play and ideas: “Free the CECOT detainees”: Direct Action to Stop the Disappearances

“Free the CECOT detainees”: Direct Action to Stop the Disappearances

You wonder what you would think if you were disappeared? No one could find you, you were lost in the system in a detention center in a far away land, your due process neglected. No one is able to locate you. Sorry.

"Bring them home!" we chanted at Trump Tower, protesting the detention camps. Two dozen of us walked into Trump the heart of the Trump cult and engaged in civil disobedience.

We carried signs:

“Free the CECOT detainees.”

“Real democracies do not disappear people.”

“Democracies do not kidnap and torture refugees.”

Walking into the gaudy lobby, you see Trump hats for sale, tourists, and a strange perversion of our values, away from rule of law, to bullying and Mao like cult of personality.

I was there with our college kid, who saw one of their classmates at college in Boston, disappeared after Ramadan. First there were protests then people seemed to forget she was gone. That was horrifying. “I’m glad to actually be doing something,” they told me.

We all trickled into the lobby in groups of two or three, meeting at a designated time, reading the names of those detained and repeating, “Bring them back!” “Bring them home.”

We read through the last of names three times and a brief statement:

"RISE AND RESIST STATEMENT JUNE 9th 2025

We are here in Trump Tower, reading the names of the people who were illegally rendered to CECOT prison in El Salvador. We intend to send a message to President Trump and his administration that we reject this illegal conduct. These people were denied due process. They were not permitted to legally defend themselves. They were not allowed to respond to government accusations that they were criminals or terrorists. They were not permitted to demonstrate that they met the requirements for asylum or residence in this country. The Supreme Court clearly prohibited the Trump Administration’s use of the Enemy Aliens Act to deport people from this country, and it stated that these people were denied the right of Habeas Corpus. Habeas Corpus states, in the Constitution, that all people on US soil must have their day in court and cannot be imprisoned without cause. The Trump Administration has refused to state how many people were sent to CECOT prison and what their names are, making it impossible for them to be found or receive legal counsel. We are focusing today and every day on the cruelty of illegal and violent abductions where people have been torn from their families with no judicial warrant. And we are resisting the horror of sending people to concentration camps. We reject the President’s flaunting the judgment of the United States Supreme Court. Today is also the first day of the administration’s Travel Ban - we reject this travel ban, and we reject the administration’s attempts to limit the issuance of student and academic visas. For years President Trump has demonized immigrants, people who have come here to flee persecution, to find a better life, to seek freedom, to study, to find work, and to join family members already here. For centuries the United States has been a beacon of freedom to foreigners and immigrants. We are demanding that the Administration bring everyone back from CECOT to the United States, release them from ICE custody, return them to their homes and families and allow them their day in court. We demand that no one else can be rendered to any country by the United States. For us to remain silent is to be complicit. To not object is to be complicit. We are asking anyone who witnesses our protest to not turn away, to not accept grossly illegal and inhumane actions, but to believe that we have the power - by taking action – to stop these injustices. RiseAndResist.org"

More and more security came to ask us to disperse, then the police white shirts, then the police warning us we would be arrested. And finally after an hour the NYPD Strategic Response Group, a unit of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) formed in 2015 to police protests.showed up with plastic handcuffs and took us away.

Three police vans carried detainees to Pitt Street, where we were held all afternoon, chatting about the state of the world and the movement, processed, and released with summonses for a court date later in the month. You wonder if we are doing enough, if we are moving the dial, or just trying to say we did something. No one is sure. We’ve all been here dozens of times, sometime with legends, Sylvia nd Leslie Feinberg, 1998, or Reclaim the Streets and ACT UP in 1999, on and on through the years.

I first heard about the action after receiving an email from Rise and Resist:

“Rise and Resist is organizing an action in the beginning of June that will have a significant risk of arrest. We plan to publicly read the names of the people abducted by ICE and sent to CECOT prison in El Salvador, and to demand that they be returned to the US and freed. Due to the location that we have chosen for the action, this will likely result in us being ordered to disperse. If we refuse to disperse, it is probable that we will be arrested. In the event that we are not ordered by NYPD or other law enforcement to disperse, we will leave at the end of an hour when the action is over..…Our goal is to get a minimum of 15 people plus support and comms to do the action, but more people would be great. One of us from the Action Committee will get back in contact with you and give you more information.

Last Friday, I got another email under the subject, “Vague Action Details”:

“These are the current plans:

We will meet on Monday June 9th …across the street from Benihana).

The folks going inside will fill out support forms if they haven't filled them out already. Support will collect the forms.

We will also hand out posters and lists of names (to the people who are comfortable pronouncing Venezuelan names). I should have a poster or two that say NO TRAVEL BANS, NO WORKPLACE RAIDS, and NO DEPORTATIONS. When we see exactly how many people we have we can sort out the props.

We will go over in groups of 3 or 4, and at 12:45 will materialize in the atrium, where the action will start.

Support will go and wait at 56th and 5th and spread out to look for the NYPD.

The action will be reading the names, chanting "BRING THEM BACK" after each name, and holding the posters….

A handful of people are going to leave if we are given a warning and allowed to leave.

We expect to be charged with disorderly conduct, but we could get a trespassing charge.

If the Tower is closed and we can't get in, then Plan B is to close down 5th Avenue and do the action in the street.”

Countless photographers were there, including Diane Greene Lent and

Erik McGregor, who writes and documents.. "On June 9, 2025 around 30 members of the activist group Rise and Resist were arrested in an act of civil disobedience at Trump Tower in Manhattan. NYPD made arrests after activists refused to leave while reciting the names while holding signs and pictures of migrants rendered to the CECOT prison in El Salvador, demanding that they are brought back and receive proper due process.

#AbolishICE #Activism #AsylumSeekers #BordersAreDeath #TrumpTower #demonstration #DignityNotDetention #DirectAction #HumanitarianCrisis #immigration #KeepFamiliesTogether #CivilDisobedience #NewYork #NoDeportations #NoDetentions #NoHumanIsIlegal #NYC #ProtectFamilies #RefugeesWelcome #RiseAndResist #SanctuaryCity #DefendDemocracy #SeekingAsylumIsNotACrime #StopDeportations #DueProcess

By the next morning we were hearing that word about the action hsd made its way around the world. My friends in Berlin were wroting that theyd seen us and hear about out action.

https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/usa-proteste-gegen-trumps-migrationspolitik-in-weiteren-staedten-ueberwiegend-friedlich-a-953596a2-9fdd-4844-8039-5910b8f70415?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh