Protests can come in many forms. To protest the deaths of two immigrants recently killed by ICE—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastian Guerrero—Ann Arbor Indivisible held a silent march through the sidewalks of Main Street, with their bustling summer evening tables on Saturday. July 25.
They marched single file, holding black signs, each with a photograph of someone who has died due to an incident involving ICE—which recently saw its budget increase $70 billion to over $200 billion points out the Brennan Center for Justice. They also had the names, age, and date of death for each person. Because of the single file arrangement, it took four minutes and 16 seconds for the last protestor to leave the front of the Ann Arbor Federal Building, following the leader, who by then was already turning right at the corner of Main and Liberty.
A silent march
Colleen Murphy, an organizer at A2 Indivisible, told Current that they decided to go for a silent march “because I feel like not enough people really recognize how many people ICE have killed.” It’s her opinion that the media doesn’t show the faces of people who have died in ICE custody constituently enough “so we wanted to show the faces of each person.”
Arajuo was an immigrant from Mexico working on getting his paperwork finalized so his presence in the US could become legal after three decades working here, having raised three children up through college. The 52 year old was killed in Texas. The Trump Administration claims that Arajuo used his vehicle to menace ICE officers, but this has been disputed and it appears that no body cam footage exists…