Tucson, AZ – Continuing a pattern of retaliation against immigrant rights organizers, the Tucson office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has taken Alejandra Pablos into custody, and has said that she cannot be released as she is subject to detention without access to a bond.
“They are trying to tear our movement and our community apart and I’m not going to let that happen,” Pablos said during a video recorded in case of her detention. “They are retaliating against all activists and organizers. I need you to fight for me on the outside as I am fighting inside,” the video concludes.
Pablos was a legal permanent resident who was placed in deportation proceedings in 2011 after substance-abuse related arrests and spent two years detained at the Eloy Detention Center in southern Arizona. Since her release, she has been on probation and checking in with ICE frequently. She is in the process of requesting asylum based on dangers she would face as a political organizer in Mexico.
In early January, as Pablos was leading chants at a peaceful protest in Virginia outside of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), she was abruptly detained by local agents. It appears that after the protest in Virginia, one of the ICE agents called her deportation officer in Tucson, Arizona, and sought to get her detained in retaliation for her protest.
This morning, when Pablos showed up to her check-in with ICE in Tucson, she was taken into custody. She will not have a chance to be released or to pay a bond until she sees an immigration judge at an indeterminate time. Pablos is a nationally recognized immigrant rights and reproductive rights activist. She is based in Tucson and Washington D.C., and is a long-time member of Mijente. Friends and family are asking for supporters to sign this petition.
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Mijente is a digital and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx movement building and organizing that seeks to increase the profile of policy issues that matter to our communities and increase the participation of Latinx and Chicanx people in the broader movements for racial, economic, climate and gender justice.
