‘No human being is illegal’

Day laborers, like these in Freehold, N.J., face detention under the Homeland Security laws.

Casa Freehold, a coalition made up mostly of immigrant workers from Latin America, held a rally and march in the central New Jersey town of Freehold on July 4. The protest, which brought out an estimated 200 people from around the region, including New York City, focused on the important struggle of immigrants who face daily racist attacks from bosses and politicians.

These workers face the terrible stigma of being declared “illegal’--a divide-and-conquer tactic meant to keep them invisible, unorganized and subject to starvation wages.

Although these workers face daily harassment and demonization from bigoted cops, the mainstream media and the Freehold mayor, they, with the support of North American activists, fought for and won the right to form a muster zone. That's an area where day laborers meet prospective employers in a kind of hiring hall.

Because they are together as a group, they can demand at least a minimum wage, and help build working-class unity against the bosses' greed to make more profits. Freehold has the only known muster zone of its kind for immigrant workers in the United States.

Most of these workers came here from Mexico. They can be taken into custody under the Homeland Security laws and face endless time in detention, including torture, without being brought up on any kind of charges. Civil-rights attorneys in New Jersey are filing lawsuits on behalf of these victims.

This sort of brutality, sanctioned under the Homeland Security and Patriot acts, is similar to what is occurring in Guantanamo to Muslims and South Asians at the hands of the U.S. military.  

The White House has given the green light to extra-legal terrorist vigilante groups like the Minutemen and Ku Klux Klan to both scapegoat and physically assault immigrant workers. It is important that the U.S. progressive movement and the trade unions show solidarity with the most oppressed workers, like those in Freehold.

They are on the front lines in fighting not only for their own rights, but for the rights of all workers, foreign and native born, especially in the United States.

--Monica Moorehead