Editor’s note: This statement by Camilo Perez Bustillo was issued by Witness at the Border, in observance of International Human Rights Day and International Migrants Day.
“The traditions of the oppressed teach us that the state of exception in which we live is not the exception, but the rule.” – Walter Benjamin (1940)
We write in the spirit of observances throughout the U.S and the world of International Human Rights Day on December 10 and International Migrants Day on December 18. For us, these are days of conscience, solidarity, and resistance, without borders, in defense of the universal right to freedom of movement in search of a dignified life.
We reaffirm this vision and commitment as the rights recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and those of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and displaced persons specifically, throughout the world — “peoples in movement” — are under intensifying attack everywhere. The Trump administration’s policies and practices of mass detention and mass deportation echo past abuses, at the same time as they normalize new forms of persecution, cruelty and terror against migrant families, communities, and countries of origin.
These measures constitute an essential component of the overall weave of neo-fascist authoritarianism that has undermined the rule of law within the U.S, driven by militarism, nationalism, and supposed “populism” grounded in racism, hatred and xenophobia.
Threats to undo the guarantees of birthright citizenship provided by the Fourteenth Amendment must be understood in this context, along with the illegal character of National Guard and military deployments in support of ICE and Border Patrol enforcement in contexts such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Portland, New York City, North Carolina, Memphis, New Orleans, Minneapolis/St. Paul, the San Francisco Bay Area, etc., and militarized, inhumane detention camps characterized by conditions equivalent to torture in settings such as the Everglades (“Alligator Alcatraz”), Fort Bliss (“Camp East Montana”) and Guántanamo.
These include systematic patterns of forced disappearances and torture through third country deportations to settings such as CECOT in El Salvador and complicity in persecution and terror against migrants in contexts ranging from Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, and Perú to Eswatini, Djibouti, South Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana, as well as the racist targeting and collective punishment of Afghan, Somali and Haitian migrants and communities within the U.S, among others, and of their countries of origin. This is the other side of the coin of the rekindled imperialist interventionism that has become rampant in contexts such as the illegal airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, and the potentially imminent threats of intervention against Venezuela and Colombia, and ongoing U.S intervention in the Honduran elections.
Now, more than ever, it is clear to us that the border is present wherever immigrant communities are present — wherever our sisters and brothers live, work, and struggle.
This is why Witness at the Border decided to launch our “Blue Triangle” campaign in response to the Trump administration’s criminalization of migrants. This initiative highlights the connection between Nazi persecution of migrants as a distinct category — first in forced labor camps in the 1930’s and eventually in those weaponized with the genocidal machinery of extermination that culminated in the Holocaust — and the repressive logic of the Trump administration’s targeting of migrants through measures such as mass detention and mass deportation, the negation of internationally protected rights to asylum and refuge, the reactivation of the Alien Enemies Act and Insurrection Act and related abuses.
This is a historical moment that shares important political, ethical, and spiritual dimensions with previous eras when illegitimate forms of power had to be challenged by people of good will as a duty of collective, conscientious citizenship on a local, national and global scale.
Today, WE STAND WITH IMMIGRANTS in the spirit of the Abolitionist movement of the 1850’s and the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960’s and their successors
PLEASE STAND WITH US. PLEASE JOIN US!!
Brooklyn, NY – Witness at the Border has joined with over 30 immigration advocacy and support organizations to launch the Blue Triangle Solidarity campaign. The effort unites around the message, “I Stand With Immigrants.” It will include an in-person presence with symbols of inverted blue triangles at marches and rallies across the country and a social media campaign.
Joshua Rubin, founder of Witness at the Border, explains it this way: “The Nazis forced immigrants to wear blue triangles to identify themselves. Immigrants are under attack, and, right now, we all have to be immigrants, don’t we?”
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