On Friday, June 27, hundreds of workers kicked off a “Justice Journey” in Durham, North Carolina, heading down via bus to Louisiana to protest the Trump administration’s ICE detention centers.
“We’re standing up for our union siblings detained by ICE, and for every family under attack by cruel policies and billionaire greed,” read a post on X by the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW), one of the labor unions taking part in the caravan. Other organizations and unions joining include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is leading the protest caravan, the NAACP, and the ACLU.
The SEIU is using the Justice Journey to highlight three demands: pushing for an end to “brutal” ICE raids, pressuring elected officials to vote “no” on the Trump-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill”, and for the Trump administration to release people from “unjust” immigrant detention to be returned to their families.
The journey aims to shed light on the so-called “detention alley” in the Deep South. 14 of the 20 largest immigration detention centers in the US are located in the southern states of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, facilities which are run by for-profit corporations and often associated with human rights abuses. Notably, pro-Palestine students held in ICE detention by the Trump administration were held in detention alley, including Mahmoud Khalil and SEIU member Rumeysa Ozturk.
“Myself, and hundreds of workers across the country, are headed to Louisiana, because that’s the heart of Trump’s detention machine,” said Ieisha Francis, service worker in Durham, NC and a member of USSW. “One of our very own union siblings, David Huerta, was assaulted and detained by ICE,” Francis said, referring to the SEIU California Union President who was violently arrested by federal agents while he was observing an ICE raid in Los Angeles. Huerta was held in custody for multiple days. “There are so many more still behind bars,” Francis said.
