Various cities across Canada—We are horrified by the violent and deadly actions of the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and previous threats from President Trump to dispatch the National Guard in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota.
This state-sanctioned and indiscriminate violence is reprehensible, deeply disturbing and anti-democratic. We are receiving reports from allied organizations, colleagues, friends and family about the brutality of ICE operations and the physical, emotional and psychological toll it is having on children, parents, racialized people and Indigenous people.
We mourn and stand in solidarity with the families, friends and communities of Los Angeles’ Keith Porter and Minneapolis-St. Paul’s Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti were brutally shot to death by federal ICE agents. As the Chicago Teacher’s Union stated after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, what is happening in Minnesota “is not an isolated incident; it is the predictable, violent consequence of policies designed to destabilize, traumatize, and dehumanize.” We stand in solidarity with allies’ calls in the US to “Abolish ICE, and oppose additional funding for ICE and Border Patrol this year.“
As Canadian organizations, we were outraged to learn that a Canadian manufacturer of armoured vehicles, Roshel, was “deployed by ICE during the operation in which the killing [of Alex Pretti] occurred.” Canadian complicity in these horrific actions must stop now.
The Canadian Parliament must immediately advance Bill C-233, the No More Loopholes Act, to ensure that weapons and components are not sent to the U.S., where the likelihood of their use in human rights violations is high and, as seen in the unlawful attacks against Venezuela, violations of international law.
From the illegal U.S. attack on Venezuela and the threats throughout the hemisphere – against Mexico, Colombia, Cuba and Greenland, and now the domestic attacks on U.S. cities, it would seem that the Trump administration is not concerned with the well-being of people and communities anywhere – it is consumed with consolidating power and further enriching ultra-rich corporate interests.
As neighbours to the North, we pledge our solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Minnesota and in all cities where ICE agents are terrorizing the population. No one should live in fear of invasion in any form. Everyone has a right to live in peace and with dignity.
In solidarity,
The Council of Canadians, Common Frontiers, World Beyond War – Canada
