Karla Rosas
“I am a DACA recipient who has spent most of my life in rural Southeastern Louisiana. I have never experienced detention, but I love and am loved by people who have experienced the cruelties of ICE detention. I write this from a place of anger, love, and solidarity with them. Louisiana isn’t the first state people think about when discussing immigration policy and detention in the United States. However, in 2019 alone 8 detention centers were built in Louisiana. Louisiana is a now an epicenter of immigrant detention facilities, a phenomenon that makes sense in the context of Louisiana’s long and violent relationship to the system of mass incarceration (the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest in the U.S. and is built on top of a former plantation). The LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, LA is in a very rural part of the state. On March 23 and 25, 2020, a group of detainees protested ICE officers’ inadequate response to prevent the spread of coronavirus in LaSalle. ICE officials pepper-sprayed the detainees. The detainees were pepper-sprayed for asserting that their lives are important and demanding that they be treated like human beings. I think of what happened at Jena and its similarities to police escalation at Black Lives Matter protests across the country and I wonder to myself: “how many more people have to die for this country to care?” I think Americans on July 4th should reflect deeply on how many Black and Brown people have died *in plain sight* at the hands of racist prison and detention systems. I think Americans should also reflect on how too often Black and Brown people are forced to put their very lives at risk just to be heard. People in immigrant detention are fighting for their lives right in front of us. We cannot ignore them. We must abolish ICE and defund the police state. The women detainees at LaSalle have clear demands, and so I am using this opportunity to let them speak for themselves — “DON’T LET US DIE.””
BIO
Karla Rosas is KARLINCHE, an undocumented illustrator and painter born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Much of Karla's work explores the relationship between “illegality,” family history, queerness, and self-identity. Karla’s work is grounded in the idea that the personal is political, and she considers her art a form of reasserting her subjectivity and agency as an undocumented person in the United States. Karla’s work has also been part of numerous political actions locally and nationally, including the Flowers on the Inside postcard campaign in partnership with CultureStrike, Casa Arcoiris, and Forward Together; as well as banner-making collaborations with el Congreso de Jornaleros and the NOLA Peoples’ Assembly. In 2019, she was awarded the Define American Immigrant Artist Fellowship, one of eight artists selected nationally.
OWN WORDS
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