A vigil today led by the “re-sisters” for people who have been detained by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) — and then have often become difficult or impossible to track — featured a 180-foot long scroll of butcher paper held up by 30 people.
Organizers had used markers in different shades to scrawl out thousands of names. Names like Seung Hun Baik. Sixto Garcia-Garcia (son of Diocelina Nuñez Hernandez.) Roger Molina-Acevedo. Some of those names were read out loud, and in response demonstrators would, in chorus, say “We send you hope” or “We send you peace.”
It was one of the more unusual events yet led by the re-sisters, a group that emerged several months ago to protest authoritarianism and the assault on civil liberties. Some demonstrators, who met at the corner of Mangrove and Vallombrosa avenues, were moved to tears, and re-sisters founding leader LeAnn Jenswold looked close to tears.
More than 200 people showed up — the local Indivisible chapter estimated there were 250 — and cars honked in support of demonstrators who were on the park side, making the intersection raucous when the stoplight was red.
A press statement said the detainees had been kidnapped by “people wearing black clothing and masks … No information for families or loved ones.”
(The Guardian reports that ICE detentions jumped from 40,000 just prior to inauguration to about 55,000 by late June. “A Guardian analysis of arrest and deportation data has revealed that Trump is now overseeing a sweeping mass arrest and incarceration scheme,” the paper says.)
“We wanted to bring visibility to the disappeared,” Jenswold said, noting that one of her group’s members wrote out most of the names, beginning the Herculean task in April. “There are thousands and thousands and thousands of names on this scroll.”
Some names were taken from the United States Disappeared Tracker built by data analyst Danielle Harlow. That document tallies people detained by ICE; today it lists 5,741 of the people who it says have been “disappeared by ICE” since Jan. 20, and whose identities Tracker staff could confirm. The Disappeared Tracker attempts to track these detainees as they move through the system, but in some cases, the document lists their detention facility as “unknown.”
In fact, the tracker indicates there are more than 4,300 of the people it is attempting to track but whose whereabouts are still unknown.
Names were also taken from a newspaper story that listed 700 people who were known to be, or scheduled to be, sent to the Everglades detention center that officials call “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“Individuals sent to the makeshift detention center do not show up in an online government database that allows the public to search for immigrant detainees’ whereabouts,” reported the Miami Herald, which also said there were hundreds of people there who had no criminal records or charges.
Jenswold said it’s entirely possible that by now, some of the people listed on the scroll have been deported.
A woman attending today’s vigil, Nita Torres, said agents are “grabbing people off the streets.”
“This is what North Korea and Russia do,” Torres said. “We need to protest.”
Liz Johnson, who spoke on behalf of NorCal Resist Chico, said the organization had been contacted recently by a woman who needed some help with a rent payment. Her partner, an asylum-seeker, was detained July 28 by ICE at Butte County Superior Court where he was attempting to resolve a traffic violation.
Leslie Layton is editor of ChicoSol, and working in collaboration with “Aqui Estamos,” an immigration reporting project, at American Community Media.
Can you follow up with contact info to donate and families left behind? Great article, thank you. Luisa
Hey Luisa, NorCal Resist keeps family info confidential but you can contribute to our fund! It’s part of our deportation defense program. DM me!
I will like to volunteer at least 1 day a week to protest l’m in the Inland empire area
Thank you.
Thank you for doing this important work: Re-Sisters to bring attention to this horrendous abuse of civil rights and inhumane treatment, and ChicoSol for your coverage to keep amplify it in people’s minds. Many are outraged at this un-American development which further erodes the status of our country in the world’s eyes, and our own sense of ourselves.
The vigil included a line of about a dozen ‘prisoners’ in grey garb, hands shakled behind backs, bent over and led in a line through the crowd, then crossing the street. It was a heartbreaking but impactful moment, that gave a stunning display of what it means to treat people as inhuman, at the hands of our current regime.
I hope that this ‘prisoner line’ display might be repeated at other actions to shock our community, as it should. This activity cannot become normalized.