Josh Acevedo is currently serving his first term as the El Paso city representative for District 2. Pious Ali has served as an at-large member of the Portland City Council since 2016. Both are members of the Immigrant Steering Justice Committee with Local Progress, a national network of more than 1,700 local officials.<\/p>\n
As local lawmakers, we are charged with acting as voices for our communities and seeing to it that constituents\u2019 concerns are heard. Although we are over 2,000 miles away from each other, both of our communities are involved in a sinister pipeline wherein refugees and immigrants deemed \u201cillegal\u201d by federal agents are ripped away from their homes, businesses and families and deported to detention facilities in places like El Paso.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beginning in January, Maine saw a dramatic uptick in ICE enforcement after Operation Catch of the Day was launched across the state with the aim of targeting supposed \u201ccriminal illegal aliens.\u201d Portland was no exception to the siege.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one horrifying instance of ICE enforcement in Portland, an agent smashed a car window<\/a> to extract a Guinean immigrant with no known criminal history while his wife and their baby were inside with him. A corrections officer with the local sheriff\u2019s office was pulled from his car<\/a>, which was left in the street abandoned and still running.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, neither of these cases are unique as federal agents conduct raids and enforcement across the country. But each has a ripple effect that affects families and their community.<\/p>\n What people have experienced in Portland is happening all across the country. The most notable example is Minneapolis, where federal agents shot and killed two civilians in a matter of days, but few corners of this country remain untouched by ICE\u2019s regime. For those detained, getting torn from your community is only the beginning. Detention centers are just one more place where immigrants experience indignity and abuse at the hands of federal immigration enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas has more detention facilities<\/a> and houses more detained people<\/a> than any other state in the nation. Many find themselves in facilities in El Paso, far away from home and with little to no contact with their families.\u00a0<\/p>\n El Paso is home to the biggest ICE detention center in the country \u2014 Camp East Montana on Fort Bliss. This camp is a $1.24 billion facility run by a for-profit contractor using taxpayer money, two cases of tuberculosis have been detected, and there is little to no training for the staff running it. Even worse, it is egregious in its human rights violations<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n A slew of reports outlining the horrendous conditions detainees have faced that include human feces and urine flooding the floors, an inadequate food supply leading to food rationing among detainees, and physical abuse from guards that have led to three people\u2019s deaths.<\/p>\n As a border community, El Paso experiences not only the Trump administration\u2019s brutal enforcement regime but also the detention of immigrants from around the country who are forced to live in tent cities and substandard conditions, with little oversight or say from the local communities where these facilities are housed. The administration has announced plans to open mega-detention centers<\/a> in warehouses throughout the country, including in El Paso.<\/p>\n