I can't do nothing

I often share actions ideas with a friends email list, around 140 people who want suggestions for defending democracy. These are ways anyone can make a difference in this time of assaults on our civil rights. Today, rather than suggesting ways to volunteer or contribute for the upcoming midterms, I just wanted to share a story about volunteering to support immigrants. 

My hope here is to focus on why we should help turn out voters to elect a congress that will block the worst impulses of the Trump administration. They won’t be stopped unless we stop them.  

I’m reading a message on a group chat: ICE vehicles have been seen driving around Seattle’s south end. This isn’t news—just a normal Friday morning. 

Together with a few other volunteers, I’m here at Home Depot for a couple of hours once a week to support the day laborers. They congregate near the parking lot entrance, hoping for a few hours of work in the sun or the rain, a few days if they’re lucky. It seems like there were more guys here recently. Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased the pace of abductions around Seattle this summer, a few workers I used to see here have been abducted; a couple of others have melted away.

A few weeks ago, Home Depot moved their Flock camera. It had been the middle of the parking lot to avert stealing from the garden center materials that are stacked along one long side. The 20-foot pole, with its unblinking, all-seeing blue light, was moved to this end of the lot where the workers gather. The camera’s new location feels intimidating.

A few days ago, ICE agents waited until after the volunteers left in the late morning to swoop into this parking lot. They abducted one man; they beat up another and sent him to the hospital in an ambulance. 

“Hola,” I say in high school Spanish. “¿Cómo estás?” The guys are gracious about my bad accent; some offer new vocabulary to help build my limited language skills. But most of my conversations are conducted in English. “Thank you for being here,” they say.

Looking around the parking lot, it might seem like there are just a handful of workers. But if I’m the first volunteer to arrive, when I pull in and open my hatchback, others will leave their cars and walk over with a friendly “¡Buenos días!” Often, I bring breakfast sandwiches or burritos, sometimes oranges and bananas. A local Starbucks provides a big jug of coffee. Someone brings bottled water. There are always at least a few of us volunteers chatting with the guys—we know most of them and they know us. One of my Spanish-speaking co-volunteers recently helped two workers get paid by people who tried to cheat them out of wages. 

When a car enters the lot and slows down or pulls to one side, the workers hurry to the driver's window in hopes they’ll be offered an hourly job. Sometimes one or two of them will open a car door and get in, while the rest are turned away. 

One of the regulars, the one with a warm, shy smile, is so thin he must weigh 85 pounds. Another, who has lived around here for 20 years, is wiry and quick; he says he can work twice as fast as anyone else—I believe him. One guy, imposingly tall, likes to show us the silverwork jewelry he makes. 

Last Monday, six ICE agents in three vehicles abducted five men, including the small, sweet guy with the shy smile. Who knows where they are, what conditions they’re kept in.

Since last winter, I’ve been here once a week to be a steady, trusted presence among the low-wage workers and migrants who are targeted by what is—let’s be honest—a paramilitary force that’s riding roughshod in cities around our country. We all volunteered through the National Day Laborer Organizing Network—NDLON—which defends the civil rights of these folks in the U.S. 

Last Sunday, local witnesses took videos showing at least six ICE agents and three vehicles surrounding a red SUV in the middle of traffic in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood, near a Fiestas Patrias parade. Witnesses said the person inside the car appeared to be an elderly man. Those celebrations of Latin American independence, culture and heritage fill neighborhood streets with music and street food—masked ICE agents arrested the man just a few blocks from the festivities. KING-5 News reported that Shawna Murphy, who was at the celebration, said many at the festival did not realize an arrest was happening nearby.

“There’s a real disconnect because we didn’t know about the ICE abduction,” Murphy said. “It was happening just at the other end of the parade route.” The capture was in a relatively secluded area along the Duwamish River, but witnesses were able to photograph the agents. On the same day at least 10 other arrests were reported in greater Seattle too.

I’m not nervous for myself about the prospect of violence—NDLON and other groups, like the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network (WAISN), provide confidence-building training on how to safely monitor and document ICE activity. Occasionally I share "Know Your Rights" information with the guys; mostly I’m just a supportive presence. No, I’m much more concerned on their behalf. 

A few times, hearing of the brutal ICE activities in other cities has made me wonder if I should step back. But it makes me so mad, that we’re now a country where this deliberate cruelty is inflicted on people, the overwhelming majority of whom are here to work hard and make a good life; who, by the way, pay taxes and contribute to the economy. When it comes down to it though, ICE tactics are meant to be intimidating, not only to the workers but to those who support them. That’s all the more reason to show up—to heed the training, be a cool observer for the day laborers, mostly legal I assume, who work by the hour to feed themselves and their families. 

Let’s be clear about what ICE, sometimes in tandem with Customs and Border Protection, is doing: they’re kidnapping people. Agents grab them at their front doors or when dropping kids at school. They follow them in their cars, pull them over and take them, leaving the detainee’s car by the side of the road. Sometimes their family only learns of their capture when the police or towing company wants the car moved.

Just take a moment and try to imagine the pain these abductions cause within families and communities.

Sometimes ICE uses conspicuous tactics like surrounding vehicles, but unlike previous, highly visible operations in other states, much of the action in Washington is more discreet, happening early in the morning or evening hours according to news sources.

Often, ICE is targeting a specific person, but sometimes they’re racially profiling people based on how they look or sound. Agency rules say they’re supposed to wear body cameras, but some photos show that they don’t. They’re wearing masks and regular clothes, jeans and plaid flannel shirts to take people from neighborhood streets and public gatherings. Or they pick them up when they arrive for a regular check-in appointment to comply with immigration rules. 

ICE has dramatically scaled up operations at U.S. airports too, pulling passengers at security checkpoints or during boarding, people who are trying to exit/enter under temporary legal extensions that allow them to return to the U.S. to live and work here. 

While official agency messaging says they remove “high-risk criminal illegal aliens,” data from researchers like the Deportation Data Project exposes a different reality: the percentage of ICE arrests of people with criminal records has hit an all-time low. Over 70% of those held in ICE detention have no criminal convictions. Most are detained for civil immigration violations or minor infractions like traffic stops. ICE officials concede this is part of their strategy to maximize the number of deportations rather than focusing on violent criminals. 

ICE has been taking about 700 people per month around here in recent months, and many are quickly shipped out from Boeing Field to Texas or other southern states with big, crummy detention facilities.

What ICE is doing, what this administration has hired them to do, paid them $50,000 signing bonuses to do, sometimes without even a background check, sometimes without even an interview, is to grab migrants not necessarily because they’ve done something wrong, but to meet a quota. Sometimes they nab legal immigrants who have every right to a life here; sometimes they grab U.S. citizens.

It makes me so angry I want to scream. Instead, I make a couple dozen ham-and-scrambled egg sandwiches on a Friday morning and heat them up before driving to Home Depot. I do it to show the guys that I care about justice, about defending the rights of a vulnerable community. It’s the least I can do to help ensure we have a country that treats immigrants with basic human respect. Mostly I do it for myself actually. In the face of such flagrant hate and disregard for civil rights, I can’t do nothing.

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Will you join me? NDLON is looking for more volunteers to be part of this warm, connected community. To support those facing injustice, challenge inequality and defend labor, civil and political rights for all, here’s how to volunteer.