IRTF News

The Border Patrol (tens of thousands of federal police agents who constitute the law enforcement force arm of US Border and Customs Protection) want to have free access to Greyhound vehicles. Greyhound says they are legally bound to let these federal police onto their buses. The ACLU and other civil rights groups disagree. They point out that Greyhound DOES have the right to refuse entry to Border Patrol agents under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

Nidiria Ruiz Medina defends collective territorial rights and identity through a gender approach. Despite the risks that this victimized population confronts—resisting a complex reality of conflict, exclusion, marginalization and historical state abandonment—Nidiria believes the Colombian Peace Agreement has helped reaffirm the rootedness of the land and spurred dreams of hope.

Colombia is a country which is greatly affected by U.S. engagement and foreign policy in Latin America. This is frighteningly visible in these statistics.

"Liberty Weeps" featured a Statue of Liberty weeping over a child huddled in a cage. Members of Immigration Working Group CLE passed out flyers asking people to oppose family separation and child detention policies and to abolish ICE.

Priests, nuns, lay Catholics and Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin gathered outside an ICE office to protest the detention of migrant children and families. Fifty sat down and blocked traffic, risking arrest outside the ICE office and the federal building.

The installation calls into question many of the injustices perpetrated by our immigration system. The Statue of Liberty weeps because children are held in cages, our neighbors and community members are systematically rounded up and jailed, the immigration system favors the wealthy, our doors are being shut to refugees, legal asylum seekers are being forced to wait in Mexico and there is no longer a helping hand for legal immigrants. In response, the Immigration Working Group CLE calls for opposition to the new “public charge” rules, and end to family separation, permanent legal status for DACA and TPS recipients and the abolishment of ICE.

The labor movement needs to take a stronger stand against agents of Trump's barbarous immigration policies.