by Laura Glesby
“What do we want?” “ICE out!”
That call and response resounded from a crowd around the fountain on the New Haven Green at sunset on Friday.
Protesters braved the cold to show support for residents of Minneapolis, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have shot and killed a civilian, dragged people out of their homes, imprisoned young children to send them halfway across the country to detention centers, and more — all as part of an escalation of immigration enforcement in the city this month.
Many Minneapolis residents stayed home from work and school in protest of ICE on Friday.
In solidarity, among the New Haveners assembled on the Green were local politicians, alternative political parties such as the Party for Socialist Liberation (PSL), and representatives from the teachers union and New Haven Rising.
“Together,” said Carolyn Valcourt of PSL, “we can show these cowards what real love looks like.”
In addition to calling for the abolition of ICE, rally leaders spoke out against Israel and Zionism, called on Yale to contribute more funding to New Haven, and criticized the Trump administration’s coup in Venezuela.
In the crowd, someone blew bubbles into the sky. Someone else held up an upside-down American flag. Keffiyehs abounded. Several handwritten signs compared Trump to Hitler and ICE to the Nazi Gestapo.
For one of the rally’s speakers, Mary Ghebremeskal, ICE’s crackdown in Minneapolis has literally hit home.
A Yale student from South Minneapolis, Ghebremeskal spoke as a member of Yale’s Somali Students Association. She’s watched from New Haven as ICE has targeted the Somali community that she grew up in.
Here’s an excerpt from Ghebremeskal’s remarks at Friday’s rally:
I’m from South Minneapolis. I was born there. And I’m Somali and Eritrean American, so I grew up with that being my community that I lived my entire life around. And I wanted to put in context what it’s like living in South Minneapolis right now.
Outside of South High School (where I went to high school) — outside of Roosevelt High School (which is a mile away from where I went to high school) — there are ICE agents every single day. … ICE agents will ask for people to show their papers when they’re walking to school. When they’re trying to get on the bus. When they’re trying to take the train. Living in a constant state of fear.
Every single day, a child is unable to go to day care. Every single day, a student is too scared to go to school. Every single day, a working family is unable to pay rent because they cannot go to work.
And when they’re on the streets, it’s illegal to be homeless. When they’re out on the streets, that’s when ICE gets them.
Every single day, this is happening in my city. And then the next, and then the next, and then the next.
