For Immediate Release
Contact: press@blmgrassroots.org
June 13, 2025
On February 10th, Black Lives Matter Grassroots released our statement vehemently opposing Trump’s planned ICE raids. With the fascist raids now in full swing, let us be clear: abolishing ICE must be part of the Black liberation agenda. The blatant attacks on migrant communities are absolutely a Black issue. We assert this position on both moral and strategic grounds.
Black people are the moral compass of the world. Even in the face of unfettered fascism and absolute evil, we seek not retribution, but righteousness. It is simply wrong to tear mothers away from their children, separate spouses and siblings, and uproot those who (re)claim America as their home.
We pledge ourselves to a praxis of solidarity, understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all. The fates of oppressed people are bound up with one another. The Brown bodies that are being rounded up, detained, and deported, are exploited by the same oppressor which must be toppled to free us all.
Our people are also migrants. One in ten Black people in the United States are immigrants. Black migrants are the most likely to be targeted, detained, deported, and harmed by authorities.
The anti-immigrant apparatus will unquestionably be used to target and harm Black people, especially African Americans. African Americans stand at the bottom of virtually every social, political, and economic measure. Every single weapon of the state has been trained on us since our arrival in 1619. What is being tested on migrants now is being fine-tuned and will come for us with even greater vitriol in short order.
For goodness sake and the sake of our own freedom, we must stand in vision and courage in this moment. We must do all that we can to dismantle every facet of the policing system that descends from slave-catching – federal units like ICE, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, National Guard, as well as local ones. Black people must make it our mission is to destroy these systems that plague Black and Brown communities alike and build a world where we can all live and move freely.
We stand with the Pan-African world and our migrant relatives. We understand that borders are colonial inventions with no place of permanence or right of existence. We stand with the indigenous people and oppose the militarized settler state that holds zero claim, power, or authority on stolen land. We affirm the right of the people to resist these forces in the name of our collective liberation.
As a radical Black organization Black Lives Matter Grassroots is committed to strengthening our alliances with all oppressed peoples. We call on others in the Black community to reject fascist Americana rhetoric, and to instead join the righteous struggle in the streets. May we seize the time to build a world free from white supremacy and its violence, colonialism along with its creations, imperialism, militarism, patriarchy, racism, antiblackness, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism.
We implore well-meaning organizations, officials, and concerned community members to stop trying to educate the community about their “rights,” for it is clear we have no rights that the state chooses to respect at this time. We keep us safe. We reject calls for peace and non-violence from protestors who bravely challenge the fascist state that rips babies from their mamas’ arms, beats workers bloody, deports human beings to foreign prisons, douses crowds with tear gas, wields batons, and shoots dissenters with rubber bullets. It is the state that commits horrid acts of violence. As the white supremacist fascists show their hate and contempt for our lives with their violent actions, we show our radical love for the people in revolution. RESIST. RESIST. RESIST.
