ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies have turned immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago, IL, and Charlotte, NC, into open-air hunting grounds, snatching people off streets, out of parking lots, and in front of their children. But in each city, federal forces have also faced strong grassr oots resistance. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with organizers from Charlotte and Chicago, Miguel Alvelo Rivera and Andrew Willis Garcés, about the on-the-ground reality of President Trump’s immigration raids and the ways communities are organizing and mobilizing against them.Guest: Miguel Alvelo Rivera is a migrant from Puerto Rico who came to the United States in 2007. He is the executive director of Latino Union of Chicago and has been a life-long educator, advocate, and believer in the power of people to change the world for the better. Co-founder of the community organizing, advocacy, and human rights group, Chicago Boricua Resistance, he’s been active in community, environmental, and labor movements since he was a teenager in Puerto Rico. He’s also worked as an Uber driver and delivery person, as a bartender, and as an educator in theater of the oppressed, adult education, and youth programming. Andrew Willis Garcés is based in Greensboro, NC. He is a lifelong Southerner shaped and inspired by the Southern grassroots organizing tradition and also by the communities of resistance from his maternal homeland of Colombia. He founded Siembra NC under the Trump Administration, and has worked with several dozen unions and grassroots community organizations over the last two decades as an organizer, strategist, communications consultant and trainer. He’s been with Training for Change since 2009. You can read some of his writing at The Forge, Truthout, Waging Nonviolence, Convergence, In These Times. Additional links/info: Siembra NC website, Facebook page, TikTok, and Instagram Latino Union of Chicago website, Facebook page, and Instagram Credits: Producer: Rosette Sewali Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Marc Steiner: Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. ICE is on a rampage. They’ve invaded and attacked people in Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago, Illinois. And rumors have it that New Orleans may be next. In our segment today, we have a great opportunity to hear from on the ground organizers about what the raids and grassroots resistance have looked like. To give our listeners lessons we all might apply when ICE and the Border Patrol come to your town. Watching these scenes unfold felt like watching the Gestapo in Germany chasing down Jews in the 1930s. What’s happening now is unconscionable, but people are standing up, they’re resisting, and they’re organizing. Recently, Chicago, Illinois and Charlotte, North Carolina have been overrun by federal forces sent in by Trump who issued the order over a pack of lies about immigrants, and today we’re joined by two guests who have been in the midst of it all. Miguel Alvelo Rivera originally came from Puerto Rico to the United States in 2007. He’s executive director of the Latino Union of Chicago, has been a lifelong educator, advocate and believer in the power of the people to change the world for better, co-founder of the community organizing, advocacy and human rights group, Chicago Boricua and Boricua Resistance. He’s been active in community, environmental and labor movements since he was a teenager in Puerto Rico, has also worked as an Uber driver delivery person, bartender, and as an educator in the theater of the Oppressed Adult Education and Youth programming. And Andrew Willis Garcés, who is based in Greensboro, North Carolina, is a lifelong southerner and has been inspired by the southern grassroots movements across time and noticed by communities of resistance from his maternal homeland or Columbia. He founded Siembra NC setting up to the Trump administration and has worked with several of his unions and grassroots community organizations over the last two decades as an organizer strategist, communications consultant and trainer. And he’s been with Training for Change since 2009. You can read some of his writing at the Forge Truthout, Legian Nonviolence Convergence, and in these times, gentlemen, welcome. It’s really good to have you both with us. I really want to start this conversation together for people to understand what is actually going on, the pain, the fear, the violence taking place with ICE coming into your communities. When you watch it on the news, it’s almost unbearable to watch, see these kinds of physical attacks. I’m just curious, just describe to us what the feeling is like and what is happening on the streets. Miguel, let start with you. Miguel Alvelo Rivera: We just went through Midway Blitz. It was an over two month terror campaign perpetrated against black and brown communities in Chicago that was pushed by the federal government, was that they were going after the worst of the worst, But the reality was that they were going after anybody that they could go after. And what that felt like was a constant anxiety over what will happen today. A constant anxiety over whether a run to the grocery store would mean that you would not see your family again, whether going to work would mean that you might be disappeared, you might be deported to a place that you haven’t been to in 30, 40 years. For folks that were born and raised in Chicago, folks that are born US citizens, it might also