FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@freedomforimmigrants.org
MINNEAPOLIS — Following reports that the federal government is pressuring Minnesota officials to expand local jail cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials in order to transfer community members to ICE custody to more easily deport people, Laura Hernández, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, issued the following statement:
“Minnesota officials must hold the line and not throw incarcerated community members and their families under the bus. While the full details of the negotiations are not yet clear, we know that any degree of local and federal law enforcement collaboration propagates the existing racial disparities of over-policing, profiling, and convictions into the immigration system. Black and brown community members who are consistently subject to harsher policing tactics and criminalizing laws, including those who have already faced the punitive measures of the criminal injustice system, are no less disposable to the whims of ICE’s terror. Their lives are of value — just like Keith Porter’s, Renee Good’s, and Alex Pretti’s. Those who are deported after ending up in jail or serving a sentence are oftentimes long-term residents with established lives and families here, and with no ties to the country they are deported to. For many others, deportation puts them at risk of persecution and could even be a death sentence.
“In the face of Trump’s increasingly fascist crackdown, now is not the time to sacrifice some of us. Removing agents from the streets in exchange for increased cooperation with jails and prisons is not a true de-escalation — it will simply result in a quieter, more covert operation of family separation and misery. Here is where we must hold the line: None of us are disposable. Our fight for dignity and justice for immigrants must include the fight to end local collaboration with immigration enforcement and the unjust practice of double punishment, both of which destroy countless lives and exacerbate the injustices served upon communities of color. Our mission to dismantle ICE and Border Patrol is interconnected to our fight to end criminalizing policies and the interwoven prison industrial complex.”
Learn more about the practice of double punishment.
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Freedom for Immigrants is an abolitionist organization working to end immigration incarceration by organizing with and following the leadership of currently and formerly incarcerated immigrants. We’re building a future in which all people can move freely and thrive. Learn more at www.freedomforimmigrants.org/.