People Should Be Safe in their Own Communities

Statement from Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director, Ohio Immigrant Alliance

Late Friday, news broke that Ohio Guard members may be deployed inside the state, to help the federal government deport Ohioans born in other countries. We didn’t hear this from the President. We didn’t hear this from Governor DeWine, who is the only person authorized to deploy the Ohio Guard. 

If this is true, we deserve to hear it from the Governor directly. And our voices deserve to be heard before a decision is made. We do not want, and do not need, militarized communities and streets. Ohio still mourns the murders of four students protesting the Vietnam war at Kent State University by the National Guard in 1970. The deaths of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder are a wound that has not healed. 

So too are the murders of Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, Black students killed on the campus of Mississippi’s Jackson State a few days later. And every police murder of every Ohioan opens another wound. State violence is a daily reality for people of color across the country, and this should not be the case. People should be safe in their own communities.

The added threat of deportation means many immigrants live in constant terror — often revisiting traumas they tried to leave behind in their native countries. I learned this from Comunidad Sol, an Indigenous organization in northern Ohio. Formed by Ixil and K’iche’ leaders, they survived genocide and came to Ohio looking for a safe place to live. Now, they are organizing to keep their jobs and families together due to an increasingly aggressive U.S. deportation policy. It’s a daily struggle when they should be able to just work, live, and relax.

Many Ohioans don’t want to live in a society that sends our military out to arrest, jail, and deport people who are simply trying to do right by their children and families, while helping their communities and the rest of us succeed. I am sure many members of the Ohio Guard don’t want to be part of that “mission,” either. They can object conscientiously.

The thing we have to remember is, people move. It’s not something to fear; it’s one thing we have in common as human beings. Unless you are indigenous to this land, whether your family has been in Ohio for over a hundred years, like mine; came during the Great Migration; or arrived more recently, your people moved here for safety or opportunity, sometimes both. 

So whether you were born in Celina, South Carolina, or Senegal, Ohio is home now. And Ohio works because we have people who want to come here and help build it. There are jobs, land, and homes to buy. So if you want to be here, I think Ohio should welcome you with open arms. 

What we don’t have is a federal immigration policy that facilitates international movement. The Trump administration is making it more cruel and chaotic, not more rational. They are arresting people who have legal work permits, who are showing up for immigration appointments and hearings and trying to follow a process. They deported a young man, Emerson Colindres, who was waiting for his legal visa to come through. They are removing legal status from people who currently have it, to make them deportable. The “priorities” they claimed were a lie.

Instead, we should have a set of logical and rational immigration laws. To do that, we need politicians to stop lying about immigrants and riling people up with lies and misinformation. They need to come to the table and work on solutions. The American people are actually more rational about this than policymakers, but our “leaders” prefer to keep us divided instead of leading the way toward common ground. This is a time when politicians could learn from Ohio communities, like Springfield.

For now, the Ohio Guard should not militarize our communities and destroy Ohio families. There has never been a clearer time to stand together and say no.