Tag: abolish ICE

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Lakeway Police Chief Is ICE Guest Lecturer

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on contracted services, which include everything from IT and technical support to chartered flights and ground transportation. Dozens of companies grow rich from giving ICE the tools they need to surveil, incarcerate, and deport an ever-increasing number of migrants.

ICE also pays individuals for services, and among them is Todd A. Radford. A career cop, Radford is currently the police chief of Lakeway, Texas, an 82% white suburb of Austin with a 3.3% poverty rate. Radford has a combination of criminal justice and business degrees, and makes money on top of his police chief salary from giving lectures. The average salary of a police chief for a town the size of Lakeway is about $90,000/year.

ICE has paid Radford an average of more than $11,000 a year for these lectures. One lecture is billed as “a unique training geared to law enforcement management”, and the other is simply described as “law enforcement training”. One can imagine the pearls of wisdom Radford has gained after 30 years of doing capitalism and nationalism’s dirty work. As the police are given more and more money, discretion, and military equipment, ICE is eager to cozy up behind the thin blue line with them.

People who live near the US/Mexico border and people suffering from poverty alike know how militarized cops of all stripes have become. Collaborations like the one between ICE and this police chief can only further harm migrants, racialized people, and poor people as cops of different stripes become more and more comfortable with sharing knowledge and information. This collaboration between Radford and ICE is above and beyond what the infamous SB4 requires of law enforcement. Radford denounced the law in 2015 while he was running for Travis County Sheriff. Unsurprisingly, he does not actually give a shit about the people he criminalizes.

Close the lines of communication between the pigs and open the borders!

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What Starts Here: Islamophobia, Fascist Crybabies, & Mapache Deported

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

This is the first edition of what we hope will be a regular column. Here’s a roundup of the shit that went down recently that we think is relevant (plus some radical reflections on those events). This week features news about Central Texas political prisoner & anti-borders activist Mapache, a climate of Islamophobia and recent attacks in Austin, & a pathetic “Free Alex Jones Rally,” that occurred over the weekend.

Continue reading “What Starts Here: Islamophobia, Fascist Crybabies, & Mapache Deported”

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Caught Between Borders: An Interview With Mapache

Interview originally posted on It’s Going Down. Check out this original poem written by Mapache during his incarceration
 

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Mapache has lived through a nightmare many people can’t even imagine. In late July, Mapache spoke with It’s Going Down on This Is America, reporting on an ongoing encampment protesting ICE deportations, forced child separations, an mass roundups. About a week after our interview, Mapache was picked up by ICE officials, as they knew his DACA was up. Upon being arrested, he was visited by the FBI, who gave him a choice of either informing on his comrades who were simply involved in protesting ICE, or staying locked inside a detention facility – he chose the later.

As The Intercept wrote:

After Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a longtime U.S. resident protesting against ICE in San Antonio, Texas, the FBI stepped in for an interrogation, telling the resident, 18-year-old Sergio Salazar, that his immigration status had been revoked because he was a “bad person.” The FBI agents asked him to inform on fellow protesters and said if he did so it could help his immigration case.

“It seems evident that he was targeted here because of his involvement in the anti-ICE protests,” said Jonathan Ryan, Salazar’s lawyer from RAICES Texas, an immigrant advocacy group. “We’re very concerned about how directed and targeted and aggressive and quick this was.”

Despite having no record, authorities used Mapache’s involvement in the protest as a pretext for his repression. After refusing to talk to the FBI, Mapache was then moved to another detention center run by a private corporation several hours away. Here, with hundreds of others, he remained for about a month. During our conversation, we talk about the conditions within the facility, the people within it and their stories, and the impact of the Abolish ICE movement.

Finally, after about 40 days, Mapache decided to opt to be deported to Mexico. While this means that he left the prison behind him, it also meant that for 10 years he is banned from returning to the United States, where he has lived almost his entire life.

In this emotional and heartfelt discussion, we talk about the arbitrary and violent nature of the deportation machine, the irony of a system that represses migrants yet depends on their labor, the struggles and humanity of those locked inside detention centers, and the brutality and psychosis of those that don badges to uphold the racial order.

More Info: Get at Mapache on Twitter and donate here.

 

Got a story you need to tell? Publish it with us! Send us your opinion pieces, art, zines, reviews, news, statements, report-backs, or anything else you wanna see put out in the world. We take all kinds of content, with an eye towards marginalized perspectives and news about movements & revolutionary organizations. Submit content to austinautonomedia [@] autistici [dot] org.

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Hell’s Walls–A Poem From Mapache

 Submission from Mapache, a community activist incarcerated by ICE.

It has been over one month since ICE kidnapped community activist Sergio Salazar aka Mapache. On September 14th, he was deported–a decision chosen by Mapache in order to get out of the cage faster, and a result of the corner he had been backed into by the feds. Through his friends in the (now de-camped) Abolish ICE SATX camp, we have received and are republishing this poem he wrote while being held in the Webb Detention Center. We look forward to publishing more works from Mapache soon. We also encourage you to attend the upcoming letter writing night for Mapache & Red Fawn, being hosted by the Austin Anarchist Black Cross and the Autonomous Student Network.

Continue reading “Hell’s Walls–A Poem From Mapache”