Community Members Remember Those Recently Killed on the Border and Fight for Migrant Justice

Each month DABC members join with others from the community in a vigil outside the Aurora ICE Detention Center.  This month’s vigil took place after several murders committed by the Border Patrol in recent months, including that of 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca.  Authorities originally claimed that the agent shot and killed Sergio only after being “assaulted” by rocks, but video evidence later surfaced that Sergio was not throwing rocks and actually ran away. (Sidenote: there are some kids throwing rocks in the video and the people looking on are heard to say “How stupid! They’re throwing rocks.” Even if they were throwing rocks, shooting someone in the head is a disproportionate response). Earlier in the month several Border Patrol agents beat and tasered a handcuffed Anastacio Hernandez Rojas to death in what the San Diego coroner ruled a homicide. Mr. Rojas was picked up by Border Patrol agents as he was trying to re-enter the US and rejoin his wife and 5 children.

Sergio’s death is just one of the 17 people who have died at the hands of the Border Patrol in the past few 6 months, twice as many people as in the last 2 years combined.  This is a direct result of the increased repression waged upon migrants since Obama has taken office.  In his first year as president, 387,790 immigrants were deported, an increase of more than 60% from Bush’s last year in office.

Supporting the Prisoners of the G20 Police State

by Peter Gelderloos
CounterPunch

This week, my mind is with the sixteen Canadians who will be transported between their maximum security jail cells and the court to determine whether they will be held in prison until trial or released on extremely restrictive bail conditions. They are accused of organizing the protests against the elite G20 summit of world leaders that took place in Toronto at the end of June. At these protests, thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to specific policies of these twenty leading world governments or in negation of the global political and economic system in its entirety. Protestors enacted their disagreement and outrage in a variety of ways that included protest, counterinformation, and property destruction targeting the summit security forces and several major corporations.

In all, over 1000 people were arrested during three days of protest, many of them detained based on their appearance, put in cages, sexually harassed or assaulted, injured, denied food, water, legal and medical attention, and otherwise abused. http://vimeo.com/12925239 Of those thousand plus detainees, these sixteen are facing the heaviest charges, accused of conspiracy as the supposed ringleaders of the mayhem. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/832173–sixteen-people-still-in-custody-on-g20-charges-lawyers-say

Some of them were arrested in early morning raids, forced half-naked out of bed at gunpoint, assembled on their lawns and handcuffed in the pre-dawn darkness, and hauled off to jail. Others were picked up while biking or walking around town, sometimes by plainclothes cops making lightning grabs, a tactic perfected by the Stalinist police (the cops are internationalists, you see, and their methods for control travel across borders with much greater ease than they allow the rest of us).

Toronto: Jaggi Singh surrenders to police

Antonia Zerbisias
The Star
July 06 2010

Social justice activist Jaggi Singh surrendered to Toronto police early Tuesday morning to comply with a warrant following June’s G20 protests.

The Montreal-based community organizer faces several counts of criminal conspiracy, including alleged conspiracies to commit mischief to property, assault police, and obstruct justice.

Singh, 39, joins 16 other people known to be in detention 10 days after 1,090 were arrested during the G20 weekend.

Just a few hours before he voluntary walked into custody in the company of his lawyer, Singh told the Star that he could not comment on the charges because he had not yet seen what evidence police have against him.

But he did dismiss the notion of any criminal conspiracy.