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A guide for groups organizing Truth and Accountability Forums in collaboration with the We Are Home Campaign to call for immediate action from the Biden Administration to stop deportations and end detention.
Table of Contents
About Truth and Accountability Forums
Template: Invitation to Elected Officials and Community Leaders
ICE Enforcement Categories & Suggested Storytellers
Documenting Your Forum for Action
Petition + Call Campaign [COMING SOON]
About the Truth and Accountability Forums
In response to organizing, President Biden ordered a 100-day review of all immigration enforcement policies and practices adopted during the last four years, to inform policy change. Because we know that nobody is better-acquainted with ICE’s failures than the communities impacted by its policies and practice, Mijente and the national We Are Home campaign, are working with community organizations across the country to organize Eyes on ICE, a series of Truth and Accountability Forums to expose the immigration enforcement practices we have witnessed and lay out the solutions needed for a free future.
Eyes on ICE aims to put our communities’ experiences with racist and abusive immigration enforcement back in the national spotlight to ensure that the Biden administration’s immigration review is substantive, informed by impacted communities, and lays the groundwork for deep and tangible change—rather than papering over years of abuse. Eyes on ICE will highlight 6 policy demands put together by communities across the country with solutions wholly under the Biden administration’s control. In contrast with legislation which will likely take years to pass, President Biden can implement these changes immediately to rein DHS in and begin dismantling the deportation machine.
There is no time to wait. While Joe Biden called the Obama era’s 3 million deportations “a mistake” on the campaign trail, already a staggering 26,248 people have been deported just one month into the Biden presidency. To put an end to these human rights abuses as soon as possible, the Biden administration must incorporate the expertise of impacted communities into its review, and use its executive powers to overhaul ICE, CBP, and the rest of the deportation machine.
Eyes on ICE will culminate in a national Truth and Accountability Forum where we will assess President Biden’s first 100 days and how far his administration has gone towards standing up to the cruelty, corruption, and bloat of the current deportation machine.
We invite organizations with first-hand experience with the impact of abuses perpetrated by DHS and its agencies to sign up to host their own virtual or in-person Truth & Accountability forum. We encourage groups to invite their elected officials and members of the general public to the forums to continue building a national movement to push the Biden administration & document the forums with pictures, transcripts, zoom recordings or live streams, and written testimonies. Mijente will help compile the testimonies presented in each forum to submit them to the Biden administration.
This written guide is meant to help organizations plan their Truth and Accountability Forums. It includes the We Are Home Coalition’s policy demands, a technical guide, storytelling tips, and various templates to help you through the process. Additionally, Mijente has organizers around the country who are available to provide support and guidance, particularly in regard to documentation and submitting forum testimony to the Biden Administration.
Eyes On Ice Policy Demands
Dismantling the brutal immigration enforcement system, which disproportionately harms Black and Brown immigrants and tears families apart, must be a central priority for the Biden Administration. The We Are Home Campaign, a coalition made up of over 100 partner organizations around the country including Mijente, has endorsed the following immediate policy demands for the Biden Administration’s first 100 days.
- Immediately make good on President Biden’s promise to halt deportations by directing ICE to grant Stays of Removal to all individuals facing deportation and conduct a review to release every person currently in detention; as 120 legal experts and law professors have explained, the temporary restraining order issued by a Trump-appointed Judge does not bar the Biden Administration from taking these actions.
- Close detention facilities and end the use of private prisons and state and local jails
- Stop fusing policing with mass deportation by ending the 287(g) program, the Secure Communities program, and the use of ICE detainers
- Close hundreds of thousands of pending deportation cases on the immigration court docket
- Adopt prosecutorial discretion guidelines that provide relief from hyper-criminalization, not more punishment
- Allow people seeking asylum at the southern border to enter the country—instead of detaining or turning them away
These actions will help ensure that the interior enforcement system is far smaller and less harmful at the end of the moratorium announced by Biden on January 20, and will lay a marker for ongoing enforcement reforms in the coming months. We encourage you to tie your Truth And Accountability Forum event to these demands and focus on one of more of the issue areas laid out in the ICE Enforcement Categories Chart.
