DES MOINES, IOWA (February 3, 2020) — Today, RAICES installed cages throughout Des Moines as caucus-goers start going to sites in the city to choose their Democratic candidate for president. We put up a dozen chain-link cages in the city, placing them outside caucus sites, media offices, and other prominent places in the city, like city hall. These cages have fake children inside covered with mylar blankets, symbolizing the children jailed in detention along the border and throughout the country. Each cage includes a #DontLookAway sign and plays an actual recording from a child who was kept in detention.
“The horrors at our border and throughout our immigration system are too often ignored by the public and politicians,” said Erika Andiola, Chief Advocacy Officer for RAICES. “We’re asking people in Iowa and across the country: Don’t look away from the terrors enacted in your name. Don’t look away from the kids in cages, the asylum-seekers turned back at our border, the deportation raids destroying communities across the country. This anti-immigrant crackdown has to end.”
We’ll be holding a press conference at 5:30PM local time at Trinity Las Americas United Methodist Church to talk about our action, a church across the street from a caucus site. Trinity Las Americas Church, as well as the First Unitarian Church, will host cages all day.
These cages are similar to the ones we helped install in New York City over the summer, which went viral as thousands of people took photos of the cages and posted them online, even as police eventually dismantled the cages and hauled them off. We’re replicating the action in Des Moines at the height of the most anticipated caucus in modern history.
We’re doing this as the administration has broken records in immigration detention by keeping up to 55,000 people jailed at once, and has sent back more than 60,000 people to Mexico to await their asylum hearings in conditions that are utterly depraved, as we have been documenting for months. We’re doing this as the Trump administration has quadrupled workplace raids that target people holding a job and paying taxes in this country.
We’re doing this because almost no politicians in this country are laser-focused on immigration. While some do far better than others, the horror at our border still goes ignored far too often, absent from the policy debates and statements from elected officials.
To everyone watching, we're asking them not to look away. With this action, we’re pushing the new Migrant Justice Platform, a collection of policies by some two dozen grassroots organizations including RAICES to depart from the comprehensive immigration reform strategy and push for radical change to our immigration system. These policies include a full moratorium on deportations, an end to immigrant detention, citizenship for all 11 million undocumented people in the country, demilitarization of the border, the dismantling of ICE and CBP, and the formation of truth and reconciliation committees examining the human rights abuses committed against immigrants by past administrations.
The cages are in the following locations:
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Trinity Las Americas United Methodist Church (1548 8th St, Des Moines, IA 50314)
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Central Academy (1912 Grand Ave, Des Moines, IA 50309)
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Smokey Rowe Coffee (1910 Cottage Grove Ave, Des Moines, IA 50314)
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Pappajohn Sculpture Park (1330 Grand Ave, Des Moines, IA 50309)
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First Unitarian Church (1800 Bell Ave, Des Moines, IA 50315)
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Centro / Starbucks (909 Locust St, Des Moines, IA 50309)
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Des Moines Marriott Downtown (700 Grand Ave, Des Moines, IA 50309)
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Iowa State Capitol (1007 E Grand Ave, Des Moines, IA 50319)
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Wellmark YMCA (501 Grand Ave, Des Moines, IA 50309
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Des Moines Mural (5th Street and Locust St.)
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Savery Hotel (401 Locust St, Des Moines, IA 50309)
