Latest / The Real News Podcast / Harsha Walia: Abolishing ICE Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling

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Harsha Walia: Abolishing ICE Is the Floor, Not the Ceiling · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of Rallying the Bars. I'm your host,
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Man Smossa. Everybody knows or heard or got a view
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: on Ice or what Ice been doing, but do we
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: really know what Ice is? Where Ice come from? Joining
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: me today is Hasha Whileiah. Hasha Waliah is the author
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: of a brilliant Boston Review article, How Not to Abolish Ice.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: So today we're gonna unpack how not to abolished Ice.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: But more importantly, we're going to educate our audience on
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: what ice is and try to clear up a lot
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of misconcept. Welcome to Riding in the Bars.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Hash, Hey, thank you so much for having me.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: All right, so, first introduce yourself to our audience and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I'm actually based in Canada, and so for me,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I have been organizing and writing against the border for
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: about twenty years. I've been active in migrant justice movements
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: up here, and I know a lot of times people
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: can be quite surprised that the violence of borders and
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: immigration enforcement extends well beyond the United States. But it does,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and it's, you know, a transnational phenomenon. Borders are being
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: militarized everywhere. Immigration enforcement is ramping up everywhere. We're seeing
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: this especially in Europe right now with what happened in
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Belfast just the last two days, the anti immigrant violence
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: and so yeah, so I've been connected to immigration migrant
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: justice organizing for about twenty years.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, can you take us back to the origin of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: ICE and explain when and how the demand for its
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: total abolishment came to the forefront. Yeah.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I think for folks who are younger or maybe on
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: social media, abolish ICE may seem newer, particularly a post
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty kind of phenomenon, and it has gone viral
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: for sure over the past few years. But ICE was
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: started in two thousand and three when a lot of
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: immigration enforcement agencies were starting all around the world, right
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: after nine to eleven. And that's really important context because
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: you know, nine to eleven was a time similar to now,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: when wars abroad and imperialism was escalating and heightening in
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: terms of the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: at that time, and so DHS, the Department of Homeland
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Security and ICE were really kind of seen as the
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: so called war at home, the front to establish the
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: war home and escalate it, and so it was always
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: connected to this narrative of immigration as a national security issue.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And so that really is the foundation of ICE, is
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: like really securitizing immigration and you know, thinking about immigrants
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: as security threats, as terror threats, which we see right now,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: but it really has been going on for twenty years.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: And some of the first demands to abolish ICE came
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: from immigrant rights organizations and particularly Muslim organizations who saw
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: ICE as connected to this war at home front and
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: the ways in which ICE was part of and continues
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: today to you know, kidnap people, place migrants, particularly Muslims,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: black and brown Muslims, into black sites, into detention centers,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: this vassive, this massive, vast network of surveillance that was
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: known as the Muslim Registration system. So some of the
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: first demands to abolish ICE happened right away as soon
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: as ICE was formed, because the kind of ways in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: which ICE was kidnapping people that we see today started
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: back then over twenty years ago.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, So whatever agencies are involved in police and immigrants
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and while on this than in this entire ecosystem, so
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: vital to the border project of abolition.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I think one of the things we
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: have to keep in mind is that ICE is just
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: one agency, is the one that sometimes we see in
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: terms of the most brutal, horrific, spectacular form of violence,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: but immigration enforcement is carried out by actually thousands of
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: different agencies. There are, there are hundreds of agencies that
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: have jurisdiction over immigrants specifically, you know, DHS has dozens
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: of departments within it, Customs and border patrol at the border,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: of course, all the other aspects of DHS, but there
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: are many other state and local level agencies that have
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: jurisdiction over immigrants, and of course policing agencies, right, and
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: so a lot of times, you know, sometimes there's a
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: kind of binary created where people see ICE as like
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: one singular agency without seeing that actually immigration enforcement, you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: National Guard gets involved, the cops get involved, other immigration
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: enforcement gets involved. So it's really important to see it,
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: as you said, as part of an ecosystem rather than
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: just you know, one bad paramilitary or organization, which of
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: course it is. It's a horrific organization, but it is
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: supported you know, surveillance, information sharing, you know, boots on
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: the ground. This is a past network that is all
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: part of policing, and so understanding ICE as a method
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: of policing is necessary for abolition because it means that
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: then we're talking about abolishing the whole system and not
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: just one agency.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I'm practiced because we hear about ICE, you know, it
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: is like it's like it's in the public consciest. We
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: talk about how it's been in existent so called liberal
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Democrats Obama, Biden, Clinton, whoever else, Democrat Congress Senate, how
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: they play into development and its existence.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's exactly that. You know, It's not
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: as if though the current administration somehow built ICE up
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: from scratch. It's getting built up for twenty plus years,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: which means that every president across party lines, both Republicans
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: and Democrats, have poured money into ICE. When ICE was
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: first founded by President Bush, it only happened because the
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Democrats supported the creation of ICE. And absolutely, you know, Clinton, Obama,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Biden have all poured money into ICE. And one of
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the foundations of Democrats policy has been to really categorize
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: the so called bad immigrant versus the good immigrant. Right
