We are grateful to those who have been sharing materials and strategies for getting people free from ICE’s deadly negligence. Here are two additional tools:
The first is below. It is a pro se humanitarian parole request packet for folks in detention, with instructions in English, Spanish, and French. We’ve shared with Freedom For Immigrants (FFI) who will in turn send the packet to folks they’re in contact with via FFI’s hotline. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is currently working on a more comprehensive version 2 of this packet.
The second is a pro se parole packet meant to help guide folks on the outside as they assemble parole requests for community members and loved ones in detention. You can find it on SPLC’s website, here. Please share both widely.
As many have noted, Coronavirus will enter those detention centers it hasn’t already entered. And when it does, if people haven’t gotten free, many people will get sick at the same time. ICE will be in a position to either:
- Bring people in need of medical care to hospitals and overwhelm local hospital systems, or
- Do what they have historically done, and provide sick people with inadequate medical care in the detention center itself, leaving many to die.
We’re sharing these tools to add to advocates’ arsenals because neither of these options is acceptable and we, like you, recognize that this moment calls for a diversity of tactics and a surge of energy directed at getting people free. ICE is pretending this is business as usual, it’s not.
We hope that pro se parole requests with a focus on COVID-19 become one more tool for folks organizing on the inside. Please share these widely, and if you are able to translate, please share those translations widely!
