Author Archives: alex

Cops and ICE collaborate to deport local immigrant workers

Two weeks ago local, state, and federal police, including Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) simultaneously raided massage parlors in Longmeadow, West Springfield, Hadley, Springfield and Chicopee More than 30 agents took part in the two Hadley raids, in which two people were arrested. In total, the police arrested nine people. Six were arrested on immigration charges and three on prostitution charges.

How do the police justify these expensive, high profile raids? An anonymous tip that a Chicopee massage parlor employee had offered sex for cash. Undercover cops investigated this tip multiple times but were never able to verify it. According to the cops, they had been investigating the massage parlors in Springfield for some time, but could not come up with enough evidence to arrest anyone there on the prostitution charges.

In these raids only three of the arrests had to do with prostitution. The majority of the arrests were for immigration violations. If these raids were targeted to break up a prostitution ring, then why are the majority of the charges related to immigration? It’s clear that when the vice squad couldn’t find enough evidence to put people away on prostitution charges, they turned to ICE to do their dirty work.

Now what about the six women who are now in ICE custody? At the East Longmeadow parlor that was raided, three of the employees that were undocumented were also living in the parlor. This means that they were almost certainly not paid a living wage and may even have been held against their will. They, like the 12 million other undocumented immigrants in this country, would have had almost no way of asserting their rights as workers. How many hours did they work a day? How many days a week? What happened to them if they were injured or assaulted by a customer? Their boss could have told them to do anything, and they would have no choice but to obey. If they spoke up, they could have easily been handed over to ICE to face imprisonment and deportation. Now that they have been arrested—not on prostitution charges but on immigration charges—they will be held without bail until a federal immigration judge reviews their cases. This means that people whose only crime was working will be sent to federal prison until they are deported.

While incarcerated by ICE, they will have no contact with their families or anyone else until they reappear in their home countries. This detention period could be as short as a few weeks or as long as a year. The ICE tactics of holding people without trial, contact with the outside world, or bail, is disturbingly similar to the practice of “disappearing” dissidents used by military dictatorships around the world. In the United States, this is the fate of millions who have come seeking jobs to support themselves and their families.

Most undocumented workers in this country are refugees of trade policies which devastate economies abroad. It is inhumane, hypocritical and unjust to then deport these people, tearing apart lives and families. We must organize against repressive immigration policy that makes it unsafe for immigrants to live and work in our communities. We must fight for dignity alongside undocumented workers—if ICE is coming for them, you can be sure the cops will be there too. So we must also organize ourselves against the police, who will always be willing to brutalize working people, immigrants or otherwise, in order to maintain economic inequality.

Cops Shoot Teen, Go Unpunished

The cops who shot Louis Jiles last summer have been cleared. At a traffic stop, the police mistook a beer bottle in Jiles’ hand for a gun, and shot him in the wrist. Months later, “independent arbitrators” and the Hampden County District Attorney rule that the cops did nothing wrong.
So, what’s the punishment for these [...]

RNC Aftermath: Torture in Ramsey County Jail

By now you’ve likely heard about the police repression of protesters at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota last week. Police made a massive show of force, arresting over 800 people, making a special effort to target journalists who were documenting the protests and the police violence going on. 
Perhaps more shocking and concerning [...]

May Day Rally a Success

Thanks to everyone who helped organize the WMCIWR (Western Massachusetts Coalition for Immigrant & Worker Rights) rally on May Day and to everyone who attended! Check out the WMCIWR blog for an assessment of the event.

Triggering Change: Hip-Hop Conference at UMass

Brothers & Sisters Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics And Hip-Hop Feminism,
“What It Look Like”: Race, Class & Hip-Hop,
Marketing A Revolution?: Hip-Hop Culture, Media Influence & You!
Sounds good? Then check out this weekend’s Triggering Change: Hip Hop, Media Justice and Social Responsibility Conference at the Isenberg School of Management at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Click [...]

Yale Daily News: Prisons commit greater crimes than inmates

Claire Gordon, in yesterday’s Yale Daily News, gives the rundown of some problems with the U.S. prison system. Not only does the United States imprison a higher percentage of its people than any other nation in the world, the system is hugely burdensome to taxpayers and disproportionately punishes people of color. As Gordon puts it, [...]

Trial Date Set for Martinez and Cops

On December 18, three off-duty Holyoke Police Department officers beat up Christopher Martinez, a Holyoke resident, outside of Pal Joey’s, a bar on Route 5. At a pre-trial conference this week, the date for the cops’ (the two who are being tried) trial was set: May 27, 2008, in Palmer District Court. Until then, the [...]

Police Surveillance in Springfield

The Springfield Police Department is looking into rolling out a program to install 50 video cameras Downtown, along with four microphones that can pick up the sound of  gunshots. This program also plans to install video cameras in police cruisers, both to scan license plates in search of stolen cars, and to record police officers [...]

ColorLines: Killed by the Cops

A recently published series of articles in ColorLines discusses research on race, crime, and police brutality. Relevant to our work in Springfield and Holyoke, this research says that nationally, the number of Latinos killed by the police is on the rise. Focusing on the ten largest U.S. cities, these articles show that police brutality [...]

Collecting Stories

Have you been harassed or beaten by the cops? Contact us and tell us what’s going on. Copwatch is collecting and publishing people’s stories of police harassment and brutality. Police abuse in our communities is widespread. By sharing our stories, we realize that none of us must suffer alone. We believe the struggle against police [...]