Movimiento Cosecha organizers call out Senator Slotkin for not responding to their requests and for not challenging the Trump Administration’s immigration policies

On Monday, the immigrant-led group Movimiento Cosecha organized a rally just outside the federal building in Grand Rapids. 

They gathered there to call attention to a fellow Cosecha comrade, who is currently sitting in an ICE detention facility in Texas. In a Press Advisory that Cosecha sent out they wrote: 

Last week, an immigration judge confirmed that Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago cannot be deported because she is protected under DACA. Yet, instead of releasing her, ICE continues to keep her detained in El Paso while it appeals the case. Meanwhile, Senator Slotkin has not responded to repeated community appeals for her leadership.

While Cosecha members were leading a small rally, two people who were not at risk of being apprehended by ICE or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) went into the federal building to deliver a stack of letters that people from this community had written to Senator Slotkin to use her power as a Senator to get Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago released from detention in Texas. 

You can watch the video that Cosecha took regarding the rally at this link. 

The two people who delivered the letters to Senator Slotkin’s office let everyone know that the Senator was not in and the office looked pretty dark. However, one of Slotkin’s staff members came to the door, took the letters and said that the letters would be “processed” and that the messages would be given to Senator Slotkin. 

You see, there was no back and forth, no commentary from the Senator’s staffer about the issue of ICE and immigrants in detention, nor the specific case of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, or the fact that Senator Slotkin has failed to respond to this issue or Cosecha’s requests. 

For the immigrant-led group Movimiento Cosecha the failure of Senator Slotkin to fight for immigrants or to even respond to immigrant demands is not surprising. Movimiento Cosecha organizers are used to unresponsive politicians and politicians who don’t fight for immigrant justice, both Republicans and Democrats. Let’s talk about the reason why.

Last week I noted in an article entitled, When rhetoric and voting records don’t match up: Sen. Slotkin on immigration and ICE, that the Michigan Senator doesn’t a great track record regarding immigration policies and immigrants.  In fact, if you go back and look at her voting record while she was a representative, Slotkin didn’t have a problem with the several million immigrants that were deported during the Biden Administration, plus she voted for funding to further militarize the US/Mexican border.

We have to come to terms with the fact that Republicans and Democrats have pretty consistently voted against any real progressive immigration policies, as I noted in an article earlier this year. This is also the point of Daniel Denvir’s book, All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It. 

It doesn’t matter if there are lots of voters who oppose repressive immigration policies, members of Congress have not voted to adopt an immigration justice platform. One difference between the Biden and Trump Administration’s is their rhetoric. The Democrats use less xenophobic rhetoric, while the Republicans are very up front about hating on undocumented immigrants. However, the practice of both parties on immigration has been very similar.

This leads us to the reality of why Senator Slotkin and many other Democratic politicians will not fight for immigrant justice, because they know that Democratic voters will continue to vote for them. Democratic voters will continue to vote for people like Senator Slotkin because they are not as evil as the Republicans. Therefore, there is no incentive for Democratic politicians to fight for immigrant justice, since they only need to be the lesser of evil when it comes to immigration and immigrants. 

This is exactly why Movimiento Cosecha does not engage in partisan politics, or as they say, they don’t dance with politicians. Movimiento Cosecha believes in social movements and the power that comes with organized resistance. Putting our faith in politicians is a dead end, since they only time they do the right thing is when they are forced to by organized resistance. This is essentially the history of the US regarding how change happens, which is so well documented in Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States. 

Where is Senator Slotkin on the issue of immigrants and immigrant justice you ask? She is doing what most politicians do, which is to maintain the status quo, which means supporting the ongoing arrest of immigrants by ICE, the detention of immigrants, and the deportation of immigrants, regardless of who sits in the White House. Slotkin is not on the side of immigrant justice.