We are aware that these are not the only things that need to be changed for a better immigration system. This list is compiling issues that are both crucial to the immigrant community and that President Biden has the power to change through executive powers in the first 100 days
Sign Up to Host Your Forum
Once your organization/group is ready to host a forum, sign up on this form. On this form you will be asked to enter information for the organization’s point of contact for the forum and event information (such as date, time, organization name and location).
When possible, we recommend that the forums be hosted on a virtual platform, taking into consideration current COVID-19 safety concerns. However, if there is an in-person component to the forum, we ask that the event be streamed into a zoom and/or livestream platform where participants can join and the forum can be recorded. The additional option allows for individuals who are unable to join the in-person Forum to learn from the testimonials.
Once the form is filled out, it will be reviewed and subject to approval. Once an event is approved, the point of contact on the form will receive a registration link for their unique event and a Mijente organizer will reach out to them for further planning and support.
Sign Up to Host a Forum |
Designing Your Forum
After signing up to host a forum, your organization can further develop the vision for the event. For example, some organizations may want their forum to focus on one specific aspect of immigration enforcement. Other groups might want to design their event with a regional or local frame. The questions below may be helpful to consider as you plan out what your forum will look like:
- What areas of immigration enforcement has your community been most impacted by? We provided an ICE Enforcement Categories & Suggested Storytellers, which may be useful in identifying ICE enforcement areas to focus on, and the kinds of community stories that can best illustrate why reforms are necessary.
- Are there any local campaigns you will feature during the forum?
- What are the main policy demands we want to push for that Biden has power to change? This guide lists the We Are Home Campaign’s policy demands, but if there are additional policy demands your organization wants to make, you should include those in your event.
- Who are the speakers and storytellers you would like to feature? Who will be the moderator?
Template: Invitations to Elected Officials and Community Leaders
Consider inviting elected officials who have been strong allies as well as those that you believe you can build a relationship with to collaborate on immigration enforcement issues in the future. The time you take now to educate and engage them can lead to their taking action in the future for our demands. If they’re federal officials, they’ll be able to intervene in key committees, advocate directly with DHS officials and others within the Biden administration, support or co-sponsor legislation, and take a public stance to build support behind our demands. If they’re state or local officials, they can echo our demands, act to limit their own agencies’ and departments’ collaboration with ICE, hold their local ICE field office to account, and put pressure on federal officials to act. Below is an email invitation template you can adapt to ask officials to participate in your forum.
Honorable [ELECTED OFFICIAL NAME],
I’m reaching out on behalf of the [ORGANIZATION] to invite you to our [EVENT NAME] Forum about how federal immigration enforcement issues impact [STATE/CITY] residents. This virtual Forum will take place on [DATE] in partnership with We Are Home, a coalition of over 100 immigrant rights organizations around the country. The Forums seek to inform the immigration review that the Biden administration is conducting during its first 100 days. We would be honored to feature you as a special guest during our Forum on [DATE]. [CONSIDER: In addition, after the event, we are interested in meeting with your office to discuss our local and national strategy on immigration enforcement and explore how you could play a role in this important work.]
[ORGANIZATION NAME] has [DESCRIBE WORK] for [TIMEFRAME]. Along with our national partners through the We Are Home Campaign, we are at the forefront of organizing nationally to raise awareness of the impacts of the past administration’s policies, as part of the process of making the changes which are so pressing in our immigration system.
During the Forum we will host a space for [STATE/CITY] community members to provide testimony about the impact of immigration enforcement in [STATE/CITY], specifically the impacts of [INSERT MAIN THEMES, example: ICE arrests through the 287G program, the conduct of the [CITY] office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the neglect, abuse, and retaliation experienced by those in immigration custody.]
As a guest of honor, we would welcome your remarks at the top of the virtual Forum, and if interested, invite you to be quoted in our press release. We would love to have you participate, show support for immigrant communities, and listen to the experiences and policy recommendations of [STATE/CITY] residents.
Please let me know if you are interested or have any questions about our event. We would love to connect further to discuss this opportunity to stand in solidarity with our community.
