OSABC: Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters Found Not Guilty-Reaffirms Call to End Border Militarization

NEWS RELEASE
DATE: Thursday June 29, 2011
Contact: Alex Soto
Phone: 602-881-6027
Email: stopbordermilitarization@gmail.com



Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters Found Not Guilty
Reaffirms Call to End Border Militarization

Chuckson (Tucson), AZ - The six protesters who locked-down and occupied the United States Border Patrol (BP) – Tucson Headquarters on May 21, 2010 were found not guilty on the remaining count of a disorderly conduct "with serious disruptive behavior” charge.

The legal defense, William G. Walker and Jeffrey J. Rogers, argued that the remaining charge of disorderly conduct did not apply because it did not meet any of the statutes of the charge. After three hours of deliberation, the judge found the six not guilty.

The city prosecutor had attempted to re-introduce the previously misfiled criminal trespassing as a misdemeanor charge, but this charge was dismissed after the first trial date for the occupiers in February. After an objection by the defense, the state’s motion was denied.

Read more...

Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change it (Crimethinc)

This article is from the Crimethinc. reading library. I imagine it'll be printed in Rolling Thunder. It is definitely worth a read, really well written, and covers so much ground regarding the issues. If this piece of writing had existed 5 years ago, i probably wouldn't have felt so compelled to start my own writing on such subjects.

There are a few things I would've said differently, but one thing i especially wish it would've addressed more was the way the border impacts indigenous communities on the border. I think this is such an important piece of the puzzle, especially when so many anarchists and other anti-authoritarians support others' fight for Comprehensive Immigration Reform which would only contribute to more border militarization.

Designed to Kill: Border Policy and How to Change it

For a number of years now I’ve worked in the desert on the Mexican-American border with a group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants who are attempting to enter the United States—a journey that claims hundreds of lives every year. We’ve spent years mapping the trails that cross this desert. We walk the trails, find places to leave food and water along them, look for people in distress, and provide medical care when we run into someone who needs it. If the situation is bad enough, we can get an ambulance or helicopter to bring people to the hospital. We strive to act in accordance with the migrants’ wishes at all times, and we never call the Border Patrol on people who don’t want to turn themselves in.
During this time I’ve been a part of many extraordinary situations and I’ve heard about many more. Some of the things I’ve seen have been truly heartwarming, and some of them have been deeply sad and wrong. I’ve seen people who were too weak to stand, too sick to hold down water, hurt too badly to continue, too scared to sleep, too sad for words, hopelessly lost, desperately hungry, literally dying of thirst, never going to be able to see their children again, vomiting blood, penniless in torn shoes two thousand miles from home, suffering from heat stroke, kidney damage, terrible blisters, wounds, hypothermia, post-traumatic stress, and just about every other tribulation you could possibly think of. I’ve been to places where people were robbed and raped and murdered; my friends have found bodies. In addition to bearing witness to others’ suffering, I myself have fallen off of cliffs, torn my face open on barbed wire, run out of water, had guns pointed at me, been charged by bulls and circled by vultures, jumped over rattlesnakes, pulled pieces of cactus out of many different parts of my body with pliers, had to tear off my pants because they were full of fire ants, gotten gray hairs, and in general poured no small amount of my own sweat, blood, and tears into the thirsty desert. Read more...

Video: Border Patrol 6 (BP6) Solidarity

See also:
Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters to Fight Charges Group Calls for Further Action Against Border Militarization

MOST RECENT STATEMENT FROM THE BP6!

Focus on Bigger Picture in Shadow of Victory

Yes, it's encouraging in some ways that Arizona Senate rejects 5 illegal-immigration bills, yet of course this is no reversal of SB 1070 or anything before it.  As my partner noted to me, it's likely that it was more the pressure from the businesses than the people that made an impact this round, though I'd like to think that protesters are at least an annoyance if not worse to the politicians deciding the fate of so many.

