Prepare for ICE: Know your rights and make a plan

Presenter: At the Feb. 8 rally in Kesey Square, community organizer Alejandro urged the crowd to carry its momentum forward into action.

Alejandro (Community organizer): It’s beautiful that the people are out today. This is community. This is what a protest, this is what an event is supposed to do: bringing the people together. And to see the people, to see each and every one of you all here is so nice to see because we do exist here in this community and we won’t be silent.

[00:00:34] So that being said, I want to encourage each and every one of you all here to take that step forward after this protest, to take a step forward after this event, to not let the conversation die out. Let’s have that same energy, the same love, the same passion that we are here today. How can we transfer that and start going to city council, to our school board meetings, calling our legislators, right?

[00:01:10] Or just simply having that conversation at the dinner table. There are ways to help. If you feel like you don’t know where to start, you can start by going onto this website and printing out knowing your rights information: Immigration Legal Resource Center. If you look it up, they have a website where you can print out your own Know Your Rights cards, their red cards.

[00:01:37] So maybe we can start there. Maybe having that conversation, right? Having a printing party where you get all your friends and homies together and start printing out these things and start going to your local businesses. Start going to your neighborhoods. Start going handing out to people that you see in the streets.

[00:01:55] On this website, not only can you print it in English and Spanish, but you can also print it in Arabic. You can print it out in French. There’s so many languages that you can print out this information. And it’s just a simple card. So if you want to start with something, let’s start there.

[00:02:11] Portland Immigration Rights Coalition, PIRC, already has a hotline ready to go. I know that in our communities and working with the communities, there’s a lot of misinformation that goes on, right, and that creates fear. So if you do see ICE, make sure to call that number. I’ll repeat it: (888) 622-1510.

[00:02:40] You can also go on their website. It’s called the Portland Immigration Rights Collision (PIRC), and the hotline is already ready to go because that way if we do see ICE, that’s the phone number to call instead of spreading out the message and causing fear. Because that’s been kind of one of the headaches that a lot of organizers as myself, that there’s been a lot of misinformation going on.

[00:03:05] And so if you want to be able to protect the people, there’s a hotline already that’s statewide and there’s already a Lane County rapid response team that’s ready to go. So I just want to let you all know that. It is very important that you all came out today and to really take all this energy and all this love and all this passion, really move it forward to go into, you know, city council, the school board, because that’s really where we make change, right?

[00:03:35] This is the step. This is the step that we take for more change. If there’s a policy or if there’s not a policy, how can we create a policy, right? And so that’s about it. I’ll end it on a quote that I love and I always share with the people. And it goes a little bit like: ‘They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.’ Thank you.

[00:04:03] Presenter: In a subsequent interview with Jana Thrift on KEPW’s Legalize Survival, Alejandro talked about why it’s so important to use the hotline:

[00:04:12] Alejandro (Community organizer): I mentioned on Saturday from the last protest that there’s a website called ILRC, which is the Immigration Legal Resource Center, where people can go and look up the red cards, which is a red card that shows you all your rights, a red card that you can give to an official, an ICE official or police officer as well, in case you don’t want to say anything or risk anything, you just simply hand them that card and you remain silent.

[00:04:43] Maybe we can start with printing parties, you know, you want to be able to help the community and let’s do some printing parties. Let’s get together. Let’s print out these cards, laminate them and simply just go out to the streets, go to your local businesses, go to the schools, go to your neighborhoods, and I’m sure that that’s all free. Just on your own time, whenever you want, just be able to go do that. And I think that’s just a great start for the people to really just get engaged and doing their part and protecting the community

[00:05:15] Presenter: Another important phone number is for the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition. From KEPW’s Legalize Survival, Jana Thrift:

[00:05:23] Jana Thrift (KEPW, Legalize Survival): The Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition, and this is the number you shared to report ICE activity in your community, right? (888) 622-1510.

[00:05:36] Alejandro (Community organizer): Yeah, and I feel like the reason I know the organizer reached out to me and asked if I wanted to give a speech at that protest, and I said yes. And I made sure that, you know, when I spoke, it wasn’t really much of a speech, it wasn’t about my story or my struggle. I really wanted to inform the people how they can help and where they can help.

