No One Is Illegal Vancouver would like to extend our deepest respect and solidarity with the Mohawk Community of Akwesasne for your courageous actions against the arming of Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) guards. We recognize that CBSA is a foreign occupier on Akwesasne territories and the arming of border guards is a declaration of war against the sovereignty of your Nation.

As a grassroots anti-racist and anti-colonial migrant justice group, we daily witness and bear the brutality of Canadian border policies – including those of border guards – that perpetuate violence, racism, destitution, and exploitation against immigrants, refugees, and people of colour. An increasing number of migrants are facing detention and deportation at the hands of CBSA – upto 13,000 deported annually – and the post 911 climate has normalized racial profiling at the border under the guise of the so-called War on Terror.

We recognize that the global forces of poverty, war, colonization, corporate plunder, and environmental devastation are causing the dispossession and migration of millions of immigrants and refugees into Turtle Island. Therefore we strongly believe that our work must always be carried out in solidarity with the struggles for the self-determination of Indigenous communities of the Americas.

We thank you for your brave and principled stand to oppose the increasing militarization of this colonial US-Canadian border, a border that divides families and neighbours from each other in your community and a border that is enforced against migrants, often Indigenous from the global South, in their quest for self-determination and a life of basic human dignity.

We have been circulating updates and information about Akwesasne to our members and supporters and will continue to support as requested. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

With respect and solidarity,
No One is Illegal Vancouver