Despite their campaign promises to end deportation and close family detention centers, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been anything but immigrant friendly over their time in office. In just 120 days, the Biden administration has deported nearly 500,000 people.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operates four detention centers in the NYC area, all in New Jersey, in counties run by Democrats: three in the Bergen, Essex, and Hudson county jails, plus the privately owned Elizabeth Detention Center. These detention centers cage the mostly Black and brown immigrants arrested by ICE in NYC.
But remember: ICE doesn’t arrest people for committing crimes; it arrests people for violating immigration regulations, which are civil offenses, not criminal. It is ICE itself that criminalizes them, often compounding the racism of the criminal legal system by targeting immigrants for deportation who’ve been incarcerated or had contact with the police. On top of that, the pandemic has revealed the threat to public health posed by detention centers, with unsafe conditions making them hotbeds of COVID-19 infection.
For over a year now, SURJ NYC members have been calling state and county officials, testifying at public meetings, raising funds for detained people and their families, and rallying and protesting with the Abolish ICE NY-NJ Coalition, which organizes to free people from ICE detention—and, ultimately, to end detention and abolish ICE—while supporting detained immigrants and their families. Coalition demands originate from detained people themselves, organizers include formerly detained people, and an important part of the coalition’s work is uplifting and supporting the organizing of people in detention, such as ongoing hunger strikes to protest conditions and win release.
In solidarity,
SURJ NYC
P.S. Feeling overwhelmed by all the candidates you have to choose between on June 22nd?? Join us at this Thursday’s chapter meeting to get informed and involved in the two weeks before this important primary election!