mean that on your way to work, you might get tear cast or you might get arrested and accused of doing things that would put you in jeopardy, right? When really all you were doing is go to work or look after your neighbors or be a human being if I’m being completely honest. So that’s how it felt from the side of the pervasive terror. Now at the same time, how it felt was also a strong sense of solidarity. There was a strong sense of really a unity in action that we hadn’t seen in Chicago for a very, very long time. And what I saw personally was whenever there was a potential sighting, people would be called to respond and I would be one of the folks that would also respond by the time I got there. A lot of times I would go driving because I would think that’s the quickest way. By the time I got there, there were already people on foot, there were people on bikes, and it was heartening. It was inspiring to see the community show up for each other and also show up for not just for neighbors that they know, but for people that they don’t know at all. So both of these things existed at the same time. Marc Steiner: Andrew, what about where you are in the South? Andrew Willis Garcés: Yeah… and, by the way, have been learning a lot from folks at Chicago, Protect Riders Park, and just generally trying to pick up all the lessons that you all have had to learn in the last couple months. And so I think it’s been pretty similar in that this was a week of the very same border patrol agents drove here from Chicago and did the same things. So they were out in public looking for whoever was walking around, coming out of a grocery store, mowing a lawn, putting up Christmas decorations for someone who had hired them to do that in their yard, just whoever looked brown and outside basically and grabbing them. Border patrol kept saying the entire time, we’re just going after the worst of the worst. And it was pretty clear that they met anyone who was suspected of being born outside the US that is the crime. And so they claimed that they made over 370 arrests. Dozens of those people in the county members have been calling our hotline. Most of them still don’t know where the loved ones are days after they were picked up and the numbers are still coming in. But in one school district alone, 40,000 kids were out two days. So we think it’s above a hundred thousand kids that didn’t go to school, who knows how many people didn’t go to work, Marc Steiner: Kids not going to school because their families are terrified and they’re hiding inside their homes. Andrew Willis Garcés: That’s right. This was clearly an operation meant to keep people from getting to school and work safely. That was the point. Steven Miller’s goal has been the same this entire time to make it impossible to live with dignity. If you are born in another country to feel like you have no idea of assessing your risks, how to stay safe, and you just have to leave the country in order to feel some sense of certainty about what’s going to happen to you today. The good news is that thousands of people showed up all over the state to defend hundreds of thousands of other people. We had over 4,000 people come through trainings. We had thousands of people who were on early morning patrols across the state who are still on early morning patrols today. Marc Steiner: What does that mean? Andrew Willis Garcés: Yeah, so we quickly stood up these safe to work safe to school patrols. In normal times, our ice watch is designed to respond to suspected ice stakeouts, ice traffic stops. But we knew this would be different. We needed to have eyes and ears everywhere that border patrol might be. And so we quickly trained thousands of people to get on the road and to be able to know how to document and report and deescalate if necessary because one of the reasons, being in Chicago just two weeks ago, a federal judge ordered 600 people. Border Patrol had arrested to be released entirely because of bystander video shot by activists in Chicago where border patrol was trying to deny they had legally arrested hundreds of people, and bystander video proved those people would say their names out loud on video. They couldn’t deny, oh, actually we did illegally arrest these people. So it’s really important to have eyes and ears on the ground, people who are trained to provide support and also to lovingly encourage border patrol to leave. We launched a map called Ojo ob Alberto, which means lookout [email protected] where you could see every day where border patrol was operating. And it was basically just kind of lazily driving up the corridors where Latinos tend to be, which again, just like in Chicago, and it made it possible to have lookouts basically everywhere and make it less light, it make it more likely that people could get to school and work safely. That was the goal and that still remains the goal. Marc Steiner: What both of you describe is something I think people don’t hear about and don’t know is happening, which is the act of resistance taking place in both your communities. It’s not just people running scared, which they’re doing, but it’s the resistance. It’s standing up to it. And I wonder how you see politically that battle unfolding in your communities. I mean, very different communities. So let’s start with Charlotte and jump into Chicago. I mean, how do you see that resistance building and where do you see the struggle going? Andrew Willis Garcés: So thousands of people joined trainings, participated in these safety patrol