Drop the Banner to protest Mass Raids in our Cities
Since the Trump Administration took office, it has terrorized our communities across the country. The scale and frequency of these state attacks echo the eras of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and the anti–Vietnam War protests, when our own government repressed Black and Brown communities with organized violence. Today, instead of attack dogs, we see masked agents with batons, smashing windows and assaulting people who dare to protect their loved ones, neighbors, and even strangers.
What is Drop the Banner?
At this critical moment, SEAFN invites our Southeast Asian communities and allies to join us as we launch the Love & Protect – Drop the Banner campaign, a call to action to publicly refuse ICE terror, expose abuses, and show visible solidarity whenever our people are targeted, detained, or disappeared. Every time you see our communities targeted and terrorized by ICE, show your defiance by dropping the “Love and Protect” banner on your social media, at rallies, and in your neighborhoods. Make it known that we refuse to accept this violence in our cities, our neighborhoods, or anywhere in this country. Through Love & Protect – Drop the Banner, we are turning outrage into visible, collective action and organized people power where our communities can live and thrive with dignity, safety and freedom.
What ICE is doing?
Just like Somalis, Southeast Asians have been the target of this administration. Cambodian, Hmong, Mien, Lao, and Vietnamese community members have faced mass deportations as Congress pours billions into ICE and expands a whole-of-government enforcement strategy. This consolidates power and evades meaningful checks and balances, enabling ICE and collaborating agencies to escalate the use of inhumane tactics: highly visible raids at supermarkets, laundromats, schools, hospitals, and courthouses, with masked agents using pepper spray and other weapons indiscriminately on civilians. This is not normal, and it is not acceptable.
They are flooding our cities with violence. “Immigration enforcement has already begun in New Orleans, a city that many immigrant and refugee communities call home. Fear and uncertainty are especially high among local Vietnamese residents, who know arrests and deportations can happen to anyone.” said Tap Bui, Co-Executive Director of Song Community Development Corporation in New Orleans.
Take Actions
There are many ways to show your love, find the vibe that works for you:
- Drop the banner: “Love and Protect” on your social media by making the graphic your cover photo. Download the banner here.
- Connect with local rapid response teams, join street actions, and attend or share Know Your Rights training and multilingual resources like ILRC’s red cards.
- Report ICE activity to hotlines, document from a safe distance, organize school patrols, use alerts like whistles, and offer rides, groceries, childcare, and other support to impacted neighbors.
These actions help transform the visibility of the banner into real protection for our people.
Elected Officials
You have the power and the moral responsibility to act now.
- Publicly denounce ICE’s kidnappings and violent actions.
- Publicly denounce deportations.
- Empower local police to protect the community from ICE agents’ terror.
- Advocate for and fund legal defense for those impacted by detention and deportation.
- Allocate resources to community-based organizations that support immigrant and refugee communities.
- Organize public hearings that expose and hold ICE accountable for its abuses.
SEAFN’s Campaign Manager, Sun H., observes similar chilling effects in Charlotte. “Border Patrol’s Operation Charlotte’s Web terrorized our community. Families were afraid to leave their homes, and over 30,000 students missed school. U.S. citizens were racially profiled and stopped because they were brown. More than 20 officers swarmed Home Depot, streets, and neighborhoods to abduct people selling flowers, biking, or simply existing.”
Neighbors are standing up for each other
Yet across the country, communities have resisted. Recent operations across the country have turned out neighbors who are standing their ground, documenting abuses, and doing what they can to shield those around them. “We filmed, shared Know Your Rights, verified ICE activity, and delivered groceries to families afraid to leave their homes,” said Sun. In New Orleans, the community is also prepared. “[A] coalition of organizers, advocates, and artists formed the VietNolaNetwork to serve as a central hub for New Orleans’ diverse Vietnamese communities – offering culturally competent resources, training, and communication,” said Bui.
“Love & Protect” is our collective response to their deeper agenda
Love & Protect – Drop the Banner is a call to action grounded in a clear truth: these attacks are part of a broader white supremacist agenda. This administration is working to denaturalize citizens, halt the asylum program, target and criminalize BIPOC communities, slash refugee admissions, and reshape immigration so that only a select few, including preference for whites from abroad, are welcome. Under these policies, many Southeast Asian refugees who rebuilt our lives here would never have been allowed to enter.
We reject the narrative that silence keeps us safe. Our safety is tied to our community. As Bui declared, “We stand in solidarity with our Latinx and Black immigrant neighbors, our Muslim neighbors, and our Viet and Asian neighbors. Only through a united, multiracial front can we best protect and support our communities.”
Just as this rising authoritarianism has historic precedents, so too does our resistance have deep and strong roots. The Love and Protect – Drop the Banner call to action draws on the national movement of queer activists during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and the youth organizers who dropped banners over New York City bridges and highways to protest police brutality in the 1990s. There is strength in our numbers and our movements.
Join us!