PHOTO: Adrian
(R) February marked the first anniversary of the hunger strike of detainees in the Detention Center in Tacoma, Washinton. Here we see their families outside of the center, showing their support for the detainees.
By the end of 2013, when other undocumented immigrants began taking actions to stop deportations, I felt I could challenge that early advice from lawyers and other activists by coming out and openly joining these actions.
Once my daughter agreed with my decision to come out, we joined the local #Not1More deportation campaign to plan a civil disobedience action. It took months, but on Feb. 24, 2014, 10 of us locked arms and blocked the street outside the Tacoma detention center, shutting down the ICE office and halting deportations for a week.
We took this action because we all believed that a comprehensive immigration reform measure was not possible. We refused to serve either political party. Most important, we knew it was time to take the leadership back from big pro-immigrant groups.
Felons versus families
We were criticized for pressuring Obama to take executive action on immigration and for calling for a stop to all deportations. We did not toe party lines or follow the deserving-vs.-undeserving-immigrants narrative. We focused on our communities’ suffering and exposing gatekeepers who shield access to the president and other Democratic Party leaders.
And we were right. After we stopped the deportation buses from leaving the Tacoma detention center in February, detainees organized three hunger strikes. In May, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., introduced a legislation that made private detention centers accountable and brought global attention to the U.S. deportation machine. All these actions, along with many other initiatives across the country, built one of the strongest pressure points that forced Obama to finally take executive action.
Taken together, Obama’s executive action was a win for those who risked their livelihoods, their health and deportation to keep at least some of our families together. The unified actions of the undocumented community — not those of pundits, nonprofit executive directors or pro-immigrant lawyers or politicians — overcame the lack of political will and brought this latest victory.
But we are not done. We will continue to push for a sensible immigration policy until we all are recognized as part of this country. Most of us don’t get paid to work for our dignity. We protest to reclaim our humanity.
We understand that our struggle is intertwined with the plight of other communities of color that face injustices in the criminal justice system. And that is why we say “not one more deportation” and why we won’t fall for the divisions created by politicians that ask us to choose between felons and families. Everyone is part of our family. Everyone — particularly victims of the international predatory economy that pushed us to migrate as well as those who are caught in the prison-industrial complex — deserves to be here. It’s our victory and one of many more to come.
Villalpando is a bilingual community organizer, consultant and political analyst with more than 10 years of experience working on immigrant rights and racial justice issues. She is the founder of Latino Advocacy Inc.