shifts in their early mornings, did a lot of things to make it possible to get to school and work safely. And ICE is still here, so there’s still large ice field offices in our state. Monday the 24th, there were two different ice traffic stop operations in Charlotte that our volunteers witnessed that resulted in at least eight people getting arrested on the way to work. And one case our volunteers had to stay with the work van that was left on the side of the road waiting for a family member to come pick it up. That’s happening every day. So that’s not at the scale of CVPs operation last week, and that’s not being out looking for Latinos and parking lots, but they’re still an active threat. And we had the speaker of our state house last week say, we hope they come back and ICE has said, our goal is to staff up by 600% by the end of this calendar year across the country. So we don’t know what that will mean here, but we do think it means continuing to be vigilant. Our goal is to have make North Carolina the safest state for immigrants in the south over the next three years, and that’s going to take thousands of people deciding to participate in that goal and make it possible and be on the lookout and be asking the question, what can I do in my school drop-off zone in the broader county where I live and work on the thoroughfares? Where immigrant construction workers often are going to work early. It’s going to take all of us deciding to make that the goal and be monitoring for what our opposition is doing. What are ICE agents doing? How are they changing their tactics just like they have been all year everywhere where that’s what we think it’s going to take. And clearly thousands of people just this week answered the call and we’re hopeful that thousands more will in the weeks ahead. Marc Steiner: Miguel. Miguel Alvelo Rivera: Well, I’ll start by saying that Chicago has a generations long, centuries long tradition of organizing and resisting. Marc Steiner: Yes, it does. Miguel Alvelo Rivera: Yeah. Yes it does. I know you know that. And in that sense, they couldn’t have picked the worst place because we have been preparing for things like this for a long time. We were lucky because a lot of that work, a lot of that infrastructure has been put into place from generations ago. Now, the challenge that we have ahead of us is to strengthen that already existing network that we have, and I’m talking about from parent groups to self-organized community groups, nonprofits, elected officials. The challenge here was a lot of these groups would kind of do their own thing, and this situation, this invasion helped push all of us to communicate and collaborate with each other. So it’s a bit of a mix of a somewhat centralized operation and somewhat decentralized operation. And in that I see a lot of strength to continue the struggle onward. Now we have been getting a bit of a breather, although ICE is still active in Chicago, but they have promised to come back in full force. So we are taking this time to one, continue to respond to the few actions that they’re perpetrating and then really continue to build that capacity to respond to this supposed larger push that they’re going to make next year. Marc Steiner: So one of the things that I think people don’t see unless you’re really watching it and you’re not in your cities and you’re not in the Latino communities, is the level of violence taking place against people in the communities? I mean, I’ve seen films of women being dragged through broken windows and cars, their kids screaming in the back, I don’t think understand the level of violence taking place. Could you both speak to that for a minute? Miguel Alvelo Rivera: I’ll start by saying that when you don’t have the people, the only thing that you really have is brute force. And yeah, they have been extremely violent. I’ve personally experienced this violence myself. Marc Steiner: What do you mean Miguel Alvelo Rivera: Ice tried to drag me out of my car and I had two old grown men try to pull me from my arm out out of the driver’s seat and my neighbors respond and us citizens like myself getting arrested for acting to protect another one of their neighbors. We have seen ice break into people’s vehicles, break windows, drag people across the floor, and all of this is meant to terrify us. All of this is meant to make us say, I don’t want to do that again. So at the same time that they are implementing this terror campaign, we are implementing a community care and the solidarity campaign. We are not just defending our neighbors, we’re also taking care of each other. There’s been a whole coalition of folks that do community psychology that do different practices to also address the psychological hurt that these forces have done upon our communities. So we’re taking into account the full spectrum of their actions, and we are not just responding, but we’re building community and we’re making it stronger as we go as well. Marc Steiner: Andrew, what’s a new experience? Andrew Willis Garcés: Exactly. I mean, it was the same guys, so it was no surprise that they broke people’s windows, dragged ’em out of the cars, and those were the US citizens. One of them had been encountered by border patrol twice in one morning, had identified himself at his real ID and still was dragged out of the car. And there were several people arrested, simply trying to document border patrol operations, which is entirely legal. So yeah, these are federal agents conducting lawless operations under the