Afton Indivisible Updates
2025-08-05
Greetings
In this week's newsletter we cover:
Upcoming events
- an upcoming training opportunity & potluck in Stillwater Aug 7
- the weekly Bridge Brigade (every Saturday)
- Indivisible's One Million Rising training Wednesday, August 13
In the news:
- ICE cruelty & concentration camps
- Border technology ramps up
- US placed on rights watchlist
- ACLU fights back
- Rapid Response Tools
Inspiration:
- Elizabeth Castillo — Story of Courage
- What Direct Action Does
Local Actions or Events
August 2025 Meeting
Training
- When:
- August 7, 6:00pm
- Where:
- Stillwater Public Library
St. Croix Valley Indivisible (SCVI) has invited our membership to a Constitutional Observer Training that is scheduled on the same day as our regular member meeting.
We are excited to offer this training to the many members who have asked about ways to get involved with immigrant defense and hope to see you there.
Community Potluck
- When:
- August 7, 4:30-5:45pm
- Where:
- Pioneer Park, Stillwater
We will have a community potluck at Pioneer Park before the training.
Interested in attending both the potluck and training and need childcare coverage? Reach out to Miller.Alison@proton.me for more information.
Bridge Brigade Visibility Action
- When:
- Every Saturday, 11:00am–12:00pm
- Where:
- Stagecoach Trail/County 21 overpass on I-94
Park on the frontage road. Put "Lucy Winton Bell Athletic Fields" into your map app. We'll protest on the east side of the overpass. Bring BIG signs or just come wave!
One Million Rising: One Million Trained, Millions More Empowered
Hosted by No Kings
- When:
- Wednesday August 13, 7:00–8:00pm CDT
- Where:
- Online
"One Million Rising — a national effort to train one million people to help lead in this moment and gain the skills to lead others. This is how we build people power that can't be ignored. You're invited to join us—and lead."
News & Training
"We'll Smash the F* Window Out and Drag Him Out"
from ProPublica
"In Los Angeles, a terrified immigrant sits inside a truck as a masked man swings a baton, shattering his window."
"Use-of-force experts and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement insiders say the tactic was rarely used during previous administrations. They say there is no known policy change greenlighting agents' smashing of windows. Rather, it's a part of a broader shattering of norms."
"'There are arrest quotas, and they are increasingly aggressive. There's been an emphasis placed on speed and numbers that did not exist before,' says Deborah Fleischaker, who served as ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden."
Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers
"You Feel Like Your Life Is Over"
from Human Rights Watch
"Within a month of the inauguration, the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began increasing. Throughout 2024, an average of 37,500 people were detained in immigration detention in the US per day.[1] As of June 20, 2025, on any given day, over 56,000 people were in detention across the country, 40 percent more than in June 2024, and the highest detention population in the history of US immigration detention. As of June 15, immigration detention numbers were at an average of 56,400 per day, and nearly 72 percent of individuals detained had no criminal history.
"Between January and June 2025, thousands were held in immigration detention at the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), the Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC), in Florida, under conditions that flagrantly violate international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention standards. ...
"Detainees in three Florida facilities told Human Rights Watch that ICE detention officers and private contractor guards treated them in a degrading and dehumanizing manner. Some were detained shackled for prolonged periods on buses without food, water, or functioning toilets; there was extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells where detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting; and many were denied access to basic hygiene and medical care."
The Fight Against ICE's Cruelty and the Rise of State Violence
from ICEbreaker News
"ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says.
"A senior White House aide has reportedly set a daily ICE arrest quota of 3,000, guiding DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to oversee high-volume immigration raids nationwide.
"New data shows ICE is focusing more on non-criminal undocumented immigrants, contradicting its messaging about targeting 'criminal' migrants and raising questions about enforcement priorities
"After temporarily pausing workplace raids, ICE has rescinded the exemption, resuming enforcement in farms, hotels, and restaurants despite industry concerns."
Surveillance at the Border
from The American Prospect
"It’s only a matter of time before the drones, spy blimps, license plate readers, and motion-activated cameras come to the rest of America.
