deadly interaction in Minneapolis<\/a>,\u00a0activists in the Lehigh Valley have come up with a way to push back: A hotline.<\/p>\n“When you call the hotline, you’re going to speak to a bi-lingual dispatcher who will collect information about what’s going on,” said Lehigh County Commissioner Jon Irons.<\/p>\n
Irons said the Rapid Response network has volunteers who will come to you if an active detention is taking place.<\/p>\n
“We show up in numbers so that there is support and solidarity within the group,” said Irons.<\/p>\n
But community organizer Raya Abdelaal said, they’re careful about it.<\/p>\n
“We’re not trying to impede on any arrests, or the kidnappings that they’re making, and we’re not trying to get in the way. We’re just making sure that we’re documenting the process,” said Abdelaal.<\/p>\n
Leo Atkinson, with the Lehigh Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, said in addition to helping the person being detained, they can also inform the community.<\/p>\n
“It can help spread the word that areas may be more or less safe, or precautions that people might want to take if they want to avoid enforcement actions,” said Atkinson.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has condemned the actions of activists like these toward ICE.<\/p>\n
“These individuals that are out there, harassing them while they do that work, doxxing their identities, threatening them and their families, it’s unacceptable, and that’s why President Trump is so strong in supporting their operations in all of these cities,” said Noem in an interview with CNN.<\/p>\n
But Irons said, it’s the government that’s in the wrong, not his volunteers.<\/p>\n
“They’re here to take people and to cause terror in our communities, and we’re here to document that,” said Irons.<\/p>\n
“Just because the government has failed you doesn’t mean that your community will fail you,” said Abdelaal.<\/p>\n
We did reach out to both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security media teams, but we did not hear back.<\/p>\n
In addition to the Lehigh Valley hotline at (610) 850-9930, there is also a hotline set up for Montgomery County at (267) 279-9205, and a statewide number at 1 (888) 214-6016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increases operations across the country, activists in the Lehigh Valley are trying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-86966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}