guise of looking for criminals, and they themselves are the ones committing crimes. That’s why it takes a community effort and people playing lots of different roles. Just like in Chicago, we need people who are filing lawsuits. We need elected officials who are banning their operations from their properties. We need people out in the communities. We need people protecting school based zones overall, just making it possible for people to get to work safely despite there being a lawless gang of people who happen to carry badges in our midst. Marc Steiner: That’s powerfully said. We live in a nation that is a nation for the most part of immigrants. It’s also a nation that hates immigrants. This crazy dichotomy we have. I’m curious about what you see as the next steps in fighting back against this in organizing in other communities and politically organizing to fight against the terror against immigrants. How do you see that unfolding? Where do you see that movement building to stop, to resist and to build a movement that says, America, we have to stop this. Miguel Alvelo Rivera: Andrew already started pointing at it, and that is that we need to use every tool at our disposal to not just stop the attacks, but really build the cities, build the states, the country that we want to live in. So this is not just about responding against basis attacks. This is also a question about what should be the priority of our governments? Where should we dedicate resources to? And in order to fight against that, you have to have these lawsuits. You have to attack this from the legal aspect. You have to have people organized on the ground, not just ready to defend neighbors, but ready to take care of each other. And you have to have elected officials that are willing to not just put their bodies on the line to defend these communities to our communities, but that are willing to build the societies that we deserve. And what I’m talking about is societies that are based on centering human need that are based on centering human care and that are meant to ensure that everybody has access to life, basic necessities, that everybody can live happy, fulfilling lives instead of investing in warfare instead of investing in terror and instead of redistributing resources to the wealthiest people on the planet. I think something that maybe it’s not talked about as much because the focus is so much what we’re seeing on the ground is the fact that these ice operations are a business venture for private prisons, for surveillance tech companies, for warfare companies. This is a business boom. The terrorizing of our communities has become a business boom for corporations, and it’s going to take not just political will from committed elected officials, but really people on the ground to be constantly organizing, constantly working together to build something completely different from that. Marc Steiner: That was a really critical point that people don’t always get that I think really has to be emphasized. And in the little time we have left, I want people to really understand the terror that people face every day. If you’re a Latino in America at this moment and the fear that takes place, you can see the pictures and the parents, children, babies, women, men, and the utter horror of them being carted away. Can you give us a sense of that? Angie, why don’t you start ’em. Just want to see. I want people to really understand what is going on and the evil that’s taking place in front of our eyes and how we have to stop it. Andrew Willis Garcés: Yeah, there were people just literally with groceries in their hands, snatched in a parking lot. There were people going into a Home Depot and just intercepted on their way in people going outside. There are security camera footage in apartment buildings where people are going outside to throw out the trash. This caravan pulls up suddenly you have to drop the trash and run and you’re barefoot outside your apartment. And I think we could all think about the last time we went outside barefoot outside our house and imagined the terror of being chased by massed arm agents. Clearly that’s something no one should have to go through. You also asked the question about what’s next, what we can do about it? And I think in addition to just being more vigilant, there are people that are making the connection between this kind of attack on a specific community by our federal government and all the other attacks being waged by the federal government rail on so many communities. So the 160 billion for ice didn’t come from nowhere. It came from our healthcare. It came from the tax cuts to wealthy people that the rest of us have to pay for. We just saw the federal government right under Donald Trump wants people to have less healthcare, less food assistance. They promised to eliminate Title one funding from next year’s public school budgets. These are attacks on every municipality in the country, all of us who depend on those things. And I think it’s on us to help make those connections clearer. And it’s on us here. We’ve started actually to invite our elected officials to take more responsibility for making that clear. So three different cities, the incoming city councils at three different cities here in North Carolina have pledged to hold public hearings on the impacts of the federal attacks on all of our communities in our cities, literally here in Greensboro, in Durham, chapel Hill, in the place that people go to work and take their kids to school. How are those things