Immigration rights activist Maru Mora-Villalpando told protesters in front of the Seattle ICE office that she had received a letter from ICE ordering her to appear in immigration court at some time in the future that was not specified. Receiving such a letter from ICE signals the beginning of deportation proceedings against the individual. “To me, it’s a clear sign that ICE wants me to stop my job,” she said. “It was an intimidation tactic.” (The Olympian)
Maru is the leader of Northwest Detention Center Resistance. NWDCR was founded in 2014 to support ongoing hunger strikes and other resistance activities, including the filing of a recent lawsuit opposing the inhumane conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. The Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma is where ICE detains immigrants prior to their hearings and in many cases subsequent deportations. Detainees are often forced to work for $1 a day under conditions described as “slave-like.” Meanwhile, Geo Group Incorporated, the for-profit corporation that owns the NWDC brought in over $148 million in profits in 2016.
“ICE only knows about me because of my political work,” explained Mora-Villalpando on the webpage of a petition to rescind the deportation order. “I have spoken out to defend immigrants in detention and shared my story as an undocumented mother. I have sat in meetings with immigration officials and challenged their practices. They are an agency whose actions have already been devastating to my community. But with the letter they delivered to my house, they are showing themselves to be an agency that silences any opposition to their practices.”
Josefina Mora, Maru Mora-Villalpando’s daughter, spoke on behalf of NWDCR on January 20 at a public event in Seattle. In her remarks she explained that her mother Maru “learned her politics from student protests and her grandfather who was a union organizer.” Maru “decided to stay here in the US in 1994 after a left party candidate was killed and after some of her family members suffered mysterious disappearances and deaths.” Josefina went on to point out that “Ice targeted my mother to set a standard for who can be deported. Single mother, here for 20 years, has absolutely no criminal history, has a small business and is always complaining about how much she has to pay in taxes for that business … A model immigrant.” Maru continued with “Because of her work she has been targeted.”
The crowd responded with a thunderous round of cheering and applause to the following statement towards the end of her speech, “But this fight obviously, is not just about my mother and I. We are fighting and we have been fighting since our founding in 2014, to end detention and deportation for undocumented immigrants, for all undocumented immigrants. For as you all know, there is no need for undocumented immigrants to ask an illegitimate government for permission to stay on illegally occupied land.”
Josefina’s remarks were in keeping with the theme of the event: “Combating U.S. imperialism: Extractivism, Women and State Violence.” One aspect of imperialism is the control of natural resources, including labor power, for the benefit of capitalist investors in oppressed countries, to the detriment of everybody and everything else. One facet of this power relation is that the capitalists can go wherever they want in pursuit of profit, but according to the rules established by the capitalists, the workers need permission from the capitalists to leave their country of origin, regardless of the circumstances.
The Democratic Party politicians are busy selling out immigrants by ending the government shutdown–even pushing to fund Trump’s racist border Wall– without winning any concrete gains for undocumented workers. Now it is more important than ever for people in the U.S. to understand that there are no borders in the workers’ struggle and an injury to one is an injury to all.
Sign the petition to support Maru!
Donate here for Maru’s legal expenses to fight her deportation and continue her work in support of people at the NW Detention Center and let Maru know: “You are not alone/No estas sola.”
