Please RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/538293229623143/

Monday, May 26
at 11:00am
701 West Georgia (corner Granville)

Come show your support for Jose Figueroa and stand with his family as the federal court reviews the decision to deport Jose.

The judicial review is scheduled for 11:30 a.m., but we will gather outside the building (at 701 W Georgia St in Vancouver) at 11 a.m. in a
demonstration of solidarity.

Join us for a couple of hours, or stop by on your lunch break — we demand justice for Jose, and hope to see him back with his family this summer!

7th Annual Community March Against Racism
Saturday March 22, 2014
Gather at 2 pm
March begins at Victory Square, Cambie and Hastings
Unceded xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ territories.

Family-friendly festivities! Bring your neighbours, banners and drums!

The International Day for the Elimination of Racism marks the anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when police opened fire on hundreds of South Africans protesting against Apartheid’s passbook laws, killing 67 and wounding 186. Every year we join friends and allies around the world to mark this day and to speak the truth about racism.

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A young woman arrived to the Lower Mainland to work as a domestic worker under the Live-In Caregiver migrant worker program. She worked for just over a year in the home of a middle-class family under abusive conditions: working over 14 hours a day, faced verbal abuse from her employers, and was forced to perform domestic chores beyond providing childcare. As in the case of thousands of other migrant domestic workers, she had little to no recourse and endured this until she could no longer and left the employer. The employer filed a police report and she was forced underground in order to stay safe from authorities and the employer. She continued to live and work underground under dismal conditions - including as a dishwasher and in the retail sector – and again, with long hours and less than minimum wage. Last year she filed a refugee claim in order to regularize her status and remain in Canada. However, she was refused by the Immigration and Refugee Board on the basis that she did not face persecution in her country of origin. Furthermore, immigration lawyers accused her of not fulfilling her required commitment under her LCP visa. She now faces deportation from Canada.

END IMMIGRATION DETENTION!
Not One More Death, Not One More Detention, Not One More Deportation.

The recent tragic and shameful news of Lucia Vega Jimenez’s death while under Canadian Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) custody in a migrant detention center has left us all reeling and outraged. Lucia was a 42-year old Mexican migrant who worked in Vancouver as a hotel worker. She was arrested on December 1, 2013 for an unpaid bus ticket and then transferred to immigration authorities, who incarcerated her at a provincial prison pending deportation. On December 20 she hung herself in the bathroom of the Vancouver Airport detention center and eight days later died in hospital, while still under CBSA custody. CBSA kept her death a secret, and to date neither a full coroner’s inquest nor an independent investigation has been ordered.

Since September 17, 2013 hundreds of migrant detainees incarcerated at the Centre East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario have been on strike, including boycotting their detention hearings and hunger-strike (two men were on hunger strike for over sixty days). The detainees are calling for their release and an end to indefinite detention and maximum-security incarceration. Striking migrants have faced reprisals with many deported, locked-up in segregation, moved to other prisons, and denied access to legal counsel.

These stories have brought some attention to migrant detention in Canada, but the reality is that migrant detention is shrouded in secrecy.

QUICK FACTS ON MIGRANT DETENTION IN CANADA:

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Lucia Vega Jimenez’s death is the latest in a series of suicides and deaths as a result of violent and exclusionary immigration and refugee policies.

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