Tacoma SDS

The corporation that runs the federal immigration detention center on Tacoma’s Tideflats plans to expand the facility’s capacity by 50 percent.

When completed, the Northwest Detention Center should be able to hold up to 1,500 immigrants in federal custody.

Mexico-born Jose J. Cervantes-Corona was 42 when he died at the Northwest Detention Center 21 months ago. We never heard about it, but his death at the Tacoma tideflats facility is now suspected of having been preventable.

Cervantes-Corona is named in recently released and published documents showing how many "detainees" have died in U.S. immigration prisons: The New York Times last week reported that 66 names are listed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data from 2004 to 2007, while the Washington Post this week reported 83 have died between 2003 and 2008.

Workers' Assembly On Immigration

Date: Fri & Sat, April 11th and 12th, 2008
(4:30 pm to 8:00 pm Friday, 9:30 am to 5:00 pm Saturday)

Location:
the Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus
1210 Sixth Avenue
Tacoma, Washington

*Childcare and Transportation will be available*

The Assembly is for workers to talk to one another about immigration, how it affects working families in all of our communities, and what we can do to stop exploitation on the job and in the streets.

How can immigrant communities and their supporters respond to ICE raids?

In 1907, more than two hundred South Asian migrant workers in Bellingham were attacked by a mob of white workers. In the course of one night, an entire community was driven from the town - in the approving words of a local paper, "wiped off the map". One hundred years later in 2007, hostility toward immigrants of color in Bellingham continues. Raids and detentions by government immigration agents are ongoing: so are surveillance and harassment from both government agents and groups like the minutemen. How have the events of 1907 shaped Bellingham as we know it in 2007?

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agents continue to terrorize immigrant communities in Washington State and across the country with increasingly militaristic raids, armed arrests, covert detentions and deportations. We ask that you join us in protest of these aggressive enforcement tactics and violations of our neighbors' civil and human rights. Many of our friends and neighbors are being held in this private corporate run Detention Center that is being funded by our tax dollars!

The New York Times ran an article today about recent immigration raids in Suffolk County, Long Island, initiated after local police submitted names of those they subjectively believed to have gang affiliations.

Not surprisingly, they were wrong. And some of the Greenport, NY employers of those arrested are helping by providing lawyers and other support. Migrant workers, as you might know, are not protected by due process law and do not have legal aid appointed to them, like anyone else would be.

November 9th & 10th-Shut Down Downtown Tacoma

Smash Tacoma ICE

To Whom It May Concern.

This letter is on behalf of all the inmates at the Elizabeth (Immigrant) Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey. This "prison" or "detention center" is run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). We have written this letter because of the mistreatment treatment from CCA Officers and the problems that this center has.

Be Contacted When Next ICE Raid Occurs

Smash ICE

Everyone,

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if you have not noticed, has begun employing fascist tactics against immigrants in this country. People are being ripped away from their families, thrown into crowded holding cells, and shipped off, away from everyone they care for and love, away from their homes, their communities and the jobs with which they feed their families.