Best,
Inviting community leaders and members of other organizations to participate in your forum is also important for broadening awareness of ICE’s impacts on our communities. You can adapt this template:
Dear [NAME],
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out on behalf of [ORGANIZATION/GROUP NAME] to invite you to participate in a virtual Truth and Accountability Forum we are organizing on [INSERT DATE]. [Add link to registered event]
[Add info about organization if you are introducing yourself to community leader for first time]
President Biden issued a Day 1 memo calling for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct a 100 day review of its immigration enforcement policies and practices. Our Truth and Accountability forum will provide a space for community members to provide testimony about ICE’s misconduct and abuses during the Trump Administration. We plan to share this community testimony with the Department of Homeland Security and urge them to adopt policy changes that will better protect immigrant families and communities. [IF YOUR TOWN HALL HAS A SPECIFIC THEME, ADD HERE]
We would love to have [Community Leader Name] participate in the Truth And Accountability Forum. In doing so, [Community Leader Name] will be showing up for immigrant communities and contributing to a national movement within the We Are Home campaign.
Please let me know if you are interested or have any questions about our event. [Add link to registered event] We would love to connect further to discuss this opportunity to stand in solidarity with our community.
Best,
[NAME]
Template: Virtual Forum Agenda
Below is a sample agenda. It is meant to help get your organization started, but you should feel free to edit it according to your event’s specific needs. COMING SOON: Accompanying Truth and Accountability Slide Deck.
I hour before the forum begins - Pre-Event Mic Check
- Test screen-sharing in presenter view
- Test audio and video of all speakers/moderators
- Technical support person - Assign interpreters, check zoom settings
- Interpreters or Host: Review best practices for language justice + documentation
3 minutes - Moderator: Multilingual Welcome
- Moderator: Invite people to share name/pronouns/why they decided to join the call in the chat
- Technical support person - begins admitting participants from waiting room & muting participants + start zoom recording
3 minutes - Interpreters: Read Language Justice Explainer Script
3 minutes - Moderator: Context about How We Got Here + Agenda for Today
- Host organization(s): introduces themselves + Forum strategy
- Remind participants that the session is being recorded and that they can go off-camera if more comfortable
10 minutes - Intro & thank elected officials/community leaders present
- Electeds share some remarks re: importance of transforming the immigration system
- invite them to listen to community testimonies
30 min - Speakers: Presentation about ICE’s Impact on the Local Community
- Overview of ICE enforcement on the community
- Panel or testimonies by impacted community speakers
- We continue to see the impacts today → optional: Present current local case + make an audience ask
10 minutes - Speakers/Moderator: Policy Reform Recommendations
10 minutes - Speakers/Moderator: Potential Action + Call to Action
- If relevant, take action during Forum
- ex: emailing DHS a CRCL complaint and/or filing Stays of Deportation
- Share a call to action
- Ex: Ask audience to take action through a phone call campaign, sign petition, share social media graphic
5 minutes - Moderator: Thank elected officials in attendance and ask them to commit to action as well
3 minutes - Host: Close Out
- Reiterate local and national calls to action in closing
**Remember to check the Zoom Technical Guidance presentation for best practices around running your virtual Forum
ICE Enforcement Categories & Suggested Storytellers
This table helps categorize the different areas of ICE enforcement that your forum may want to address. Within each category, the table highlights different prompts that can help inform testimony, details to highlight within testimony, and suggested storytellers to uplift who are experts in why that particular area needs to be reformed. We strongly encourage you to center storytellers and experts who have personally experienced or seen the impacts of immigration enforcement practices on the community.
Category | Guiding Question | Potential Details to Highlight | Potential Storytellers |
Detention | What are the impacts/costs of detaining people who are immigrants and those seeking asylum? |
|
|
Raids | What are the impacts/costs of raiding workplaces, private homes, and communities? |
|
|
Right to Dissent | What are the impacts/costs of DHS’s investment in suppressing dissent to its activities? |
|
|
Budget | What are the impacts/costs of DHS continuing to receive funding? |
|
|
Tech and Surveillance | What are the impacts/costs of the proliferation of partnerships with tech firms and increased surveillance of immigrant communities? |
|
|
Information sharing | -What are the impacts/costs of continued sharing of information between agencies within DHS, and between DHS and other agencies, including local police departments? | Information sharing between:
|
|
Personnel and Leadership | How should individuals who presided over human rights abuses be held accountable? |
|
|
Storyteller Guidance
Here are some things to keep in mind if you will be speaking at a Truth and Accountability Forum:
- Speak with conviction. You are an expert on your own experience and the ways that DHS and ICE’s systems actively endanger members of our community. Remember, the purpose of the Truth and Accountability Forum is to ensure that people with the power to make changes, including Biden Administration officials, listen and take direction from you.