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: right Democrats have really used that division to justify more
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: and more money into immigration enforcement and border militarization by saying, hey,
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: you know, the infamous kind of refrained from Obama when
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: he said, you know, I'm just deporting felons, not families,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: and so that became their justification for border militarization. And
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: it was actually under President Obama, we're half of all
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: federal criminal arrests were immigration related, and he really poured
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: money specifically into collaboration between local law enforcement and federal
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: immigration enforcement. That was a big cornerstone of his agenda.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: And so you know, today when Democrats say, you know,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: abolish ice or abolish ice as we know it, they
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: don't actually mean abolish immigration enforcement. You know, they don't
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: actually mean we want less border militarization. They just mean
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: we don't want this particular version of ICE that is
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: so spectacularly and obviously out of control. They want is
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: a more rained in ice, one that supposedly, you know,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: they're big mantra is always like, you know, ice has
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: to Ice has to continue to uphold the laws. So
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: they just r more benevolent, you know, a more pleasant
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: looking ice. And so they're not actually a post immigration
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: enforcement they're just opposed to the excesses of ICE. Today.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Talk about your critigue of good cop, bad cop, you know,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: like they say, like, well, Ice is a bad cop.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You have the good cop. They choke out United States
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: citizens put their knee on their neck. But that's not
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: a that's just a cop random nk. That's not the
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: police mentality. Talk about that as it related to like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: this misnoma that's associated with that and how it plays
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: into the continuation of abuse of monod.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah. I think you know, there's been a
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: huge kind of surge in people, uh you know, for
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: good reason, wanting to abolish ice and being opposed to ice.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: But it's, as you know, sometimes it's this binary gets
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: created where people say, yeah, but bad ice, good cop,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: you know, and it is for example, are reporting a
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: massive increase in nine to one one calls where people
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: are calling the cops to protect them from ice or
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: to protect their neighbors from ice. And you know, we
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: see these viral videos where people are calling the cops saying,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: you know, ice is here, can you help me? And
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: this is you know, exactly as you said. It completely
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: erases the reality of policing also as a violent gestapo
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: right and immigration enforcement is a form of policing. It
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: is not different, uh there they all have monopoly on violence,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: whether it's immigrants or citizens. You know, the cops beat
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: up on immigrants the same way cops beat up on
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: so called citizens. Ice picks up citizens as well, right,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: based off profiling, and so there is no difference. They're
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: all just about they have the same ideology, which is
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: to control people under white supremacy and racial capitalism. And
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: you know when Ronald Reagan, who we know, you know,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: really burst the War on drugs and the so called
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: war on crime and really increased policing and the prison
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: industrial complex, you know, in the eighties and nineties, he
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: at the same time actually called I n S, which
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: at that time was responsible for immigration enforcement. He called
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: it just another form of the criminal legal system. Right.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: He saw it as all one and the same. And
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: it's really important to look back at that era. You know,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: when we had the so called War on drugs, the
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: so called War on poverty, and the so called war
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: on immigrants, they all kind of coalesced at the same
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: time in the eighties and nineties, when we saw this
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: rapid increase in the prison industrial complex, the rapid increase
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: in border militarization, and a rapid increase in cops on
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: the block and so I think looking at how the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: state looked at all of these as the same kind
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: of mechanisms, right, They're all tentacles of the same system
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: to control people, to manage capitalism, to ensure that more
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: and more people were dispossessed and became cheapened labor for capitalism,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: and justified making massive cuts to public services by racializing
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: crime and making immigration a so called criminal issue. That
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: was all part of the same narrative of criminalization. So
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: making people illegal is the same logic, right, so once
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you so, once you make criminals, you also be illegal.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: And that's all part of policing people, regardless of you know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: regardless of which uniform is doing it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And I think for the benefit of that oly we
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: need to understand that they're thinking right there, because the
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: power to define. Once you define, or once you label,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: then it labeled. It's almost like going back to what
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: you're saying in Germany about propaganda. Come up with narrative
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: and you repeat over and over again. They become beliebal.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: So now you come up with this nerds, you saying,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: like Trump campaign on securing the borders, right, that was
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: his campaign, his campaign, I'm a secure the borders and
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Denny gators a horrific view of how people coming across
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the borders rave and rob and murdering, child snatch anything
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: that could come to the top of his head. He
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: threw it out there as to why we need to
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: secure the borders. But the problem that's seem to be,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: and this is the movement the left and people that's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: in this space that's trying to take up this call
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to stop rounding up people so called immigrants undocumented. The
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: argument that people are making, and it's creating the wadge
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: in the movement, is that they're not criminals. So when
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: you say I'm making an argument that they're not criminally,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I'm just supposing that to like, yeah, other people are criminals,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: they not like them, as opposed to saying something like
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: this policy and this attitude is fastest racist and people
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: should be given the right to do process according to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: with the lords. What's your views on that?
