Workers Strike Back and I are absolutely horrified and angry to hear about ICE having detained Muhammad Zahid Chaudhry, a longtime antiwar activist, a decorated and disabled U.S. Army veteran, and a member of Veterans for Peace. We are demanding the immediate release of Zahid Chaudhry, and that he be immediately given his U.S. citizenship.
Workers Strike Back and the Washington state chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), @CAIRWashington, will jointly host an emergency protest at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma on Saturday August 23, at 12 noon.
CAIR Washington is a grassroots advocacy and civil rights organization based in Seattle that serves the Muslim community across Washington state, and is a chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group.
Protest rallies are urgent in order to fight to get Zahid released as soon as possible, deliver a defeat to Trump, and build the movement to stop all deportations, shut down the detention centers, and shut down ICE. We need to use this to build momentum to end the genocide in Gaza and end all U.S. military funding to the Israeli state.
Everyone who can should join us. We also need rank-and-file union members to help build coordinated strike actions to defend against these attacks by shutting down the profit system and force the hand of Trump, the Republicans, and the Democrats, and the warmongering billionaires they serve!
Melissa Chaudhry, who is married to Zahid, is asking that people flood the Department of Homeland Security and the Northwest Detention Center phone lines and inboxes with the demand to free Chaudhry and naturalize him. We encourage all of our supporters to take these steps immediately to start building as much pressure as possible for Zahid’s release ahead of the protest on Saturday.
Melissa ran last year against corporate warmongering Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, to challenge his unwavering support for the Israeli state’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Notably, genocidal Democrat Adam Smith also shares direct responsibility for the current attacks on immigrant community members. Smith was one of the many Democrats who voted in 2002 to create ICE as part of his disgusting support for Republican President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Act and the bipartisan assault on immigrants.
Washington state’s Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray also voted for the Homeland Security Act and to create ICE.
Zahid’s detention is at the doorstep not only of Trump and the Republicans, but also of Smith, Cantwell, Murray, and their fellow Democratic Party politicians.
Democrats Smith, Cantwell, and Murray have also voted for tens of billions of dollars to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Zahid’s detention is part of the Trump administration’s brutal ICE crackdown that is targeting working people all over the country. The administration is particularly targeting anti-genocide activists like Zahid. Trump is making use of the ICE machinery that was created, funded, and expanded by both the Republican and Democratic parties for decades. Obama and Biden notoriously deported untold numbers of working people. The Biden administration carried out the worst crackdown on antiwar activists last year since the Vietnam War era.
Working people and those fighting to stop the deportations can’t afford to put our faith in the Democratic Party. We need to build movements independent of the Democratic and Republican Parties, both of which serve the billionaires and are complicit in the mass deportations, genocide of the Palestinian people, retaliation against peaceful anti-genocide activists, and brutal attacks on working people.
We need to urgently bring working people and community members together to fight back against all the deportations, including ones like this that are clearly a part of the bipartisan campaign of repression against movements, in order to stifle opposition to the genocide in Gaza.
We need emergency protest rallies like this one to fight to get Zahid released as soon as possible, deliver a defeat to Trump, and build the movement to stop all deportations, shut down the detention centers, and shut down ICE. The movement for immigrant rights must also stand with the movement to end the genocide in Gaza, by calling for an end to the Israeli occupation and an end to all U.S. military aid to Israel.
Speakers at the Saturday protest rally will include Imraan Siddiqi, the Executive Director of CAIR Washington, Rizwan Samad, antiwar activist and community organizer, and myself.
If your organization would like to join us in co-hosting and speaking at this protest, please respond to this tweet, DM me on X, or email us at [email protected]