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Fifty or so activists—asylum seekers, former detainees, hunger strikers and members of the community—took to Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, Queens on Friday, 8 April to call for an end to the mass deportations of South Asian immigrants by the U.S. State Department.

The symbolic funeral to mourn the countless migrants deported to death in their home countries was organized by Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), the South Asian Organizing Center that advocates self-determination for the South Asian diaspora in the United States. DRUM’s members are from countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Guyana, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Trinidad.

Based in Jackson Heights, a historically working class community with a large South Asian immigrant population, DRUM works tirelessly to uphold the rights of immigrant workers and families across New York City.

In 2005, South and East Asians comprised 23% of the undocumented immigrant population in New York City according to a Pew Research survey. This number has only risen in the decade sine the study was conducted.

Yet South Asian immigrants in the U.S. are consistently underpaid, the victims of employer harassment and generally denied basic worker and human rights.

Inextricably linked to the struggle for the rights of working people and immigrants is the Obama administration’s policy of broad incarceration and deportation, carried out infamously by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).



Friday’s symbolic funeral mourned all the migrants deported to death over the years, with a special focus on the 85 Muslim asylum seekers from Bangladesh, India and Nepal deported only last week.

Seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing violence in their home countries, many of the men were imprisoned in the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona—a detention center with a litany of documented human rights abuses and allegations of torture of detainees.

The deported asylum seekers are in life threatening danger in their home countries, especially India’s Punjabi Sikhs and Bangladeshis associated with the opposition Bangladesh National Party.

Sikhs in the Punjab province are persecuted by India’s ruling government, with countless incidents of state violence against their community. Likewise in Bangladesh, supporters of the opposition Bangladesh National Party are frequently targeted by the state.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ignoring widespread complaints of civil rights violations as they continue deporting asylum seekers. Worse yet, there is evidence that the U.S. State Department is colluding with the Bangladeshi government, giving the names of those seeking asylum and thus putting them and their families in increased danger.

An unnamed Bangladeshi man told the immigrant rights organization #Not1More “they had promised all my information would be kept private when I applied for asylum. But after the US government gave our names and asylum information to the Bangladeshi government, my home was visited by the police, and then my home was attacked by unknown men, and now my family is living in hiding.”

In the fall of 2015, detainees across twelve ICE facilities organized a thousand-person strong hunger strike to bring attention to the deplorable treatment of asylum seekers by the U.S. government. The strike lasted more than 20 days and brought the discrimination against South Asian and Muslim detainees to a broader audience.

Some former hunger strikers spoke at the mock funeral in Jackson Heights.

A Bangladeshi man introduced as Ahmed told the crowd about his journey across 17 borders to reach the United States, only to be locked up for 10 months at an ICE facility. About the lure of the U.S., Ahmed said he “came here with hope,” only to see the reality of a policy that destroys families and places little value on the lives of immigrants.

Comrade Shahid of the Pakistan-USA Freedom Forum told American Herald Tribune that the mass deportations being undertaken by the U.S. government have their root in unchecked imperialism and a corporate media.

“We call for the end of deportations now” and are committed to the belief that “all people are legal” Shahid said.

“The corporate controlled media pushes for war” continued Shahid, as both the Democrats and Republicans cater to their backers. “There aren’t two parties—there’s only one party.”