Today’s national actions against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) was originally called for by student groups from the University of Minneapolis: the Somali Student Union, the Graduate Student Union, the Ethiopian Student Union and more. Already, Minneapolis university students have organized numerous walkouts and massive protests, showing the way forward for universities everywhere. Outside of college campuses, high school students around the country have also been walking out against ICE, speaking out for their classmates, families and communities.

This is the second week of mass actions to shut it down against ICE. Last week, Minneapolis was ground to a halt by strikes, business closures and massive protests after the muder of Renee Nicole Good. Those actions came after weeks of on the ground organizing, street battles against ICE and community support networks providing care and protection. And then just one day after this massive and historic day of action, ICE murdered healthcare worker Alex Pretti, resulting in a new wave of mobilizations and calls for another day to shut it all down.

The mobilizations have forced Trump to take a step back by ousting Nazi-coat-wearing Greg Bovino, but this is not nearly enough. Despite the shift in leadership, Minneapolis ICE operations have continued essentially uninterrupted, now under the direction of far right Tom Homan.

The Democrats, while many praise the protests, are trying to contain and quell the radicalism of the actions and are relying on legislative maneuvers that will inevitably lead to ICE’s continued funding.

The way forward is in the streets. The way forward is in organizing our workplaces. The way forward is in our schools.

The university based campus movement made history when it took over university campuses across the country to decry the brutal genocide and occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. That movement has been beaten back by intense repression, but it has not been defeated. It is time to revive those university based movements to also include demands to abolish ICE, which has been occupying and terrorizing cities across the United States.

Universities are uniquely affected by the surge against immigrants given the large number of international students and international professors that make up our university community. Anyone on a college campus, anyone who knows international students, has heard stories about how they are living in fear from day to day.

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At universities like CUNY, where I study, large swaths of undergrad students are immigrants or come from immigrant families. Students are finding it difficult to focus or to study because they are afraid that their family members could be deported at any minute. One student said to me “I find it hard to even smile anymore. I’m just so scared of everything going on.”

We must mobilize on college campuses, we must take the “no school” seriously in “no work, no school, no shopping.” University unions, which have organized sickouts and strikes for wages and against the repression of pro-Palestine students, have a special role to play in this, and the University of Minneapolis grad union is showing the way by supporting today’s day of action with a sickout. We must bring this discussion to each of our union halls, organizing discussions and votes around sickouts and strikes.

We must also bring the discussion to academic departments. At CUNY’s Grad Center, the English Department cancelled all classes and activities in solidarity with today’s action.  During the International Women’s Strike of 2017, the Education Department did the same thing. Department based organizing is essential to organize at the level of our classmates, mobilizing them into action.

And the mighty student movement has a central role in this struggle, too. National SJP called to shut it down today, and that must mean organizing on every campus, with spaces for students to discuss, work together, and decide on communal actions. It is essential to also mobilize the YDSA, which has chapters on college campuses around the city and can play a leading role in organizing assemblies, voting next steps and building the rank and file organization needed to really shut down our universities.

What is happening in Minneapolis is historic, and it requires historic action on our part, in our universities. We must stand up for Minneapolis, calling for ICE out of Minneapolis, but also ICE out of our universities and communities and, ultimately, to abolish ICE and the Department of Homeland Security completely. That includes stopping all ICE recruitment on our college campuses and all university cooperation with ICE — in terms of administration and academic research, grants, and contracts. ICE has no place in our universities. We have to mobilize to kick them out of Minneapolis, out of our universities and to abolish this institution once and for all.

The post University Students and Workers Must Unite and Stand Up Against ICE appeared first on Left Voice.

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