Arizona: Ground Zero in Immigration's New Race Wars

By George Ciccariello-Maher, CounterPunch. Posted December 26, 2008.

We did not create the fear at Killip; the ICE roundup did. … The Repeal Coalition’s intention was to ease those worries. When we got word that ICE was arresting people, we were told that the children at Killip were petrified because many of them feared their loved ones had been arrested (as was true for some of them). In response, we organized U.S. citizens to go to Killip to escort any family members who were afraid to pick up their children. No one offered rides to children without adult supervision. No one sought to intimidate the children.

If anything, members insist that by accurately assessing the threat level that the raids entailed, the Repeal Coalition gained the respect of many community members. When the ICE raids hit, Taryn tells me, "Repeal Coalition was seen as providing the advice that people needed at that moment." Since the raids, that advice has been largely legal in nature -- advising community members of their rights, instructing them not to sign any papers offered by ICE or the police and informing them how to be in contact with lawyers if necessary. This strategy has been forced by the situation: Katie says, "we aren’t going to be knocking on doors while ICE is doing the same thing." For Taryn, Repeal’s current role is one of creating connections: "We’re trying to be a listening board, connecting people with other people outside ourselves who can help them."  

Press distortions, however, were not limited to right-wing demonization by the police, but extended even to the left-wing coverage of the event. In an article posted to local indie media shortly after Repeal’s mobilization at Killip Elementary, a well-meaning writer claimed that the resistance to the ICE raids was an ad hoc mobilization organized through impromptu meetings using consensus process. For Repeal members, however sympathetic to the writer’s perspective, this article neglected the fact that the coalition had been organizing on the ground for a full nine months, and that the mobilization, rather than appearing spontaneously, was the result of the patient and deliberate work of political organizers.

FIRE Turns Up the Heat, Melts ICE

Since the raids, it has been public knowledge that ICE agents have remained stationed in Flagstaff, holed up in the swanky Radisson, but even their home base would not be safe from community outrage. On Dec. 4, a previously unknown organization known as Flagstaff Immigrants Rights Enforcement gained entry to an ICE strategy session at the Radisson (video here). According to the organization’s communiqué,

FIRE agent Del Fuego read the notice of deportation to more than 15 ICE associated criminals, some of whom appeared to possibly be illegal immigrants themselves, as they were not Indigenous People. Agent Del Fuego called for the immediate withdrawal of ICE from the Flagstaff community and notified ICE of the cease-and-desist order for all future raids.

Like the Repeal Coalition, groups like FIRE are coming together in the immigration battleground of Arizona to call globalization’s bluff: If the proponents of global capital insist that it’s all about freedom, then the strategy is to hold the powerful to their bad-faith promises and ensure that people are free, too -- free to "live, love and work as they please..."

The Repeal Coalition is soliciting donations to ensure that anti-immigrant racism not go unanswered. You can make a donation through its Web page.

See more stories tagged with: immigration, arizona, ice, arpaio

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, Calif., where he is completing a people’s history of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, "We Created Him". He can be reached by e-mail at gjcm@berkeley.edu.

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