Tag: testimony

The following is a video record of the testimony of of Abi Morrison, Annegien Zuidema, and Peter Yanz to the Rockland City Council in Maine on March 10, 2025. Video credit: Marjorie Strauss. Transcript follows.

---

You have a choice: a choice between words and actions.

The resolution affirming community trust and clarifying law enforcement responsibilities claims that Rockland police will not participate in targeting people based on immigration status. But this council has already taken federal money, the Operation Stonegarden Grant funds, and those will compel our law enforcement officers to do exactly that.

On January 29, 2025 the president signed S. 5 into law. Under this law, anyone merely suspected of being undocumented can be detained, and also if they are also just suspected of having committed a crime. There is no conviction necessary; there is no judicial review. Anyone who isn’t white is at risk. Once detained, they disappear into a system with no transparency and no oversight. Families don’t know where their loved ones are. They don’t know if they will ever see them again.

And now, for the first time in history, our government is using Guantanamo Bay to detail immigrants who were apprehended here, on U.S. soil. This is completely unprecedented, it is completely illegal, and it is happening now. The administration refuses to provide notices of transfer. Detainees are living in daily fear of being moved without warning, without reason, and without recourse. They are cut off from their family, cut off from their attorneys, literally cut off from hope.

And this is what we do know about conditions at Guantanamo Bay thanks to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit: detainees are confined in solitary, windowless cells for at least 23 hours each day. Detainees are allowed extremely limited time outside their cells. They are constantly shackled and invasively strip-searched. They are never permitted to contact family members.

Guards engage in verbal and physical abuse including restraining people to a punishment chair for hours, withholding water as retaliation, threatening to shoot detainees, fracturing an individual’s hand by slamming a radio into it. People are losing 10-20 pounds over the span of several weeks. They can’t sleep because of what they’ve endured there. These degrading conditions and extreme isolation have led to several suicide attempts as well.

People are getting picked up who have a green card, who are here legally. This isn’t some far-away injustice. This is here and now. The rate at which Customs and Border Patrol are picking up people doubled just in January.

The council can’t have it both ways. It can’t claim to stand for justice with a resolution while taking money from a system that is based on cruelty. If we are going to truly stand by this resolution, then we have to act. We have to return the Operation Stonegarden grant before the new fiscal year. If we don’t, this blood is on your hands.