Over 100 EIU students, faculty and Charleston community members rallied outside the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union on Friday afternoon to call for the funding of education over the funding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The rally, organized by the EIU Students for Socialism and the Latin American Student Organization, was part of a nationwide movement stemming from a general strike that started in Minnesota last week.
The general strike in Minnesota was started by the Somali Student Association of the University of Minnesota in response to the killing of Minneapolis residents Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents.
“Today, the whole country is standing with the Twin Cities to call for an end to ICE and Border Patrol’s reign of terror,” EIU SFS President Jason Farias said. “We demand the abolition of ICE, not a deal between politicians for minor reforms.”
The Associated Press reported in early January that the Department of Homeland Security sent 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.
Farias criticized politicians who he said have had a lack of response to ICE and who voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s unconscionable that any politician would vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security at this time while ICE and Border Patrol are on a murderous rampage,” Farias said. “It’s outrageous at a moment like this that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate are cutting a deal that gives up the leverage of a government shutdown.”
On Jan. 22, the House of Representatives passed a funding package for six departments. The Senate objected and passed a five-bill funding package Friday evening with the caveat that the DHS would be funded for only two weeks to work on reforms. The House of Representatives must now vote on the amended package to end the government shutdown. The vote to could come as early Tuesday.
Farias also said people’s strategy for change needs to include organizing and education, and not just voting.
Krystal Camas, president of LASO, spoke about the harm she said ICE causes to marginalized communities.
“These families deserve respect, safety, compassion and dignity,” Camas said. “They don’t deserve to feel fear. We’re here because communities are being torn apart, husbands and wives and daughters and sons are being killed or taken away by the unjust force that call themselves ICE.”
History professor and EIU SFS adviser Aura Arroyo said the current situation involving immigration goes back into history.
She spoke on repatriation, which saw a mass deportation of between 600,000 and two million Mexican and Mexican Americans during the Great Depression, regardless of citizenship.
“It was one of the most shameful events in U.S. history,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo said immigration is also a labor issue because many undocumented immigrants work jobs that are unpopular to American citizens. Additionally, immigrant detention centers have detainees who are overworked but must continue providing labor in order to call their families, she said.
“Labor issues affect all of us,” Arroyo said. “The problems we see with ICE are problems that actually affect all of us.”
Arroyo encouraged the crowd to follow organizations that are planning events and to look for actions taken by those organizations.
“Striking is a strategy that comes from organizing,” Arroyo said.
EIU SFS Treasurer Cal Jimenez spoke on why undocumented immigrants work in the United States by focusing on the hardships faced by her mother, who had to leave Mexico in 1999 to find work, leaving behind a 3-year-old daughter with her grandmother.
Jimenez said that decision was “the last thing she wanted to do.”
“The decision she made back in 1999 has haunted her to this day,” Jimenez said. “Do you think she wanted to become a mom who was just a distant voice on the phone? A mom that would never get to celebrate Christmas, Easter or birthdays? Even a simple dinner with her daughter?”
Jimenez said people need to educate themselves about the United States’ South American interventionism foreign policy.
“The United States felt gladly that it was their honor to exploit all of South America,” she said. “They’ve destroyed people’s opportunities to flourish in their countries.”
She said it is also important to know people in the community, to volunteer and to learn.
“Show up for you and your community,” Jimenez said.
Jason Coulombe can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].
