Calling on Biden for Help, Immigrant Activists Claim ICE Targets Them

Immigrant rights advocates say there’s a growing body of evidence that ICE deliberately retaliates against activists and they are urging the Joe Biden administration to do something about it, reports NPR. Activist Maru Mora-Villalpando, who has protested an immigrant detention facility in Washington and was born in Mexico, was recently placed in deportation proceedings by ICE after an email exchange between high-ranking ICE officers labeled her an “instigator” and a “well-known local illegal alien” and suggested that trying to deport her might “take away some of her ‘clout.’ “

A new report prepared by The University of Washington School of Law Immigration Clinic, with input from immigrant rights activists across the country, claims that federal immigration officials are engaged in “a sustained campaign of ICE surveillance and repression against advocacy groups and activists.” ICE denies retaliating against anyone. The agency says it is simply enforcing immigration law against people who are living in the country illegally. In the case of Mora-Villalpando, immigration authorities did not place Mora-Villalpondo in deportation proceedings until years later and after she had spent much of her time as an advocate openly discussing her status as an illegal immigrant.  Activists want immigration officials to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in the cases of organizers and activists, and to bring home immigrants who were deported or targeted for deportation because of their work.