By UNA TOLCA
For several workers and the immigrant community in the small city of Princeton, N.J., the early morning of Wednesday, July 10, did not begin like any other workday. Before sunrise, agents from the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were roaming the streets. According to the agency, they were specifically looking for two Guatemalan workers they wanted to detain. They were in unmarked vehicles, armed, and wearing bulletproof vests.
The migra reports that they managed to detain one of the workers but were unable to catch the other, who managed to elude the agents with the help of community members who interfered with the operation. The agents continued to roam the streets, randomly questioning people of Latin American appearance who were riding bicycles or walking to work without showing any identification, and intimidating day laborers waiting for work on street corners.
Several activists later characterized these interrogations as “profiling” (the detention of people based on their race or appearance). They included Veronica Olivares, who charged that although ICE claimed to be looking for specific people, they were actually “profiling and stopping people who look like us, who look like Latinos.” At the moment, it is not known for certain how many migrants were detained, but according to Alejandra Gonçalvez Peña, Legal Director of Immigrant Rights at the American Friends Service Committee, it could be as many as 10.
The response from the immigrant and working-class community was immediate. By mid-morning, Resistance in Action NJ leaders mobilized to organize patrols of workers and activists on the streets of the city to spot the ERO/ICE vehicles and agents still in the area, in order to warn the community precisely what was happening and how to protect themselves. Workers’ Voice participated in this surveillance. Resistencia also organized workshops to educate the community about how to proceed in the face of an immigration or police interrogation, and has since held in-person immigrant worker meetings to organize the community response to the raids.
Under the banner of “ICE Out of Princeton,” on July 16, Resistance in Action held a press conference in downtown Princeton, led by Ana Paola Pazmiño, the organization’s director, and Angela Ramos, an organizer, both fighters for immigrant rights in Princeton, the state, and the nation. At the conference, these activists and members of other immigrant organizations, such as Desde Abajo Labor Enforcement (DALE), Make the Road NJ, and Faith in New Jersey denounced the threatening presence of immigration agents and pledged to continue mobilizing to protect the community.
Pazmiño, Ramos, and other community speakers emphasized the need to organize and mobilize to reject government aggressions as the community suffered on July 10 and to win rights for immigrants in this country. It should be noted that Resistance in Action declares itself politically independent, as it does not support the Democratic or Republican parties. Even so, the mayor of the city, Mark Freda, and two members of the city council, Leticia Fraga and Leighton Newlin, spoke at the conference, since as municipal authorities they must account for their actions or lack thereof in the face of repressive intervention by agencies of the federal government.
Freda stated that Princeton welcomes all communities, and that as a municipal government they have not assisted the migra since 2013, calling on the community to “trust our police department” among the other local government agencies. Freda and Fraga stated that they did not know that ERO/ICE was coming to the city and that their government did not collaborate with the federal agency in any way one they had learned that its agents were here.
“If they are coming they have to let us know, and the police should be present [in the operation], not to assist Immigration but to have a detailed report of what goes on and that it is legal … that they don’t do what they shouldn’t,” Freda declared, as if the underlying problem was the regulatory correctness and legality in the anti-immigrant procedures of the federal authorities and not the fact that there is repression and persecution of the migrant communities and the denial of their rights by both imperialist parties in this country.
Not content with this, Freda and Fraga added, with almost “innocent” candor, the importance their government places on appearances: “We don’t want to give the appearance that the [Princeton] police are collaborating with immigration.”
For his part, Councilman Newlin warned those present that as a Black man he too knew what persecution is like. But he urged the community to “not antagonize us [your government] …. we are not part of the federal government, and we ask for patience and not to turn against us because that will lead to pushback,” thus repeating the mantra constantly evoked by the Democratic Party to prevent a political force of its own from emerging among working people.
At no time did the local authorities detail how they will act in real life: If they learn that ERO/ICE will come in the future, will they alert the immigrant community and their organizations? They likewise failed to state how they will mobilize the population and the students of Princeton University to prevent the entry of the migra into the city, what measures they will take to ensure that any detainees are released, how many resources they will allocate to defend immigrants in reality—beyond the discourse–and how they intend to fight for full rights for all immigrants.
And although she declared herself “appalled,” neither did Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democratic representative of the congressional district, commit to do more than demand that ERO/ICE follow the rules in prosecuting immigrants. The statements by government representatives are more of a whitewash than a real response to a community crisis brewed by the bipartisan regime itself.
And that is how immigrant activists seem to have seen it. Veronica Olivares declared after the governors’ speeches that “I understand that we have to trust our local governors, but in the end we are always on our own.” She added, “It’s not about coming to show your face and say we are a welcoming city. … It’s about doing something, going forward, and being there when you are needed.”
Ana Paola Pazmiño and other activists also demanded a public investigation into the circumstances that facilitated the ERO/ICE operation, and an answer to questions about the actions of the government and local police in the presence of the immigration authority. The questions are several and aim in part to determine if the local police collaborated with the operation, and if so, under whose orders, since during the operation it was observed that a police vehicle accompanied the ERO/ICE, and that they took refuge in the parking lot of the police station when detected and questioned by activists.
The community speakers also demanded to know why the migra intervened in a local matter (ERO/ICE’s statements alluded to infractions by wanted migrants that constitute crimes normally dealt with by local governments and police) and how the federal agency had learned of these infractions. While we at Workers’ Voice do not share Resistance in Action’s expectation that “ICE be transparent and accountable,” and instead militate for the abolition of this institution and police through mass mobilization, we do support their demand that local police not collaborate with ERO/ICE.
In these days of community mobilization and at the press conference, the healthy distrust of the authorities has been palpable, and it is equally clear that at least Resistance in Action is betting more on the mobilization of immigrants themselves, alliance with other sectors of the working class, and solidarity with struggles of the oppressed like Palestine than on dependence on the bosses’ politicians. These politicians—whether Biden or the so-called progressives in Congress—like the local authorities in Princeton, ask workers to trust them and reduce their political action to casting a vote and waiting patiently for the institutions of the capitalist state to resolve the pressing crisis that afflicts every worker.
Workers’ Voice will continue to support and participate in independent, militant, and united action with other sectors of the working class in organizations like Resistance in Action NJ.