I am an officer with ICE and this is planned for next Wednesday. It's pretty disturbing. Maybe some people in Minneapolis would want to show up to watch the idiots?


http://twincities.indymedia.org/2009/ap ... ne-illegal
Community members call for protest at ICE Headquarters on May 6 - No more raids! No one is illegal!
Submitted by Frowner on Sun, 04/26/2009 - 13:33
If Obama doesn't shut ICE down, community members will. Local immigrants' rights activists demands that Obama issue an executive order to stop all immigration raids, detention and deportations by the end of his first hundred days in office. Failing that, they call for civil disobedience backed by a large legal protest on May 6 at ICE Headquarters in Bloomington.

On April 15, thirty-some activists and community members met in the basement of Bethany Lutheran Church in Minneapolis to discuss the action. "Lots of organizations are doing really great lobbying work, like schools and churches...it's also really neccessery to push the envelope and take risks," said one of the organizers of the action. Organizers cited Obama's campaign references to "a path to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants as a factor in the action. The Obama administration has said it hopes for immigration reform by 2010. "It's always really convenient to say 'wait for a better time'," said an organizer. "I get really tired of hearing people say, 'It's not convenient, it's not strategic'." For these activists, the time to pressure ICE and the administration is now, "while the door is open."

An organizer added that the protest will be taking place on a Wednesday morning, the time when people are taken from detention, driven to the airport and deported. Although the Bloomington ICE building is not used for longer-term detention, those who are being deported are held there the night before.

At the meeting, organizers talked about the need for a large legal demonstration to support those committing civil disobedience. Legal observers, people who can be media liasons and people who want to do jail support for those arrested are also needed.

Organizers reviewed the probable sequence of events for those planning to do civil disobedience, reminding everyone to wear comfortable clothes with a warm and sturdy under-layer, not to bring anything like scissors or a pocketknife that could possibly be construed as a "weapon" by police, and to communicate with organizers about their plans. Further details available on request!

Those who can do civil disobedience are asked to get in touch with organizers of this action. A training is tentatively planned for May 1 at the Immigrant Rights event--Indymedia will publish further details as available. If you find out that you are able to do CD on the day of the event, please speak to an organizer at the demonstration.

Locally, ICE has a long history of aggressive and dangerous tactics. In April of 2006 Maria Inamagua Merchan died of a brain infection while in ICE custody after five weeks of deteriorating health and pleas for medical attention. On April 13, 2006, she passed out in her cell. Immigration staff watched her condition worsen for four hours before taking her to a doctor. Currently, Ali Yousuf Diriye is in detention. He has served a sentence for theft by swindle but continues to be held although his wife has a terminal brain tumor and is therefore unable to care for their children. Since ICE is not allowed to deport anyone to Somalia--which lacks a government to accept deportees--the agency is currently seeking another country to accept him.

The May 2008 immigration raid on the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa robbed the small town of ten percent of its population. Arrested immigrants were held in the local fairgrounds, some in shackles, while federal prosecutors raced through a three-day plea process which has been criticized by the ACLU. The raid took place while a class action lawsuit was pending against the plant over unpaid work hours. Many of the arrested workers had lived in Postville for years. In the wake of the raid, immigrants' children came home from school to find their parents gone.

The ICE headquarters, said an organizer, "is a symbol of the destruction of families and a symbol of death."

The action will take place on May 6th at 7:00am at ICE HQ, 2901 Metro Dr., Bloomington, MN 55425.

The organizers can be reached at shutdownice@gmail.com