I would like to point out, as I have in previous posts though perhaps buried within my writing, that the overarching goal of anti-immigrant legislation is not to remove all immigrants.  It is to criminalize them so as to make them more exploitable and controllable.  As many of you understand, migrants provide cheap labor.  They would to some extent, even if they were not "illegal", as they have been in the past.  But criminalizing them more and more keeps them in the precarious position that makes them easily exploited.  Of course what makes them "illegal" is their presence in this country, which implies that the law makers want them out--and some probably do.  But where blatant racists and business owners' interests come together is the interest in criminalizing a permanent underclass.

Let us not forget, however, that the prison industrial complex, the private prison industry in particular, directly profits from the criminalization of migrants.  This is a more direct and observable player in this game, especially where it connects with those in government like Russell Pearce and Jan Brewer as I discussed in What came first: the Racism or the Profit Motive? On Private Prisons' push for SB1070.  Then on a larger scale, with more funds and power, are the defense contractors who have been pushing for securing the border with walls and a variety of technological equipment.

 As I wrote in Ending criminalization of people of color must be priority,

Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, like those whose faces I could barely see, are held in detention centers and jails.  SB 1070 has not yet gone into effect.  This has been going on for so long and will only continue to do so as long as activists only insist upon ending racial profiling and stopping SB 1070 or even all racist bills/laws if it stops before calling for an end to the border and criminalization of people of color.  There are so many undocumented immigrants who are living in our cities whose voices are overpowered by those who want to maintain the status quo.  There are so many indigenous people near the border or even throughout this state whose voices are not heard, who are also impacted by the border and will also be impacted by SB1070 and so much more.

We must not buy the rhetoric that if it weren't for this right-wing attack on immigrants, things would be just fine.  Even before so many people were worried they'd be deported at any moment, they still had to work shitty jobs for low wages.  Even before so many border patrol agents or national guard invaded O'odham land, there were still many problems faced by people in the border regions, or just with brown skin in general.  Let's address the reasons so many are forced here in the first place and why so many people of color are in prisons, who profits, how settlers can decide who does or doesn't belong, and how does it all come crumbling down?

Border Patrol Headquarters Occupation Protesters to Fight Charges Group Calls for Further Action Against Border Militarization

National Guardsmen Caught in Drug Smuggling Bust

So they say the border isn't safe and that's why we need the national guard there, but then when national guardsmen are involved in a huge drug-smuggling ring, the former AZ attorney general says, "The involvement of uniformed military personnel and children show the extent to which the cartels will go to pursue their illegal schemes."  It doesn't show the extent that national guard statesmen can go because they're not looked at with suspicion?

The involvement in the drug trade by military, police, border patrol, prison guards, not to mention the CIA and such, has been extensive.  It is ridiculous that migrants are the ones stereotyped as drug smugglers (yes there are drug smugglers from south of the border just like there are white drug dealers in middle class neighborhoods) and when people with some sort of authority get involved in the drug trade it supposedly speaks more to "the extent to which cartels will go".  Similarly, I point out in Ex-ICE Officer Charged in Drug-Smuggling, there is much more sympathy towards officials than towards Mexicans.  As though Mexicans are naturally corrupt, while officers get corrupted by the former.

No it couldn't be American demand, plus greed, poverty, capitalism, and the fact that drug smuggling (and human smuggling) is illegal that causes people to get involved in the trade.  And it wouldn't be the impunity, authority, and trust afforded officials that allows them to participate in the drug trade more effectively because of their position that causes them to be involved.  One wonders what the drug trade would look like if nobody tied to the government ever participated in it.

It's especially unfortunate that the drug trade negatively affects the Tohono O'odham and then on top of that, they have people who are "protecting the border" also negatively affecting the community, in addition to some involvement in the drug trade.  People transverse the entry port in the Tohono O'odham Nation and surrounding areas because of tightened border controls in other more urban regions.  It will be interesting whether this will be an excuse to tighten border security on T.O... just before the Unity Run too...

