Indigenous Peoples Led Shutdown at Ft. Sill Immigration Detention Center

On Saturday, July 20, 2019, over 400 protectors led by Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island took escalated action by blocking the entrance to the Fort Sill military post in Lawton, O.K. shutting down the freeway for two hours.

The Trump administration and Oklahoma Governor Stitt are putting forth a plan to re-open the concentration camp at Fort Sill to once again incarcerate children.

For twenty years beginning in 1894, our Apache relatives were held as prisoners of war at Fort Sill. We, as Indigenous peoples, know the pain and generational trauma that comes from Fort Sill and camps just like it. It is our moral responsibility to take a stand with our Indigenous relatives trying to cross the so-called “border.” Generations of Indigenous youth have suffered and have been forced to assimilate at Fort Sill’s boarding school. We cannot stand by as this happens again.Ft. Sill is also the same place where 700 Japanese immigrant men were detained without due process during World War II. We will not allow anymore pain to happen at Ft. Sill.This multiracial coalition of organizations was led by immigrant youth, their families, and Japanese American, Black, Indigenous, Jewish and white allies who all vehemently reject this administration’s immigration policies including the concentration camps that have been built across the country to incarcerate immigrants and children, and which have resulted in severe abuse, trauma and multiple deaths by the deportation force of ICE and CBP.

Throughout the action, we called on Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to get ICE out of Oklahoma and to stop supporting Trump’s administration as they criminalize immigrants, separate families, and kill asylum seekers.

The local and national organizations Indigenous Environmental Network organized this action with include: Dream Action Oklahoma, United We Dream, Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City, Democratic Socialists of America – Oklahoma City, Native Voice Network, Tsuru for Solidarity, Oklahoma Call for Reproductive Justice, ACLU OK, Women’s March OK, Indian Territory behind American Indian Movement, NACA-Inspired Schools Network, The Majority, Workers Defense, Bend the Arc, Sunflower Community Action,Center for Popular Democracy, Sunrise Movement, The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, and others.

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