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, this is a failed logic
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and has been a failed logic for decades, you know,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: to try to appeal to innocence or respectability or the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: idea of being a good immigrant who is not a
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: so called criminal, you know, which then actually just criminalizes
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: people further. And also that that yardstick is always shifting, right,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: we know it's arbitrary, like maybe you're not a criminal
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: today and tomorrow you are a criminal because you're on
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the street and the fascists pick you up. And so yeah,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: and I think that's why it is so important to
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: not fall into that kind of logic of who's good
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: who's bad. And of course abolition teaches us that. And
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: also I think the other piece that's really important is
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: talking about colonialism and imperialism. That to me is much
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: more powerful as a way to counter who deserves to
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: stay and who doesn't, you know, because when people say, well,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: immigration is a privilege, you know, people don't get to
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: stay here, then we have to remind them, well, actually
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: it is imperialism and colonialism that is forcing people out
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: of their lands and homes, right, that is why people
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: are forced to migrate. So people can't pretend that migrants
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: just happen to arrive at the border to kick them.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You know, we get to kick them out whenever we want.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: We have to be assertive that actually migration is a
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: form of reparations and decolonization that many people articulate you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: that is how a lot of migrants see themselves. They're
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: not looking for pity, they're not looking for charity, They're
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: actually you know, one of the most powerful slogans is
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: we are here because you are there finds us of
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: imperialism and colonialism. And so I think that is a
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: much more powerful way to counteract fascism and racism, rather
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: than constantly trying to appeal to respectability or innocence. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: in fact, many migrant justice movements, especially outside of the US, frankly,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: have a much sharper anti colonial analysis that articulate that,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: you know, especially of the relationship to Europe, where it
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: is very clear the relationship to the continent and to Asia.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: You know, across Africa and Asia, there's a very direct
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: correlation to migration into Europe. But of course that is
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: true for the US as well, and so I think
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: that is the approach that I think we need to
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: have when fighting back against anti migrant racism. Is not
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: saying oh, you know, we're good, or we contribute to
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: the economy, or we're not criminals, which divides us from
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: social movements. We actually need to have a stronger anti capitalist,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: anti imperialist analysis and articulation.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because at the end of the day, that's exactly right.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: World Bank, you strangle our country, You take our resource
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and our minimum natural minimals ability to be productive in
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: terms of being competitive in the world model. You train
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: police to brutalize us. And then when we see the
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: opportunity to get somewhere, to get a better life or
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: to have a better life, you tell us, you say, oh, no,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you're not entitled. Why because we don't want you to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: be entitled. But on the same token, you will say
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: South African immigrants, you know, you can say with impunity that, oh,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: they're being persecuted in their country by black people, therefore
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: they have a right to relocate. It's almost as if
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: as if they got the same right as citizens in
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Israel when they say that if you, if you of
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Jewish descent, you got a right to citizenship in Israel.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: But talk about your your definition of borders. How do
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: you define border in your work and how does it
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: functions not just as a physical waw but as a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: tool to serve global capital and reinforce racial hear, particularly
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: across Latin America and the Caribbean. How do you look
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: at it in relation to those entities.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I would say not even specific to
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Latin America and the Caribbean, but overall in the world.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I would define borders really as a system of global apartheid.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: You know, when you gave that great example of what's
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: happening with South Africa today and white Africaners being you know,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: welcomed by Trump and other countries. You know, if we
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: think back to the purpose of apartheid, the purpose of
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: wide in South Africa was racial segregation, not just stance,
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: to keep people segregated in order to serve the European
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: settler elite and to maintain racial capitalism, right by keeping
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: black South Africans as a reservoir army of labor that
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: served the purposes of capitalism in South Africa to benefit
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: white South African apartheid and the settler elite, and making
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: particularly Bantustan's completely unlivable, right, that's organized abandonment. And so
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: when I think of borders, I think of them very
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: similarly today. If we zoom out and look at the world,
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: then really the purpose of borders is to maintain the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: peripheral economies. As peripheral economies, right, like what allows the
