On ICE raids in our buildings

Early Tuesday morning, ICE agents raided a home in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx.

The reasons for the raids the public hears are the usual xenophobic and racist ones. The goal of this narrative is to terrify us, to disconnect us so deeply from one another that we do not bat an eye when migrants are violated or killed throughout the city.

We are responsible for each other. These are our buildings where these multiple city and federal agents are coming in to separate families and neighbors. People with kids and lives and routines, like us. These are our communities. They do not deserve this violence.

We cannot let outside forces—not politicians or mainstream NYC news or talking heads—tell us who our community is. We have to learn from each other and our histories. We cannot be afraid to keep each other and our homes safe. No agents should be allowed to walk into our buildings to arrest or to evict our neighbors.

And, people are already doing this. We will not be, are not, alone. People are having ICE watches. People are flyering. People are talking to each other and talking to local businesses and shops about how to report and confirm sightings. They are facilitating Know Your Rights gatherings and figuring out how to keep our buildings and communities safe. People are figuring out how to feed and educate and support each other. People all throughout the Bronx and New York City are organizing.

A borough on fire

Tenants are forming associations in buildings all around us. Dominicans and Haitians continue to gather and protest against anti-Haitian violence and the latest deportations of Dominicans following ICE raids in Puerto Rico. Throughout last year, legal aid workers went on strike for better wages. Street vendors protested against the increase in NYPD tickets and harassment.

Students for Palestine critiqued Fordham University’s silencing of Palestinian solidarity. BX and N.Y.C. comrades began fundraising for Khalil, a 24-year-old whose family was forced to flee violence in Gaza. (Khalil and his family are returning north. You can support them here.) Pro-Palestinian educational events were held at the Oval, Fordham Plaza, and campuses across the borough and city, including Fordham University. Throughout the year, Bronxites critiqued Sen. Ritchie Torres for the donations he receives from Zionists.

Throughout history in the Bronx, we have seen different groups fight for an improvement to our daily lives as workers. From indigenous and Black communities throughout the 1600s to today, including Puerto Rican and Black resistance movements of the 20th century to students organizing against the Vietnam War to students organizing today across CUNY campuses throughout the city.

Resistance is an integral part of how our communities survive in the Bronx and New York City.

When flyering late Tuesday night with other community members, we stopped by a shop and talked to one of the workers and a customer shopping for sandwiches.

The latter spoke for several minutes about the need for our Bronx community to understand our history, especially how we have resisted state violence. “We have always persevered. There are more of us than there are of them.”

We are responsible for each other, for our communities and land, our planet. We have the power to protect our migrant brothers and sisters. We must. The same communities, the same buildings that are being targeted by ICE exist inside the very same communities displaced by fires. The same communities where landlords are not giving us heat. Where we are struggling to eat and survive. All these things are connected.