“Three million deportations!”
Over and over, the call rang through Detroit’s Fox Theatre on Wednesday night, where CNN was hosting the second night of the July Democratic debates.
The target: former vice president Joe Biden.
The voices behind the chant: Movimiento Cosecha activists Lorena Aguayo-Marquez and Ofelia, who declined to provide Teen Vogue with her last name. The two women kept up the cry until, they said, security removed them from the premises.
Movimiento Cosecha started nationally in 2015 and has been organizing in Michigan since 2017, according to a representative for the group. Cosecha is an immigrant-led movement that seeks to “win permanent protection, dignity, and respect for all 11 million undocumented immigrants,” and, as the Cosecha representative put it, to highlight “the power of the immigrant community through its workers and consumers, boycotts and strikes.” The word “cosecha” means harvest in Spanish, and is meant to honor the undocumented workers who have long labored in American fields.
Ofelia and Aguayo-Marquez advocated for immigrant rights in the Great Lake state for years before getting involved with Cosecha. At the debate, the pair carried banners that read, “Stop All Deportations on Day 1.”
Although they were not inside Fox Theater to witness the conversation started by their words, their chants prompted New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio to ask Biden if he used his power as vice president to stop deportations under the Obama administration.
“Did you say those deporations were a good idea?” DeBlasio asked, “Or did you go to the president and say ‘this is a mistake, we shouldn’t do it,’ which one?” To which Biden responded, “What I do say to you is, [Obama] moved to fundamentally change the system. Much more has to be done.”
Teen Vogue caught up with the activists both before and after the action.
“I did this because the immigrant community in Michigan is facing a crisis and we need our voices and our demand to be heard: any candidate who claims to be against Trump’s raids and family separations needs to make a real commitment to protect all 11 million undocumented immigrants from detention and deportation,” Ofelia said in a statement sent to Teen Vogue “That means using executive authority to stop all deportations on day one in office. We won’t accept empty promises of immigration reform. Obama promised immigration reform and then separated 3 million families. We cannot allow history to repeat itself.”
Movimiento Cosecha has taken on Biden before. In July, Cosecha activists shut down his campaign headquarters in Philadelphia, and approached him in New Hampshire, demanding an apology to the immigrant community, as well as a commitment to ending all detention and deportation if he is elected president.
Teen Vogue reached out to both the Biden campaign and Democratic National Committee for comment on Movimiento Cosecha’s recent activities, but did not hear back.
Cosecha recently launched their Dignity2020 Campaign, which lays out a platform for Democratic hopefuls, calling for “an end to all detention and deportation,” as well as family reunification for everyone separated by deportation,” and “immediate legalization for all 11 million undocumented immigrants.”
Cosecha organizers felt the Democratic candidates had paid insufficient attention to immigration thus far in the campaign. Cosecha’s organizing around the Detroit debate was two-fold: to provoke a response from the presidential candidates and to shed light on the issues faced by the state’s large immigrant community.
“There are over 100,000 undocumented immigrants here in the Michigan community,” Brenda Valladares, a representative from Movimiento Cosecha, told Teen Vogue. “They are experiencing the same levels of harassment as people at the southern border.”
“The fact that no one is addressing the idea to end detention and deportations on day one, it’s sickening. For our community, there is no debate. Our community needs a statement from the candidates saying we commit to doing this,” Michigan Cosecha organizer Nelly Fuentes, who is undocumented, told Teen Vogue. “What they are not seeing is that we are not a topic, we are human beings. The fact that we are being pawns on their political gains, it needs to end… We need to make sure that the public knows that this is not concentrated at the southern border. It also happens on the northern border.”
Prior to Wednesday night’s debate, Cosecha and their allies, including activists from Never Again Action, a group of Jewish activists who stand in solidarity with the Latinx immigrant community, and the Sunrise Movement, a climate justice organization, attempted to shut down the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, also known as the Detroit-Canada tunnel. This tunnel connects Detroit in the United States to Windsor, Ontario in Canada. The action called attention to the danger Detroit immigrants face every day as a result of the city’s close proximity to the Canadian border, which means there is a high volume of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and Border Patrol agents in the community.
“We are trying to shift the narrative, not only calling attention to the crisis of immigration, but the treatment in immigrant communities every day,” Cindy Gamboa, a Cosecha Michigan activist, told Teen Vogue, “I live less than one mile from the national border. My community is living in constant fear of being stopped by federal agents… There have been raids, ICE and Border Patrol scope out and are usually around schools after school gets out. They have been known to patrol around our churches and places of work, and I want to call attention to the inhumane practices happening in our community.”
Police arrested 21 Cosecha allies at Wednesday’s protest, but all 21, including Grand Rapids, Michigan native, Deirdre Cunningham, were released shortly after. Cunningham was introduced to Movimiento Cosecha during a “Day Without Immigrants” rally the group organized on May 1. In their hometown, it drew an estimated 4,000 people.
“I’m coming to stand with the immigrant community in solidarity and put my body on the line. I don’t have much power in the system, but what I do have is my body,” Cunningham told Teen Vogue in a phone conversation prior to Wednesday’s action. “I’m a little nervous. I don’t know what exactly is going to take place... I’m not sure when I’m going to come home. But that is the fear that my immigrant neighbors face everyday.”
Following their arrest and release, Cunningham told Teen Vogue, “I [did] this for the people I love and the people they love... Civil disobedience is a long and time-honored tradition that works, and I'm honored to have the privilege to participate.”
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