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: imperial core to still exist as the imperial core is
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: that borders make it so that people can't move, right,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: the vast majority of the global South has to remain
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: in the so called global South, you know, and keep producing,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: keep working in sweatshops, keep mining, you know, keep having
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: to live under conditions of extraction. And we know that
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: borders don't work equally, right, We know that the borders
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: of countries can constantly be violated. When the imperial countries
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: decide to bum other countries, then borders are not respected.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: You know, when mining corporations decide to go in to
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: you know, South and Central America to the Caribbean, to Africa,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: to Asia, you know, then borders aren't respected. Then they're allowed.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Then then borders don't exist, right, And so borders exist
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: to maintain racial capitalism. They're monetized for the rich and
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: militarized for the poor. And the related to that is that,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: you know, then we start to see that the border
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: isn't just the line on the map, you know, like
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: if you look at a globe and you know the
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: border is the line between countries, that's not how I
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: define the border. I think of the border as this
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: regime it's a method of governance that functions for empire, right,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: And we see that because once migrants cross the border,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: you know, going back to Ice, you can be picked
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: up even once you're in your school, once you're in
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: a neighborhood, right, the border is still acting on you.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: The border, you know, you're still dealing with border enforcement.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And the other example of how the border is really elastic,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: like it can exist anywhere is border outsourcing, you know,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: so we see, for example, you know, now Mexico actually
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: deports more Central Americans than the US does, and that's
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: because the US is paying Mexico to build detention centers
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: and enforce against migrants. And this is happening around the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: world in Latin America, in the you know, almost every
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: single Latin American and Caribbean country is being paid or
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: forced by the United States to stop migrants. Most kind
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: of obvious example of this was in El Salvador with
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the Bukeli government or ranking government who struck a deal
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: with Trump to accept migrants from Venezuela and then they
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: were incarcerated in the notorious gulag right as sea Coat.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: But that's not one exception, and it's not just Trump
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: it's been going on for day decades. Same in Europe.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: You know, all of all of the Sahel and Horn
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: regions of Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, these are all places that
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: are getting money by the European Union to build border
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: camps and concentration camps to hold migrants. And so you know,
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: even US authority, you know US officials with Department of
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Homeland Security, they have said for years that our southern
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: border is not with Mexico, it's actually the Mexican border.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: That's our southern border, right. Southern Mexico border is our
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: southern border, right. And so the border is always shifting.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: The border is being militarized both within the nation state
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: but also well outside of it. And so I think
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: for me, that's how I think of the border is
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: it's a line that is always expanding in all directions
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: in order to maintain capitalism and empire. And so that's
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: the way to think I think about the borders. It
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: is again another method of policing, It is another method
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: of a person and it's not really just about immigrants.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: You know, Angela Davis and Gina Dent years ago wrote
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: that the prison is a border, right, and so we
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: again we can think of all the ways in which
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: borders are not just about immigrants, but it's about keeping
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: so many different populations subjugated, you know, gated communities, gentrification.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: That's a form of bordering as well, and I think
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: that helps us see the connections between movements. Right, So
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: it's not just about citizens and migrants, it's actually about
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: so many people who are being impacted by displacement and
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: dispossession and policing, whether it's in or cross borders.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: If we can get in that space. Now, he that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: it's no such thing as a boarder, but this is
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: a design by improvalists and capitalism to maintain control, to
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: explore people's resources. I think Hughey Newton came up with
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the concept of intercommunalism and inter communalism he showed, he said,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: like the ability to communicate because of the technology with
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the same token. When we look at the imperalism and
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: fascism as we know it exists to day, everything is
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: for grass when it comes to exploitation, murder, and dehumanization.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: So I don't have a board in El Salvador. I
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: have a for sale sign on my country. I'm selling
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: space to whoever want to buy to house whoever they
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: want to house. It's about imperalism, fascism, and capitalism. Talk
