BFN Statement on USPIS Collaboration with ICE
At the end of April the Latin Times and Washington Post reported that the USPIS was collaborating with DHS agencies on their ramped up deportation efforts, specifically using data and images of mail and packages to identify potential targets for deportation. BFN, in line with our previous statement against immigration raids and our strong commitment to working class solidarity, strongly opposes this collaboration with Trump’s mass deportation machine. It is not the place of the Postal Service or its related agencies to use private communications sent through our public service to snatch our customers, our friends, our loved ones, and our neighbors off the street.
Immigrants make up a large section of the most exploited part of the working class. The deportation machine exists to facilitate that exploitation by creating an isolated and terrorized group that takes worse jobs for worse pay under threat of being sent to detention facilities, or a concentration camp in El Salvador, with no due process if they speak up against it - a situation that, if left unchecked, could expand to the rest of us. The bosses blame immigrants for society’s ills to divert attention from their own failures and to divide the working class.
Furthermore, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is leveraging the threat of privatization to force this collaboration, taking this as an opportunity to undermine USPS’s status as an independent agency and pushing for deeper integration with the executive branch. We can see how concretely, attacks on one section of the working class are attacks on all of us. NALC and its members must firmly oppose this effort to kill two birds with one stone. We call on NALC and all postal workers to refuse and resist collaboration with ICE, CPB, and the USPIS in deporting our customers, whether in the workplace or at home; and demand that NALC leadership join with the other postal unions in pressuring the USPIS cease collaboration with DHS immediately
BFN calls for:
NALC members should refuse to share information on our customers if approached by ICE agents on the street
Organized, energetic union contingents at upcoming immigrant’s rights/anti-ICE protests
NALC and AFL-CIO to call for a national day of action to unite the entire labor movement against ICE raids on our communities, legalization for all immigrant workers, and an end to all sanctions and wars that create refugees and asylum seekers
