Tag: anti-borders

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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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Interview: Indigenous Resistance at the Border

Originally published by It’s Going Down

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Welcome, to This Is America, December 22nd, 2018.

In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking to someone at the Somi Se’k Village Base Camp, which is an indigenous led resistance camp that is organizing along the Rio Grande in so-called Texas to mobilize against various resource extraction projects, threats to sacred sites, destruction of butterfly and other wildlife habitat, to provide direct aid to migrants, and also to fight border wall construction.

#StopRioGrandeLNG Banner Drop

Earlier today, we held banners on the proposed site of Rio Grande LNG to demand French bank Société Générale no longer finance this fracked gas project that would pollute the Valley! #StopRioGrandeLNGOn Friday, activists in France will mobilize outside the bank office to demand they divest from Rio Grande LNG & all fracking projects.

由 SAVE RGV from LNG 发布于 2018年12月12日周三

During our interview, we talk about the land the the battles facing the people there, and their call for solidarity and support. On their Facebook page, they write:

the Somi Se’k Village Base Camp’s mission is to populate and support a network of front Line Encampments (Wolf Pack) villages along the so called Mexican-American border. These villages will be active in providing aid to our asylum seeking relatives, protecting indigenous sacred sites, resisting construction of the LNG (fracked gas) terminal, accompanying pipelines, and stopping the Border wall. We fight to stop the senseless endangerment of people, animals, and the environment.

The first encampment that our Base Camp will support will be the Yalui village, located at the National Butterfly Center, which the border wall will soon divide and desecrate. The village will exist on both sides of the wall. From there, we will rebuild more Esto’k villages, from which we will protect, aid, and bear witness along the so called Texas-Mexico border.

The Somi Se’k Village Base Camp will support and train activists to populate these villages. We operate with the understanding that the issues arising around the border– the right to migrate, destruction of the environment and indigenous sacred sites, and the inhumane incarceration of migrant children– are intersectional and are symptoms of centuries-long control and oppression by colonizers.

We are Natives and non-Natives, Water Protectors, military veterans, students, community organizers, antifacist collectives, and working people. Working under the leadership of indigenous communities, we are people of all races, genders, ethnicities, political and spiritual backgrounds, and ages. We recognize our co-dependence and understand that we are one people.

To get in touch, donate, and learn more, go here.

After the interview, our discussion then turns to headlines, where we tackle the continued rapid disintegration of the Trump administration, the increasing far-Right rhetoric against migrant workers, Trump’s failure to get border wall funding passed, and also, the ramifications of his recent decision to pull out of Syria, leaving the Kurds and Rojavan territories to face Turkish and ISIS aggression on their own. For up to the minute news from Kurdistan, please follow ANF News as well as our comrades at Internationalist Commune.

We will return before the end of the year with announcements on new projects for 2019 as well as info on looking back on 2018. See you soon!

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Red, White, & Blue

A submission from Mapache. September 28th marked two weeks since they were deported.

windows just big enough to see the flags they used to lock me up
but we all saw this coming
it was just a matter of time
tossed in the back of a van and taunted with threats of being sent back to a home i dont remember
kidnapped
taken by cowboys who would die for those 3 colors which persecute me
the same 3 colors which destroy the countries my cellmates seek refuge from
they guard the entrance to this prison
and haunt my only view of the outside world
red, white, and blue
judge, jury, and executioner

Write a letter to Mapache at the upcoming letter writing night for Mapache & Red Fawn, being hosted by the Austin Anarchist Black Cross and the Autonomous Student Network.

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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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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Justice For Andres: Abuse, Mistreatment, and Retaliation by ICE

Submission from participants in Abolish ICE SATX. If you read this story, we ask that you please donate to help Andres and Margaret get back on their feet!

About two weeks ago, Andres Mancilla was deported without warning. Andres, a permanent resident, was detained by ICE about a year ago and subject to horrific mistreatment and neglect. His fiance, Margarita (aka Margaret), dropped everything to follow Andres as he was moved throughout the immigration prison system. This brought both of them to San Antonio, where Margaret came into contact with local activists. Together, they followed Andres to the processing facility at 3523 Crosspoint Drive, from where he was then sent by bus to be held at the Pearsall Detention Facility. It is because of Andres and Margaret that we even know of the Crosspoint facility’s existence. Andres’ story and Margaret’s energy helped lay the foundation for Camp Cicada.

Continue reading “Justice For Andres: Abuse, Mistreatment, and Retaliation by ICE”

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San Antonio ICE Agents

Republished from a document produced by Revolutionary Horizon

Click through the images to see the agents that have been identified with photos & social media profiles. Below are agents who have not yet been matched with a social media profile or photo.

If this interests you, check out this article regarding an anti-ICE & anti-fascist alert system set up by organizers in San Antonio.

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