Immigration/Refuge Protests Continue in Seattle

—  by Gavin Amos-Lopez of Seattle Globalist.com —

It was a cool summer morning last Thursday, as I headed downtown to check out the daily vigil in front of the Seattle office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more commonly known as ICE.

The vigil was held outside 1000 2nd Ave in the heart of downtown Seattle’s business district. It is an intense corridor of the city with older giant nameless buildings that hold regional federal government headquarters for agencies like the IRS. I see a small group of rather ordinary looking people standing and holding up signs. The faces look familiar, in a way that naturally blends into Seattle’s cityscape: commuters, parents, teachers, bartenders and professionals. These were the supposed rebels in the face of the controversial government agency that commands a budget of over 6 billion taxpayer dollars and was responsible for over 200,000 deportations during 2017.

The protestors acted in customary Pacific Northwest fashion, polite and rather quiet, but that made the bold statements on their signs read that much louder. ICE is notorious for surveilling people within our communities. There are many stories of people being arrested on their way to work, tracking people through social media, and even through local news stories. This serves to create fear among many undocumented folks and silence their stories. Many of the migrants who travel to live in this country are escaping hostile conditions and are in search of safety. Just about all of the people present were white or white presenting, and they were open about that intersection. The people did their best to show solidarity and spoke with an understanding of leveraging their position within society to help those who cannot be present.

(To read the full article and view photographs, go to seattleglobalist.com/2018/07/17/dispatch-photos-from-seattles-anti-ice-vigil/)