Free them all: protest outside ICE prison in Jena, Louisiana

People traveled from across the Deep South on Tuesday to take part in a protest at an ICE prison in Jena, Louisiana. On any given day, as many as 2,000 people are caged at the LaSalle Detention Facility, one of nine for-profit immigrant prisons across the state. The majority of the people in detention have never been charged with a crime; most are forced to spend months in detention, and some, even years.

Protesters from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Shreveport, and beyond spoke out against the persecution of immigrants and demanded the release of student activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is being targeted by the Trump administration for speaking out against the U.S. / Israeli genocide in Palestine.

The Trump administration is trying to use ICE as a Gestapo-like force to crush any organizing against U.S. wars-for-profit, for workers’ rights, etc. They have been targeting our immigrant brothers and sisters, but their intention is to intimidate and repress any and all efforts to resist the U.S. billionaires’ agenda of war and austerity. Any efforts to defend and expand the labor and civil rights and social programs we’ve fought so hard to win must also be aimed at the abolition of ICE and the legalization of immigrants whose labor the billionaires exploit for super-profits. None of us is free if one of us is chained.

Marches, rallies, and actions to inspire courage among the people are all part of the fight against fascism. We will build our strength that much more by bringing the movement into our workplaces and working-class communities. The struggle for Palestinian freedom is part of the struggle for food on our table, is the struggle to liberate humanity from the clutches of the war and prison profiteers in control of the U.S. government.

Workers Voice Socialist Movement is based in New Orleans, Louisiana.