pilsen to attract white and higher income individuals. Rent in Little Village and North Lawndale has been skyrocketing as a result of white and higher income people moving in, displacing poor and working class Latinx and Black residents. The signature of Cardenas is necessary for the patio permit to move forward. Sign the petition and call Alderman Cardenas at 773-523-8250 to ask about the space, demand he not sign the patio permit and demand that the benches be put back INSIDE of our community square immediately.

As outward white supremacy is on the rise, we can not allow for elected representatives to not be held accountable for racist acts. The community cringed when Ducey praised Trump’s clemency for former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who terrorized migrant communities and racially profiled black and brown people for over two decades. The governor, who earlier in his political career sought Arpaio’s endorsement, didn’t hesitate to stand by Trump who has ferociously attacked us since he came into office. This weekend Governor Doug Ducey continues to side with bigotry and hate by posing for a picture with known racist. For the past week tens of thousands of teachers have been on strike and Ducey has shunned them like he has the migrant and people of color communities in Arizona for the last four years. Gov. Doug Ducey, we demand that you Denounce White Supremacy or RESIGN!

Lulú Martinez has been fighting alongside her community for nearly a decade, and has been a part of significant actions demanding dignity for the immigrant community. In 2013, Lulú took part of the DREAM 9 action where she and a group of other young people left the country and re-entered seeking asylum. The DREAM 9 action directed attention to harmful immigration and border policies as well as helped uncovered dangerous conditions in detention centers. Five years later, Lulú is still going to court for her asylum case. Lulú has risked a lot in the actions she has taken, and now it is time for her community to show up and demand justice for Lulú.

Since Alejandra was released from detention she has worked to advocate for human and civil rights, dedicating her life to organizing for reproductive rights and the rights of immigrants. She is an active member of Mijente, a digital and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx movement building and works as a Field Coordinator for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, where she organizes to raise the voices of Latinas in Virginia for policy change at all levels of government on issues that impact their lives, women’s health care, and other social justice issues. Alejandra is yet another name added to the growing list of immigrant rights and human rights defenders in the United States who have been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation. She was released from immigration detention by a judge at Eloy Detention Center on April 18th, 2018, but continues to be in deportation proceedings. Getting a pardon from Governor Ducey would significantly increase her chances to be able to stop her deportation and allow her to stay home.