- Practice sharing your experience and perspective before the event the way that you want to tell it. You never have to share anything that feels uncomfortable, painful, or re-traumatizing. Jotting down bullet points can be helpful. If possible, avoid reading directly from a script in order to sound more natural. Practice timing yourself to stay within the amount of time you have.
- Be specific -- the more detail you can give on your experiences the more impactful your story will be. Let the people listening to you get as close as they can to what you went through by sharing specific memories.
- Use language that honors the humanity of all people—not language that dehumanizes others or divides our community into “good” or “bad” immigrants. For example, do not say “immigrants are not criminals” or “immigrants are being treated like criminals.” Instead, say: “people who are immigrants are being dehumanized.” Likewise, instead of saying “detainees” or “inmates,” instead, say: “people who are detained” or “people who are incarcerated.”
- Speak slowly and steadily—remember that it’s harder to understand speakers in virtual settings and that interpretation requires speakers to take a slower pace. If interpretation will be consecutive, remember to pause every 1-2 sentences so that interpreters can convey your full message.
- Be aware there will likely be reporters attending the forum and that those reporters may use part of what you say in their coverage of the event. While you should only ever share your story if you want to, you can also let event organizers know that you’ll be off-camera or that you want to only be identified by your first name or a pseudonym.
- Cut back on distractions. On the day of the forum, find a quiet room with good lighting, like natural light or a lamp. A plain background can help the audience avoid distractions. Try to find a place with good wifi—talk to event organizers about joining by phone if that’s not possible.
Virtual Platform Assistance
In order to share our stories with a wider audience and have robust documentation, it is strongly recommended that the Truth and Accountability Forums be recorded.
Mijente is able to provide groups/organizations with the use of a Zoom account that can allow up to 100 participants to join. If the number of registrants to your event exceeds this number, Mijente can provide use of a Zoom account that allows for up to 500 participants.
When using the Mijente Zoom account, recording and transcript functions are automatically set, and the digital organizer can share the files with your organization after the event.
If you would like additional functionalities (such as interpretation, transcript, and recording) we recommend that you select to use a Mijente Zoom account on the Sign up form and/or indicate that you need interpretation assistance.
Permissions
Note: Please make sure that all speakers and attendees know that the event is being recorded, and that you, Mijente, or We Are Home may share content with other organizations, media, or the Biden administration to impact the 100-day review process.
Social Media Toolkit
To facilitate promotion of your forum, the following social media toolkit can be used as a guide for digital amplification and social promotion.
Language Justice
Another area to consider when planning your forum is language justice. Incorporate interpretation and translation into your event from the beginning to make your Forum more wide-reaching and powerful, and to ensure that participants are able to participate and express themselves in the language in which they feel most powerful.
You can read this tips sheet from language justice worker, Catalina Nieto, for a short, step-by-step guide to creating your multilingual virtual event. This zoom interpreting guide summarizes technical details related to hosting virtual interpretation on zoom. Finally, this Explainer, adapted from the BanchaLenguas Language Justice Collective, includes language to help you prep speakers and storytellers on language justice best practices before the event and a script that should be read to participants at the beginning of your event to explain how to access interpretation.
Mijente’s zoom account with interpretation feature is available for hosting your Truth and Accountability Forum—simply note that on the form when you sign up to host your event. Mijente organizers are also available to support you in incorporating language justice into your planning process.
Documenting Your Forum for Action
In order to effectively share the breadth of the experience of our communities due to ICE policies and abuses, our goal is to collect the following files from each forum (as applicable), including but not limited to:
- Forum recording
- Pictures
- Transcript
- Agenda
- Written testimonies
- Formal requests to DHS submitted for local cases and campaigns, including Civil Rights and Civil Liberties complaints and Stay of Removal requests
Mijente will coordinate with a contact from your organization to ensure that all files are included a Documentation Folder and provide full access to your specific forum folder. Once the Forum is approved, the host will receive access to an event specific folder, and can upload and download forum content. For example, when using the Mijente Zoom account, the recording and transcript will be uploaded to the folder, and the groups/organizations can access the files there.