Anyway, here's the article: Authorities bust major marijuana smuggling ring. 
And Ex-ICE Officer Charged in Drug-Smuggling is worth reading too, in my opinion, even though it's a little old.

Tucson Shooting Overshadows Border Shooting

Before Congresswoman Gifford and others were shot in Tuscon, Arizona , 17 year old Ramses Barron Torres was shot and killed by a bullet originating in Nogales, Arizona. There have been no national moments of silence for the apparently unarmed teenager. No memes speculating on the sanity of the shooter(s) or if violent rhetoric played a role. That’s probably because Ramses Barron Torres is Mexican and was shot by U.S. Border Patrol.

These points, made by Maegan La Mala on VivirLatino recently are ones that didn't really occur to me, even though I try to be aware of these sorts inconsistencies on the part of the media as well as the left.  The article explores some of the stories around the circumstances surrounding Torres' death.  But even if Torres had been throwing rocks, even if he had been on the US side of the border, the shooting was still unjustified.  Certainly violent rhetoric played a role in this shooting, as it did in the shooting in Arivaca a year and a half ago.

Border patrol agents, like cops, get away with shootings and other violence on a regular basis.  Even Ramos and Compean who were sentenced to prison for shooting at a man on the border (he didn't die), got their sentence commuted by Bush.  It will be interesting to see what comes of this shooting.  Either way, though, the outcry (as it is reported by the media as well as how it is coming across on the part of activists) is not nearly what it is in response to this shooting in Tucson.  Yes, it is different that it was so out of the ordinary and that it was several people who were shot at once, but just because immigrants already live in a state of fear for their lives does not mean it's any less painful or traumatic.

No More Deaths: Recent abuse interviews from Nogales

From a No More Deaths Newsletter:

No More Deaths volunteers working in Nogales continue to document and denounce abuses experienced in custody by deported migrants and immigrants. The following interviews were conducted in the last week. Please share these stories with your friends, family, congregation, and community.

• Interview conducted 18 February 2010. Interviewee, man from Sonora, Mexico, requested to remain anonymous. Interviewee reported that while attempting to cross for a second time, after walking for three days in the desert, he and his friend were apprehended by three US Border Patrol agents in green uniforms. The agents apprehended them on 15 February 2010 at approximately 10-10:30am. The agents spoke Spanish. The agents accused the interviewee of carrying drugs and beat him in the head with the butt of a pistol. He collapsed to the ground and was bleeding heavily from the gash in the left side of his head. The agents called an ambulance (presumably a BORSTAR ambulance) which came and brought the interviewee to a hospital. He reported that he received staples in his head at the hospital but when he was released from the hospital he did not receive any papers or documents about the injury he sustained or the treatment he received. He reported that the hospital was small and the doctor who treated him did not have any identification. After being released from the hospital he and his friend were taken to custody in Tucson where they were given deportation papers, in English, to sign. They were given only crackers and juice to eat. They were deported 18 February 2010 to Nogales, Sonora. The friend, who witnessed the assault and was present during the interview, confirmed the interviewee's testimony. At the time of the interview the interviewee appeared to be in a state of shock.
   
• Interview conducted 19 February 2010. Interviewee Bernabel R------ A------, from Guanajuato, Mexico. Mr. R------ is blind. He reported that he was taken into immigration custody in November 2009 in Texas, where he was held for three months before being taken to court in El Rio and deported to Nogales, Sonora. He had lived in Seattle, Washington, for three years and still has brothers there. In custody in Texas all of his papers (for a bank account at Bank of America, his passport, and other documents) were taken. When he asked for them to be returned he was told that they had already been thrown away. He was deported to Sonora, Mexico, in February 2010. He stated that he wanted to report the loss of the documents so that other people would not have to endure similar abuses.
   
