+[RECHEARTLANDKIDS

MIGRANT DETENTION FACILITY UNDER
CONSTRUCTION STORMED IN CHICAGO
ON MAY DAY

THL FOLLOWING RLPORT DOCUMENTS A
DEMONSTRATION OF ROUGHLY TWO HUNDRED
ON MAY 17, 2020 IN CHIGAGO AGAINST THL
WEARTLAND ALLIANCE, A NON-PROFIT THAT

HOLDS MIGRANT CHILDREN CAPTIVE IN Dr-
TENTION,

This story was first published on the website 2% Gosng Down, (au-
thor unknown). The original version is found at the url:

https:/ /itsgoingdown.org/vacant-migrant-child-jail-building-
stormed-in-chicago-on-may-day/
n May 1, 2020 a group of outraged neighbors, aboli-
tionists and other anti-racists came together to storm

the gates and shake up a child detention center own
by Heartland Alliance, under renovation in Chicago’s Rog-
ers Park neighborhood. The child prison is temporarily un-
occupied. According to the local news, “More than three
dozen immigrant children at a Heartland Alliance shel-
ter...have tested positive for COVID-19.”This torture
chamber located at 1627 W Morse has been used to isolate
and punish migrant children who attempted to escape or
rebel against their captors in other facilities. The following
communique was thrown across the surrounding streets
and flung from the rooftop of the facility.
The text of the distributed statement reads:

We are occupying this building in solidarity
with all of the rebellious children who have
been detained here in the past, those who
are still being detained elsewhere, incar-
cerated people everywhere, and all who con-
tinue to experience violence at the hands of
the state. With each passing day of this
pandemic, we realize, as some have long
known, that coronavirus is not the only thing
killing us — it’s effects are weaponized by
systems we are told to trust and rely on but
which are actively harming and disposing of
us.

Heartland Alliance, a non-profit organiza-
tion masquerading it’s sinister program of
social control as altruistic endeavor, jails
migrant children in all corners of this city,
including right here at 1627 W Morse. This
detention center is currently empty, not be-

cause Heartland has started releasing kids

to their families but because the brick and
mortar cage is being renovated and re-se-
cured to continue detaining and traumatizing
children or to transform it into another type
of carceral facility to hold our houseless
neighbors while thousands of CHA units re-
main vacant. Regardless, this building’s
purpose will be to surveil, control, and

criminalize.

There are currently 42 cases of COVID-19 at Heartland’s fa-
cilities. Even before these numbers were confirmed, soli-
darity demos have been denouncing what in cages is inev-
itable.

Chicago Rising

ChicagoRising

"Once the children are taken into custody, Homeland
Security charges the genocide survivors w/ immigration
crimes, initiates deportation proceedings, & transfers them
to detention centers like those run by @heartlandhelps in
#Chicago," by @littlevillagesn: itsgoingdown.org/fight-to-
close

The Fight to Close Child Detention Centers in Chicago - It'...

Heartland Alliance operates at least nine detention centers for
migrant children in the Chicagoland area. The children in these

9 521PM

As a result Heartland has claimed that singing to the chil-
dren, demanding their freedom and expressing love, both
frightens and endangers them. Meanwhile, those on the
outside witness smiles, waves, hands forming the shapes of
hearts, signs reading ‘thank you” and ‘i love you’. At a re-
cent demo a written plea for HELP was launched towards
the crowd standing below after which Heartland had cov-
ered their windows with tarps to stop children from inter-
acting with us. Their flustered responses reflect the inten-
sity of our connection and reveals an important truth: soli-
darity is powerful and our collective action is starting to
create some cracks across the prison walls.

We are destroying the illusion that Heartland’s baby jail
business is anything but an insidious overlap between the
non-profit and prison industrial complexes. The pandemic
has laid bare this tortured interplay exposing an avalanche
of contradictions. It is within these cracks that we begin to
grow new worlds. Worlds without incarceration, without
domination, in which we no longer rely on systems that

seek to extinguish and exterminate our autonomy and joy,
and which reject separation from our greater power: each
other.

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Chicago, IL 60640