Additional Resources
Talking Points
- There is no time to wait. While Joe Biden called the Obama era’s 3 million deportations “a mistake” on the campaign trail, already a staggering 26,248 people have been deported just one month into the Biden presidency. To put an end to these human rights abuses as soon as possible, the Biden administration must incorporate the expertise of impacted communities into its review, and use its executive powers to overhaul ICE, CBP, and the rest of the deportation machine.
- The Biden administration is now conducting a review of immigration enforcement policies passed during the last 4 years and has introduced the Day 1 Bill in Congress to introduce a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people. The bill offers potential future protections, but does not justify continuing to fund and operate a cruel, unaccountable, and politicized deportation force now. Biden must act now.
- As a movement, we are clear on what accountability means, both short and long-term. Over 100 immigrant rights organizations have united under the We Are Home coalition to call on the Biden administration to take action now, starting with stopping deportations, closing down detention facilities, ending local police-ICE collaborations, and allowing people seeking asylum to enter the country at the border. [Refer to the policy demands for more details on what the President can do now]
- These solutions are clear to our communities because we have lived through the terror and long-lasting harm of the current deportation machine. That’s why we are hosting Eyes on ICE, a series of Truth and Accountability Forums across the country to tell the real stories of how ICE and CBP have harmed our families and communities and to lay out the path towards accountability and the solutions to free our future. To transform our immigration system, the experiences of those who have been impacted must remain at the center of the national conversation. We will be submitting all of the testimonies and policy demands from these Forums to the Biden Administration.
Template: Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[DATE]
Contact: [NAME], [name@email.com]
NEWS: [NAME] to Host “Eyes on ICE” Forum; Expose Stories of ICE Abuse
As the Biden administration launches its audit of ICE, civil rights organizations across the country to conduct their own investigations
[LOCATION] – As the Biden administration embarks on its audit of the Department of Homeland Security, including a full-scale study on current practices at ICE and CBP, civil and immigrant rights organizations across the country will conduct their own, independent Truth and Accountability Forums on the country’s immigration enforcement arm.
X cities will hold “Truth and Accountability” forums, inviting community members who have been personally impacted by ICE to testify to the agency’s devastating impact.
The series of local forums will culminate in a nationwide forum, in which immigration reform leaders will present the first-hand accounts gathered and assess the administration’s first 100 days and where President Biden stands on standing up to the cruelty, corruption, and bloat of the current deportation machine. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, will be invited to attend.
“The personal stories we will present and compile over the next two months should be considered vital evidence of the devastation ICE has wrought on immigrant communities,” said TKTK. “President Biden must hear directly from the people who have suffered at the hands of DHS, and take direction from them to stop the damage being done to our communities.”
The nationwide campaign is structured around the following policy demands for the Biden Administration’s first 100 days:
- Immediately make good on President Biden’s promise to halt deportations by directing ICE to grant Stays of Removal to all individuals facing deportation and conduct a review to release every person currently in detention; 120 legal experts and law professors have explained, the temporary restraining order issued by a Trump-appointed Judge does not bar the Biden Administration from taking these actions.
- Close detention facilities and end the use of private prisons and state and local jails
- Stop fusing policing with mass deportation by ending the 287(g) program, the Secure Communities program, and the use of ICE detainers
- Close hundreds of thousands of pending deportation cases on the immigration court docket
- Adopt prosecutorial discretion guidelines that provide relief from hyper-criminalization, not more punishment
- Allow people seeking asylum at the southern border to enter the country—instead of detaining or turning them away
###
About [HOST ORGANIZATION]: [INSERT MISSION DESCRIPTION HERE]
About #WeAreHome: The We Are Home campaign is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-generational coalition calling on the Biden administration and Congress to take immediate action to protect millions of immigrants who call this country home and end the cruelty of our interior detention and deportation system.
DWN Towards Freedom Immigrant Detention.pdf