"FUNDING FOR THE BORDER-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX has steadily increased over the past decade, and private-sector partners of all stripes have been eager to cash in. Some, like IBM and Google, are household names, but others are as obscure as they are numerous. Researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been tracking the growing number of small-time players making their foray into the industry, documenting hundreds of tech companies that specialize in everything from biometrics to unattended ground sensors (which can detect footsteps).
"The chilling effect of border authorities and immigration agents scooping up just about anyone suspected of crimmigration has reverberated across the country. The rise of indiscriminate enforcement activities—CBP raiding places of work and masked ICE agents detaining people at immigration courts and Home Depots—signals a nationwide implementation of the surveillance-driven immigration enforcement apparatus."
US placed on rights watchlist over health of its civil society under Trump
from The Guardian
"International non-profit Civicus says ‘sustained attacks on civic freedoms' put US on par with El Salvador and Kenya.
"Civicus pointed to three major issues including the deployment of military to quell protests, growing restrictions placed on journalists and civil society, as well as the aggressive targeting of anti-war advocates surrounding Palestine."
ACLU in the Streets: Action Highlights
from ACLU
Immigration | ICE Detention
"Across the country, People Power Volunteers are fighting to stop 287(g) agreements: the harmful policies that deputize local law enforcement as ICE agents. In Minnesota, over 50 volunteers joined the ACLU of MN's first state-wide volunteer engagement call to learn about 287(g). The ACLU of MN also hosted a statewide community training on preventing 287(g) agreements, and 14 People Power activists joined MN community leaders to form an action team in Kandiyohi County, the most recent county to enter a 287(g) agreement."
Rapid Response Plan if ICE Comes to Your Community
ACLU Oregon
"If you or someone you know is being deported"
This resource includes scripts for a number of different scenarios.
Inspirations
Elizabeth Castillo — Story of Courage
from WLRN
"They saw their neighbors taken away by ICE. Then they made a plan
"At first, Castillo was on her own with a megaphone. When she saw ICE vehicles in the streets she followed them in her car, honking and shouting to warn people that they were coming. She started getting up before dawn to patrol her apartment complex. Then she contacted the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which runs a nearby job center. Through it, she was plugged into a citywide network of people who are constantly tracking ICE’s activities..."
What Direct Action Does
from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove & William J. Barber, II of Our Moral Moment
"In the spring of 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality organized a Freedom Ride from Washington, DC to New Orleans to challenge the illegal practice of racial segregation on interstate travel. It was a nonviolent direct action. White and black passengers boarded the bus and insisted on sitting together, no matter what the authorities said. They would nonviolently face whatever consequences came for their actions because they knew that what they were doing was right. John Lewis, who was 21 years old at the time, said the goal of the ride wasn't just to end segregation; it was to 'take the civil rights movement into the heart of the Deep South.'
"If you visit the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, today, there is a wall of hundreds of mug shots, mostly taken in Mississippi that summer of 1961, before Freedom Riders were sent to the notorious Parchman Prison. After Lewis and his riding partner, Jim Zwerg, were attacked by a mob at the bus depot in Montgomery, Alabama, and another bus was fire bombed in Aniston, Alabama, others came to continue the ride. When Lewis was released from the hospital, he insisted on joining them. They took their direct action to the heart of the Deep South and served 40-day sentences, transforming the Mississippi State Penitentiary into a school for American democracy. Their mug shots cover that wall as a monument to the power of direct action to inspire a moral movement."
"The moral witness of direct actions like the Freedom Rides interrupted everyone in a system that was more fragile than it seemed. It didn't change the minds of Southern governors or Mississippi jailers, but it did force the masses who'd gone along with the quiet violence of the system to decide whether they really believed it was justified.
"This is what direct action does. It exposes the moral bankruptcy of authoritarian regimes. It compels everyday citizens to choose a side in a moral struggle."
Thank you for all that you do!
We hope to see you at upcoming events and at the August 7 Membership Training & Potluck.