• Interview conducted 19 February 2010 collectively with three women who were held in custody in Tucson from 17 February 2010 to 18 February 2010. One of the women, from Chiapas, has three children in Chiapas, aged 8, 10, and 12. She stated that she was attempting to cross for the first time in order to find work to support her children. She was taken into custody in Tucson and brought to streamlining at the Tucson courthouse. She stated that guards pushed the detainees who were chained and could not walk quickly. She stated that one guard held her nose in front of the detainees and said they smelled. Another interviewee stated that when she was apprehended with a group in the desert a Border Patrol agent accused them of carrying drugs and threatened to shoot them. The third interviewee reported that guards shouted at them and used racist language. She gave the name of one agent in particular in Tucson, Mr. J. V------, who was especially abusive. All three women reported that they had their clothes taken from them and were held in extremely cold temperatures while in custody.

Reading up on O'odham border struggle

Far too often in my writing and my actions, I have marginalized O'odham experiences and struggles regarding the border and the effects of immigration enforcement on the reservation and in the city. I am not the only one, so in reading up on the issues, I am sharing the links below with you so you can also read up. These issues should really be central for so many reasons.

For one, the injustices that O'odham face are sometimes worse because they are invisible to so many. It is also part of an ongoing onslaught of colonialism (on the part of the Spanish then the Mexican State then the US) and white supremacy. We can see many patterns when looking at the historical and present forced removal of indigenous people from their lands in the US, and the way migrants (mostly indigenous) are also forced from their land by economic and other conditions. If we are concerned solely with racial profiling and legalization for the undocumented, we are perpetuating harm by allowing it to continue. Calls for comprehensive immigration reform do not tend to call into question the demand for border security. The government might legalize a bunch of people (maybe) but will there be more border walls? Won't there still be the conditions that have led to mass migration in the first place? I have more to say on this, but I will work on that later.

A quick note though, I included several documents on the border issues, but I also wanted to include some info on the south mountain freeway which you should especially know about if you live in Maricopa County. This isn't so much related to the border, but if it gets built on the reservation, it will displace people and put a border/barrier through their communities. If there is destruction to south mountain, it would disturb a sacred site. There are many to ignore the local struggles of people here, but you should know about it.


Websites:
O'odham Solidarity Across Borders Collective

O'odham Solidarity Project

Articles/Documents:
Fear of a Milighan Planet part 1 and part 2

Immigration, Imperialism and Cultural Genocide: An interview with O’odham Activist Ofelia Rivas concerning the effects of a proposed wall on the US / Mexico border Interviewed by, Jeff Hendricks

RESISTANCE AND COLLABORATION O’ODHAM RESPONSES TO U.S. INVASION by J.D. HENDRICKS

Traditional O'odham statement at the Zapatistas' Encuentro 2007

Shame on the New York Times for Fueling Border Misery By Brenda Norrell January 2010

Hate and Death on the Border By BRENDA NORRELL December 2009

O'odham: Surviving apartheid on the illegal border By Brenda Norrell November 2009

A Border Runs Through Them: The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham By BRENDA NORRELL November 2009

Indigenous Peoples Vow to Bring Down Apartheid Border Wall by Brenda Norrell November 2007

Indigenous Border Summit Opposes Border Wall and Militarization By Brenda Norrell October 2006

Video:
Tohono O'odham and U S Border Patrol (youtube video)

Imaginary Borders, Real Obstructions (youtube video)

Videos on the South mountain Freeway:
South Mountain Freeway Proposal - Public Comments pt 1 and pt 2

South Mountian Freeway Protest

Article on Freeway:
Sal DiCiccio’s Loop 202 Problem: Phoenix Councilman Would Benefit from Reviled Ahwatukee Freeway Extension

Freedom, Not Reform: On the New CIR-ASAP bill

Please don't be fooled. If anything, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 is lip service at best. If you review the bill (the complete bill, not the summary), you will see a glaring lack at anything like a solution to the "crisis" so many speak of. Worse, it maintains that border security (read militarization) is important, includes employment verification, and also leaves out any mention of same-sex couples. It is unlikely to pass as is, or probably not even close, but I am concerned with so many people blindly celebrating this bill.