showing up? How are tariffs impacting our local manufacturers? There’s so many ways that this is showing up that we are not reading in the news we don’t see on TikTok, and so they’re going to hold public hearings and get people to come talk about the impacts on their public schools, on the things that we care about and issue a report that the city manager will write talking about what we’ve discovered, and the report will have recommendations about what we can do at the municipal and the state level about these attacks. Because at this point, that is where we are, where we need our local, I mean, Chicago is clearly leading the way on this, but local elected officials and state officials saying, this is what we can do about the federal government to be a shield against the federal government. But imagine if every municipality, even in states that are controlled by Republicans like ours, if everyone decided that was what it meant to be, to provide leadership in this moment, I think we would be in a really different position going forward. Marc Steiner: That’s very important. Miguel, your final thoughts? Miguel Alvelo Rivera: Well, I wanted to share briefly the story of one of our community organizers from Latino Union. His name is Ian. He’s a day laborer, and a year ago, he decided to take a very brief stance against what were human rights abuses that were perpetrated against him by off-duty police who were working for private security at a local Home Depot in Chicago this year. On September 12, when he was on his way to the Barber to Ice agents, stopped him and took him away with his wife in the car, and he was in detention for over 40 days. During that time. At first, I’ll say that, for almost the first 24 hours, we had no information. We had no idea where they had taken him, and we mobilized all of these resources that I had just talked about to get that information. And it was right after we did a press conference outside the one holding center that they have near Chicago, Broadview, Illinois, that he was actually given a phone call and he was able to speak with his wife and able to speak with his lawyer. When one of the officers in the detention center heard that he was speaking with his lawyer, they hung up, they cut the call and he got transferred over to Michigan and we fought with everything at our disposal to get him out. Finally, we were able to get him out just a couple weeks back and we’re extremely happy that he’s now back in the community. The thing is, during this time, there were multiple moments in which things felt hopeless in which I would speak with his wife and she would say, I have no idea what to do. Should we just give in? And should I just encourage him to say, let’s just leave. The thing is they’re gaping political violence back home, and they came to the United States for refuge. The fact that they encountered this violence both at the hands of private security and then at the hands of ice is unacceptable. So I’m happy to say willingness back, and I will say that the struggle needs to continue because this is not just about these operations to terrorize our communities. This is really about having a government that does not center people’s wellbeing, and especially in this junction in human history, where we’re going to see continued migration because of climate, because of wars. We need to be prepared to not just take care of people, but to be able to thrive in growing cities, in growing countries. The formula is not scapegoating, the formula is not removing people. The formula really is continuing to build with the folks that are coming and really looking to integrate them on the basis of our shared humanity. Marc Steiner: Lemme just say this in closing, that the work you’re doing, both you’re doing is critically important to the migrants, immigrants, and to our future as a country. I think what you’re describing is the grave danger that we are in, what your communities are facing, what we’re facing as a whole in this country. And I appreciate taking time today and I appreciate, deeply appreciate the work you do and we will stay in touch as this unfolds and your voices are important and the voices of immigrants in our country are important, and we Real News will keep lifting that up and standing up next to you. Miguel Alveo Rivera and Andrew Willis. Thank you both so much for being with us. It’s really been a powerful discussion and let’s stay in touch. Andrew Willis Garcés: Thank you, Kevin. Marc Steiner: I want to thank Miguel Alveo Rivera and Andrew Willis Godsy for this powerful and important discussion. I want to thank you even more for the work they do to protect immigrants in our country. We’re a nation of immigrants, those who are ancestors, parents, great-grandparents, didn’t have papers when they came here, no immigrants, no America. We will link to the works of our guests and we’ll keep covering the struggles of immigrant communities and exposing the work of the Neofascist forces like Ice. And thank you to Cameron Granadino for running the program. Our audio editor, Stephen Frank, for working his magic, the nonstop creative working producer, Rosette Sewali, and our Ed Max Alvarez for bringing this program to our attention. And all the crew here at The Real News, we’re making this show and all of our work possible. So please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at s the real news.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner, Stan involved. Keep listening and take care. ...read more read less