Following is a talk given in a panel titled “Fighting to
win: How to defeat immigrant bashing, anti-LGBT bigotry, Islamophobia and the
ultra right” at the Nov. 13-14, 2010, National Conference on Socialism
sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
I am going to begin by reading a
statement from a woman with whom we work in San Diego:
October 13th
was a major turning point in my life. ICE agents took away a great portion of
my family, raided my house, my father’s workplace.
It was around
11:20 a.m. when the raids went down. My family and I had begun eating lunch
when ICE cops surrounded the house yelling “Police, Police! Put your hands up!
Don’t move! Open the door!” It happened so fast, but I remember thinking to
myself: ‘Do they have the wrong house?’ Officers were pointing guns at us from
outside the window while one of them ordered us to open the door. My sister,
confused as everyone else, managed to open the door and was instantly arrested.
Once inside the house an agent pointed his gun straight at my brother-in-law’s
head. There were a total of ten agents, some of them with long-distance guns
and bulletproof vests as well as helmets. It was as if they were after a
dangerous criminal.
Inside they
kept yelling at us to put our hands up. I began to ask why they were doing this
and they would only reply, “We have a warrant.” I kept asking what the warrant
was for but they didn’t want to tell me. Only after I told them I had the right
to know did they tell me it was because of an investigation at their work
place.
After that they
kept yelling at us. I couldn’t raise my hands because I was holding a two-year-old
child who was crying from all the commotion. On one side my sister and my dad
were already in handcuffs and on the other my brother-in-law still had a gun
pointed to his head, even though he had his hands up.
Two officers
then kicked in the garage door while another aimed his gun and proceeded to arrest
my uncle who had been sleeping. Once they were assured that they had gotten
everyone they proceeded to sit everyone in the living room, except for my mom,
whose hands began to get paralyzed.
Even when the
officers saw what was happening to her they kept yelling at her to move to the
couch. It broke my heart to see how they yelled at her, when they could see
perfectly that she was unable to. They saw she couldn’t breathe and they did
nothing.
I began to cry
and started yelling at the officer, “Can’t you see she can’t move!!” The
officer then asked me why my mom was acting that way if this wasn’t a life or
death matter. I didn’t reply, but I told my mom not to worry, to calm down and
that if anything happened to her I would do something about it. After that the
officer changed his attitude towards my mother.
I was the first
to be asked for an ID. I asked them, which ID would prove my citizenship enough,
my passport, my California ID or my drivers’ license? They even asked for the
child’s ID, which we didn’t have since we were babysitting him, but they kept
insisting he was my child and that they needed something to prove he was born
here. It got me so mad they would even ask for the child’s citizenship. I
asked, “Are you guys going take him too?” One officer just replied, “No, we
just want to see some type of identification.”
The whole
operation took three hours. One by one I watched as they took my dad, my
sister, my uncle and my brother-in-law. My mother was left behind, which I
think was because of her medical problems. We saw how they searched every part
of our house as if we were criminals hiding drugs or something. My mom and I
just sat there at the kitchen table crying, waiting for them to leave. I didn’t
want my little brother to come home and see them and so I asked if we could
make a phone call to arrange for someone to pick him up and they agreed. While
we waited they told us that the only reason they had come to our house was
because of my dad. It seemed to me they wanted us to go against him, as if it
was his fault
They also told
us that they had gone to the bakery and other houses as well, including my
uncle’s home.
Since nobody
was at my uncle’s house, ICE had to break in, breaking the entrance door and
leaving it semi-open when they left. I went to look for their dog once ICE left
my house. I found the dog hiding and trembling under a desk. I could see that
they had trashed their house really bad.
This brief account of what
happened to a family in San Diego is how ICE agents treat human beings
everywhere, clearly in an effort to instill fear and intimidation. But as the
writer expressed, our people will not be intimidated. We will stand up in the
face of state repression, and look the oppressor straight in the eye and demand
justice.
The Party for Socialism and
Liberation stands in strong solidarity with migrant workers who are being
criminalized and terrorized by the state’s forces.
It is for this reason that upon
hearing a much briefer version of this story we knew we had to mobilize.
We immediately called and asked
if we could support them and with the family’s consent we organized a rally to
denounce these types of attacks against the working class. In three weeks we
were able to mobilize a coalition of progressive organizations to hold a rally
with over 150 people present. We are continuing to build relationships with
grassroots organizations in San Diego to mobilize against further attacks and
build a stronger fight back movement against state repression of our community.
The workers’ struggle knows no
borders and we will continue to reach out across capitalist divisions of our
community and build working-class solidarity against capitalism.
