Due to the growing number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids occurring across the country administered by the Trump Administration, protesters came out to Cal State LA on Thursday to stand against ICE.
One of the student activists who led the protest, Maeve Campbell, believes that detaining immigrants is inhumane.
“I believe there’s no humane way to deport people, especially the way the U.S. does it where they [are] literally picking up people putting them on buses and drop[ing] them off in the middle of Mexico whether or not their from Mexico. There is no humane way to deport people or lock them up in cages,” said Campbell.
In an investigative piece by Time Magazine, the horrid conditions in which immigrants are being held was graphically exposed: no access to any type of hygienic products, children sleeping on concrete floors, lack of space and there have been reports of deaths happening under U.S. Custody.
This touched Viviana Capistran, a U.S. born member of the Internationalist Group, personally as her parents are immigrants and faced a lot of struggles in the U.S. when they had come to the states originally.
“My mother arrived as an immigrant and faced many situations of racism, of violence against her and of poverty,” said Capistran. “The ICE cops don’t respect any rights that people have and so people don’t have rights in reality.”
During the protest, about 20 students showed up and chanted “We are not illegal, we are not criminals, we are international workers.” Some said they hope that the working class of all ethnicities can unionize together not only to stop the ICE raids, but also to fight against the capitalist society.
In spite of the protest, some students don’t agree with what the organization has to say.
Joey Dayot, a Cal State LA student who happened to pass by the protest, said that ICE is just simply enforcing laws.
“I think that as a matter of enforcing existing laws regarding immigration, ICE has importance today, so long as they have established restraints and regulations governing the procedure and nature of their raids,” said Dayot.
With raids continuing throughout the U.S., organizations like the Internationalist Group are advocating to abolish ICE, while others believe that they are important to the nation’s security.
