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BastaYa! Couple Killed by ICE Agents in California’s Central Valley

March 22, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Shortly before 7:00 am on Tuesday, March 13, Santos Hilario Garcia, 35, and Marcelina Garcia Profecto, 33, left their home in the city of Delano in California’s Central Valley. They were looking for work in the fields, picking crops that feed people throughout the U.S. and are the economic engine that drives the region. Within minutes they were dead—dead due to the actions of the modern day slave catchers of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE).

At this point all of the information we have about this incident comes from ICE and local police. No one should take at face value the word of these known liars. However, even their own words paint an ugly portrait of immigrants being hounded to their deaths.

When the couple got in their truck, they had no idea that their house was being watched. ICE admits that they were stalking someone else but that Santos “matched the description”—meaning that he was Latino. Soon Santos and Marcelina saw the lights and heard the siren.  Perhaps thinking that the stop was a routine traffic stop by local police, the couple pulled over.  Then, they saw the ICE agents step out of the car.  What went through their heads? Being separated from their 6 children? Losing everything that they had worked for? Being held in detention for months for the crime of looking for work? According to the ICE agents they sped off in their truck trying to escape.The ICE agents took off in pursuit.

The truck veered off the road, overturned, and hit a power pole. Santos and Marcelina were pronounced dead at the scene.

The couple leaves behind six children between the ages of 8 and 18. "The kids are very scared right now,” United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez said in a statement. “The oldest daughter is 18. She has a young child, just a few weeks old right now. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her siblings, to her brothers and sisters right now so they're all just trying to figure out, what are the next steps."

The ACLU of Southern California, said their organization has received reports from throughout the Central Valley of ICE staking out roads farm workers use to get to work and pulling them over in unmarked vehicles during early morning hours “without any lawful basis.”

Speaking directly to the deaths of Santos and Marcelina the ACLU said, “This horrible tragedy is a direct result of ICE’s inhumane tactics and the fear it provokes in hardworking people who stand to lose everything if they are deported.”

The deaths of Santos and Marcelina are not an isolated incident. Daily immigrants are being snatched from hospitals, schools, and courthouses. Mass raids are intensifying. All this is being organized by Trump and his regime and fueled by the vicious, racist lies being spewed out by the administration daily.  As Revolution wrote (March 12, 2018): “Make no mistake about it: what we are witnessing is nothing less than a fascist, white-supremacist ethnic cleansing program.”

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the singer Bob Dylan wrote, “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” It is essential that people across the country—everyone with an ounce of humanity—see, confront and STOP these attacks on our immigrant brothers and sisters. And this needs to become a force that can help drive the fascist regime from power.

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