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: about as we close out looking towards resistance, what are
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: some of the inspiring examples of grass organizations successfully combat
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and these oppressive systems of human capturing, imprisonment. What do
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you see in terms of resistance and how people organize,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: how people mobilize from your from you.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that question. I'm also I'm going to
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: just mention one quick thing just listening to what you
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: were saying earlier, particularly on imperialism and capitalism, is also
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: when we think about how this border, you know, it's
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: it's really not about the border, as you said, it's
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: about these systems of oppression and capture.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: One of the big things the border does too is
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: make undocumented workers, as a form of cheapened labor, you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: like without immigration papers, forced to work for less than
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: minimum wage. Whenever they try to unionize, they threaten to
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: call ice, you know. And so that system of capture
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: also maintains racial capitalism as a form of domesticated imperialism
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: to keep cheap in labor here like construction work, service work,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: farm work, et cetera. And so thinking about that too again,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: you know, with the analogy to apartheid. But so and
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: then resistances. I think there are so many because again,
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: if we think about the border, not just as you know, immigration,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: but we think about resistance to any form of capture
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: and imprisonment, then I think there are so many things.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: You know, of course, the ones that are most obvious
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: to us are you know, the resistances to ice in
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: cities and heights that have had surges of ice, so
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: whether that's Minneapolis or la or Chicago, and the ways
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: in which people have defended their neighbors. And I think
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: there's something incredibly important about this new articulation that's coming,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: which is about neighbors, which I think again kind of
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: collapses the idea of migrants and citizens, but is thinking
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: about kind of localism and I think echoing actually on
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: some of Hughey's work on intercommunalism about how do we
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: think about kinship and each other? And so I think
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: that's been quite powerful. I'm also thinking actually right now
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: about resistances to FIFA, because FIFA is a form of bordering,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: and you know how FIFA has displaced people in so
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: many cities in the United States. In Mexico, you know,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: teachers who are resisting on the opening of the World
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Cup like that is also resisting bordering. So it's you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: there's the more obvious like ice out of FIFA, which
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: is about immigrant rights. But I think the ways in
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: which people are and all fights to stop displacement, against gentrification.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Every city has a fight to stop prison expansion, jail expansion.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: These are inspiring. Because I talked about Belfast earlier and
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: the anti immigrant you know, violence that has been happening there,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: it has also been inspiring to see right away immediately
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: protests and rallies and support of immigrants happening in Belfast
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: and across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Also
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: people setting up community watch to defend their neighbors and
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: you know, basically pledging to fight back if more violence
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: comes to neighborhoods and setting up roles, and you know,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the idea of community defense and support of migrants is
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: happening literally in countries around the world. And you know, oftentimes,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: of course these kinds of community defenses are not a
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: match to the heavily militarized state violence of immigration enforcement.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But I do think every time we get together and
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: we fight back and we assert our presence, it is
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: incredibly powerful. And so I am one hundred percent always
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: a believer that we always have to organize, we always
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: have to come together, and even in a moment if
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: we don't think we've won, we have changed the terrain
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: of struggle, right, be braver for the next time we learn.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: There's no such thing is failure. There's only you know,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: things that we learn for next time. And also I
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: think the most powerful resistance to the border is people
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: who still continue to be ungovernable and cross that function, right,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: like people who are getting in those boats, people steering
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: their own boats, you know, people who are who are
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: taking their children and saying, even though there is a
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: multi billion dollar industry that is trying to keep me
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: from moving, I am still going to move and I'm
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: still going to be free in whatever way that looks like.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: And so I think the ungovernable power of migrants who
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: are defying this fascist agenda every day and still living,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: still moving, still resisting, still being so called illegals and undocumented,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: and you know, making community, getting to know their neighbors.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Those are all forms of resistance. But I do think
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: you know, every tentacle of resistance that is anti fascist,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: that is fighting back against the fascist agenda, is a
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: part of dismantling the border.