How about this as a summary for much of CIR-ASAP: review this, analyze that, assess this, study that, examine this, make recommendations, develop and implement a plan. This is the extent to which major questions are addressed: border deaths, costs of border security, human smuggling, Operation Streamline, etc. Certainly this gets nowhere near actually coming up with solutions to, much less acknowledgments regarding the injustices caused by the border and border enforcement. To me, it's nothing but superficial- surprising that they'd be mentioned, but still, just empty words. It doesn't take a genius to know that increased border security means increased deaths. Yet they are developing a study that would include "an analysis of whether physical barriers, technology, and enforcement programs have contributed to the rate of migrant deaths". And who would end up doing these studies? Is there any hope that they would be done objectively? And what then?

Not surprising at all is the callousness, or neglect of the impact on the indigenous communities and others as a result of continued border security. Let us not confuse a lack of a wall with lack of problems due to border security. The bill states, "Subject to the availability of appropriations, the Secretary shall establish a demonstration program to procure additional unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras, poles, sensors, satellites, radar coverage, and other technologies necessary to enhance operational control of the international borders of the United States." If anything, the bill seems concerned with making border security more efficient, maybe a bit more regulated and supervised.

Border enforcement has divided O'odham folks who live on both sides of and along the border, limiting their ability to participate in traditional ceremonies. Border patrol officers harass indigenous people, check points have been set up on the reservation at which further harassment and abuse occurs on a regular basis. The funnel effect caused by increased security in more urban areas like in El Paso and San Diego, has led to increased deaths on O'odham land (and surrounding border areas), as well as more drug smuggling, which negatively impacts the communities there. These issues have been worse than deprioritized by most people in the immigrants' rights movement. Far too often the colonial nature of the border is not considered, much less the everyday concerns of O'odham like the Loop 202 freeway.

There are some positive acknowledgments and solution-like proposals for how to handle detention. But it all really boils down to bigger cages, longer chains. No one belongs in a detention facility of any sort just for crossing the border illegally! Of course the government is not going to say such a thing. This is why I expect very little of any reform.

There is a large emphasis on consequences for employers who hire undocumented immigrants, but many of us have known for a long time that these measures have the most impact on migrants- the laws are meant to keep migrants from attaining work. It's funny that within the bill, there is a statement about preempting any state or local jurisdiction from "imposing any sanction" on people based on their immigration status. But isn't going after employers indirectly imposing a sanction on people based on their immigration status? A prime example is that in Arizona, an employer sanctions law was passed in January 2008, but has mostly or only negatively impacted workers- not employers. It has, in fact, been the justification for raids by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

Some good news is that the authors of the bill oppose the Real ID. The bad news is they support electronic employment verification, which has and will continue to have many flaws.

Some are suggesting that this bill might pass with an addition of a guest worker program. I cringe when I think about the possible support for this, despite the implications of such a program. A guest worker program would only benefit businesses, and would not benefit workers, as has been seen in the past with the Bracero program, and existing programs.

In addition, the bill lacks any acknowledgment of the need for addressing same-sex couples' ability to stay together when one is legal and one is not.

The main failure of this reform is that it does nothing to put to question the idea that the border is legitimate in the first place. But why would it? As I've written before in Freedom, not Reform: If we don’t demand it, it can’t happen,

Illegal immigration is not wrong. What is wrong is the criminalization of people because of their class and countries of origin, and of the actions they have taken as a result of the decimation of economies and human rights by US business interests. What is wrong is that American businesses in and outside of the US have benefited from the cheap labor of Mexicans in particular, and others as well... Clearly no reform can be acceptable [to us] that the US Government, the perpetrator of violence against the people, will allow.

Again, I say, we need to demand Freedom, not reform, because otherwise it's not possible. Down with the Detention Centers! No More Border Security! No More Border! No More NAFTA! and on and on.


Thanks to Alex and Kevin for the information about impacts on O'odham.