[00:05:58] And I specifically also mentioned the PIRC hotline just because, working with the people and in the community and also working with other organizers, it’s been quite an a headache that we’ve had to deal with misinformation that’s been going around. So, yeah, we’ve been having to debunk a lot of misinformation about ICE being in town.

[00:06:22] We’ve gone to places and we ended up finding out that they were, you know, landscaping trucks. And I know that they’re doing their good intention of wanting to, you know, protect the community, the people.

[00:06:36] But with this number, if we do see ICE here, or do you felt like you’ve seen ICE, the appropriate thing to do is to call this number, cause you know, when we call this number, there’s already a rapid response ready to go to these places and make sure that it’s true. And if it’s not true they’ll inform the people once again and be like, ‘Hey, like there, there’s no ICE here,’ or ‘There was no ICE presence here,’ or they get to the bottom of it.

[00:07:03] And so I feel like if we can directly call the hotline, that’ll decline the fear that’s being put out in the community and let the rapid response, you know, handle that aspect of trying to figure out if it’s true or not.

[00:07:18] Jana Thrift (KEPW, Legalize Survival): I think it’s really good that already, there is a place where people can call. I’ll go ahead and repeat the number, (888) 622-1510, (888) 622-1510.

[00:07:36] And so there’s actually a rapid response group already in our county that would respond if somebody called this number, then somebody that has experience could go and analyze the situation, see what is needed to support or let people know that it’s not a situation at all. That seems like a really good, good advice.

[00:08:02] Alejandro (Community organizer): From my understanding, most of these people are already legal observers, so they have already prepared and, you know, done the workshops and done ‘Know Your Rights.’ And so they’re well-equipped people. So, I put my trust in them.

[00:08:15] Presenter: Host of Legalize Survival, Jana Thrift:

[00:08:18] Jana Thrift (KEPW, Legalize Survival): And I wanted to be sure to go back to this Immigration Legal Resource Center, ILRC.org. It’s like a wealth of resources for anybody who has interest in the subject. There’s a lot of different things that they offer trainings and different recordings of different things that they’ve done in the past and seems like a really good organization.

[00:08:542] Their mission is ‘to work with and educate immigrants, community organizations, and the legal sector to continue to build a democratic society that values diversity and the rights of all people,’ and I really appreciated that mission there.

[00:09:10] Alejandro (Community organizer): And I think that’s where we kind of want to lead the people to is to know their rights and to be well-informed.

[00:09:17] I feel like now with today’s technology, it makes it easy to, you know, just simply go on our phones and look up these Know Your Rights. I’m sure that YouTube has plenty of videos, of course. And so don’t think that it’s hard. It’s, it’s, it’s just a Google away. It’s just a YouTube search away where you can really inform yourself.

[00:09:39] And most of these websites, organizations have already things out there that you can just look up and be ready to learn and, and just, educate yourself.

[00:09:49] Jana Thrift (KEPW, Legalize Survival): Yeah, yeah, this is a great website. I really like this ILRC.org website. One of the things they have here is a downloadable, fillable, printable form about family preparedness. Yeah, it seems very useful.

[00:10:08] Alejandro (Community organizer): Yeah, because that’s kind of one thing that was working with the community is really having that conversation about family preparedness.

[00:10:16] What if ICE does show up and what if they do raids in our community? Are we prepared to have the conversation of like, what happens to the kids? You know, who are the the kids going to, or what’s the process?

[00:10:30] So, I’m sure that with that family preparation, there’s ways that they can, you know, start having that conversation and start kind of getting ahead of the game just in case anything happens.

[00:10:40] And like, I kind of tell the people, God forbid any of this happens where we’re losing families, but it’s good to prepare ourselves for anything.

[00:10:50] Presenter: Community organizer Alejandro speaks at the Feb. 8 rally and then joins Jana Thrift on KEPW’s Legalize Survival. Know your rights and make a family preparedness plan. For more, see the website at ILRC.org.

Listen to Legalize Survival Wednesdays at 7 p.m. on KEPW 97.3 FM.