On Independence Day this month, many people celebrated with fireworks and barbeques while forgetting the United States’ history of settler colonialism, slavery, genocide, imperialist wars and internment camps. Meanwhile, migrant children are still be in detention centers and are deprived of basic human essentials such as soap, toothbrushes and blankets.
Public outrage is growing over the civil rights violations and dehumanization of children. The Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps formed to call for mass mobilizations of concerned people, activists, organizations, and social justice groups to demand the closure of the camps.
The Coalition is partnering with Lights for Liberty Vigil to End Human Detention to host actions on July 12 in multiple cities. Protests against the dehumanization of migrants and against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for arresting undocumented people, have already happened in Minneapolis, Tucson, Boston, and Burlington. The Coalition wrote a google document on how to protest and how to get involved in one’s own community.
As people are realizing what happens in the concentration camps, President Trump is increasing his attack on undocumented people. In Columbus, Edith Espinal, who has been in sanctuary since October 2017, received a fine for almost $500,000. The solidarity group is asking people to donate and to get involved in helping Edith stay with her family.
Illegalizing someone’s humanity is a way to control labor, wages, and the workforce. Through a politics of policing immigration, corporations and politicians have the goal of creating cheap labor. Authors Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis use anti-capitalist, class analysis in their book, No One is Illegal, to explain how immigration policies are a way to keep workers divided through racism, sexism, ableism, nationalism, and xenophobia.
The book analyzes how immigrants have historically been treated in the United States. Capitalists need cheap labor to keep production costs low so they create a dichotomy of illegal humans and legal humans. Legality is policed heavily from certain countries to perpetuate a racist narrative and to create barriers to citizenship.
Deportation, detention, and limiting illegal labor are capitalist tools to take workers out of the workforce, control wages, pressure workers to accept lower wages and perpetuate racism. The authors argue for open borders as a way to combat capitalist exploitation of workers because it disrupts how people in power control labor.
Migration should be a human right and having border security and walls will not end immigration. Capitalists do not want to end migration because they want to have complete control over it. Nationalist borders allow them to control the flow of human migration. If capitalists truly wanted to end migration, then they would not invest in the United States’ military and prison industrial complexes which cause environmental destruction and destabilizes communities.
Politico magazinewrote about why people are fleeing Honduras and the conditions that cause someone to leave everything they have ever known to join a migrant caravan. Philip L. Shepherd, associate professor at Florida International University, published for writing, wrote “The Tragic Course and Consequences of U.S. Policy in Honduras” in the World Policy Journal. He points out how the United States military interventionism has underdeveloped Honduras and created an unstable political economy.
Neoliberalism allows capitalists to use politicians and government policies to enact austerity and to manipulate markets for profit. Capital is tied to government spending and corporations benefit from the military and prison industrial complexes. Research by the Twitter user, @babadookspinoza, produced a list of ice detention centers in the U.S. and a list of companies that profit from their ICE contracts.
The creator of these two threads used information from Detention Watch Network’s spreadsheet, from ICE’s Detention Facility Locator, and USAspending.gov website. In Ohio, the five detention centers are in Bedford Heights, Hamilton, Mt. Gilead, Tiffin, and Chardon. Human detention and dehumanization is a commodity for these capitalist companies.
Continued resistance, mass solidarity, and national action is necessary to end these violations of democracy within the country which projects the façade of spreading democracy globally. Fighting to end detention centers, abolish ICE, and fighting to open up borders is the way to ensure that wealth does not stay consolidated within the millionaires and billionaires class.
The California Youth Justice Alliance has written an immigrant liberation manifesto called, First We Abolish ICE. The manifesto explains the history of ICE and how community lead deportation defense is the way towards supporting migrants and abolishing ICE. Organizations like Columbus Sanctuary Collective and Central Ohio Worker Center have been building resistance by providing communities and support for immigrants. The manifesto argues for a world where human lives are valued more than corporate greed by opening borders and challenging global capitalism.
On Friday July 12th in Columbus, there will be a vigil at the Ohio Statehouse from 7 p.m. till 10 p.m. About 18 civil rights activist groups have hosted the event and continuing to join these organizations to build resistance is imperative for the future of democracy in Ohio and globally. Change happens when the masses unite and demand the powerful elite redistribute their wealth and stop profiteering from the trauma and murder of marginalized people.