Update: Read more about Sexual Assault in Detention Centers and CIR-ASAP

Ex-ICE Officer Charged in Drug-Smuggling

Yet another case of law enforcement officials involved in drug smuggling was exposed this week. Richard Padilla Cramer was arrested for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US. Cramer was a former high-ranking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who worked near the border in Arizona. He retired in 2007.

The Associated Press recently published an article about their investigation on corruption among law officers on the border. Unlike any discussion about Mexican citizens or migrants involvement in drug trafficking or other crimes (or US citizens of color involved in drug dealing), this article was very sensitive to the officers' vulnerability to bribery. Nonetheless, they exposed that this isn't just a case of rotten apples. I would take it one step further and argue that this is a systemic problem- that law enforcement is by its very nature corrupt.

It is ridiculous that the supposed attempt to fight the drug war is to get more law enforcement involved. It's no wonder that since the Merida Initiative, aka Plan Mexico, there has been more corruption (I discuss this further in Breaking Down the Mexican Drug War).

From On Border, Agents Struggle with Corruption

As Calderon sent thousands of soldiers to northern Mexico to stop the gruesome cartel violence and clean out corrupt police departments, CBP, the largest U.S. law enforcement agency, boosted its border forces by 44 percent or 6,907 additional officers and agents on the southwest border.

At the same time, CBP saw the number of its officers charged with corruption-related crimes nearly triple, from eight cases in fiscal 2007 to 21 the following year...

In the past 10 months, 20 agents from CBP alone have been charged with a corruption-related crime. At that pace, the organization will set a new record for in-house corruption; 90 employees have been charged with corrupt acts since October 2004. Agency officials expect those cases to continue to climb: There are 63 open criminal investigations - including corruption cases - against CBP employees.

I have been casually keeping track of cases such as this for a few years. I have been particularly interested in the fact that migrants are stereotyped as drug smugglers while law enforcement is not. While obviously nearly everyone has vulnerability to this lucrative business.

Human smuggling, is another lucrative business. Most of these non-drug related corruption charges involve providing "legal" paperwork for folks crossing the border- probably those who have money and are therefore probably involved in the drug trade. So who's to blame for drug traffickers entering the US.

An opinion piece from October 2006, Corrupt officials at home hinder real immigration reform lays out a number of examples of border-area law enforcement corruption, particularly drug trafficking, such as this example: "Border Patrol agent David Duque faces up to 15 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to accepting bribes in exchange for legal documents. He sold fake passports, birth certificates and Social Security cards. He even received $5,000 to allow a cocaine shipment through the Texas border."

Surely decriminalizing drugs and migration would solve the problem of corruption. And surely poverty and the perceived need for more and more money by those who already have it are to blame as well. People will always have incentive to do wrong within capitalism. The drugs and migration are not necessarily the problem in and of themselves- it's the abuse of the drugs, and especially the violence that pervades these underground markets, that are the problems.

While watching a video on the Mexican drug trade, I wrote down a quote from a woman who was heavily involved in drug trafficking in Mexico: "You'd have to wipe out the government to wipe out drug trafficking." I'm quite certain she was referring to how corrupt the Mexican government is. But clearly government officials, with their power, access, and impunity (mostly), along with everyone assuming they're innocent because they are part of law enforcement, are not immune from participating in that which they claim to counter, whether in the US or not. So maybe we really would have to get rid of the government to get rid of these crimes.

By the way, since Arpaio was involved with the DEA in Mexico, someone should really look into what he might be hiding...

Complexity of the Border Patrol Agents' Sentence not so Complex

In December of '07, i wrote up a blog entry about border patrol agents, Ramos and Campeon getting prison sentences for shooting at an undocumented immigrant. I explained that this was a rather unusual turn of events since it sort of breaks the pattern as far as whose lives/dignity are more important in this society. Well, now we see that Bush commuted their sentences and so they will go free.

Here's the bit i wrote: The Complexity of the Border Patrol Agents' Sentence