PROTESTORS DEMAND THOMSON REUTERS STOP PROFITEERING FROM CONCENTRATION CAMPS, IMMIGRANT RAIDS AND IMMIGRANT DETENTIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — February 16, 2020
Contact: Andy Ratto (678) 561–7248, info@closethecampsnyc.com

Close the Camps NYC Leads March and Sit-in at Thomson Reuters for Colluding with ICE — Group Demands #NoBusinessWithICE

New York, New York, February 16, 2020 — Close the Camps NYC led hundreds of protestors to peacefully march to Thomson Reuters in Times Square today, then staged a sit-in to demand the business information giant stop powering Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in its racist campaign against immigrants and legal asylum seekers. Demonstrators are protesting this weekend — as Donald Trump launches a promised months-long crusade of arrests and raids in New York City and other sanctuary cities, targeting families and children.

Thomson Reuters and its subsidiaries have multi-million dollar contracts to give the militarized organization vast amounts of data that directly empower ICE’s gestapo-like raids. As a multinational corporation, Thomson Reuters’ influence is staggering: It provides highly specialized business information to decision makers in critical industries — legal, financial, tax, accounting, intellectual property and science — and it’s the parent company of the global news service Reuters, which claims to reach more than one billion people every day.

Among the data Thomson Reuters provides to ICE: scans of license plates and live jail booking information that enable ICE to track and seize immigrants. These arrests and raids destroy lives, tear apart families and even turn bloody, threatening everyone within proximity. By supporting ICE, Thomson Reuters is following the same grisly path of IBM, which powered the Nazis and enabled the Holocaust.

This is Close the Camp NYC’s next major action against a multinational corporation since its successful September 14, 2019 protest that first shuttered Microsoft Inc.’s flagship location on Fifth Avenue — and then halted all traffic when scores of protestors moved to the street just blocks from Donald Trump’s New York City residence in Trump Tower. With hundreds of peaceful protestors supporting the sit-in and 76 people arrested, the protest earned significant national and international media coverage. Close the Camps NYC also led the major protest that closed the West Side Highway in August 2019. There, more than 100 people were arrested while publicly shaming RXR Realty LLC for allowing ICE to covertly operate among social justice organizations in its Starrett-Lehigh office building.

“Doing business with ICE is collusion with ICE,” said Andy Ratto, an organizer with Close the Camps NYC. “We will not remain silent as corporations profit from human suffering. History has proven this is life-or-death for 11 million undocumented people in the United States.”

“Our ongoing investigation into tech companies powering ICE has definitively revealed this: Thomson Reuters is among the most dangerous tech companies to immigrants targeted by ICE,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a senior campaign organizer with Mijente. “Thomson Reuters quietly amasses troves of personal data, which it sells to ICE. ICE agents then use it to pinpoint their targets, who they ambush outside their homes, schools, workplaces, banks — wherever they may have left a digital trail. There is no doubt that ICE agents use Thomson Reuters to cyberstalk and terrorize communities.”

“ICE is kidnapping our people every day because companies like Thomson Reuters profit off our pain and suffering,” said Haydi Torres of Movimiento Cosecha. “We’re demanding that Thomson Reuters stop its work that’s tearing apart families and deporting people seeking asylum.”

Follow actions by Close the Camps NYC — and our allies nationwide — by using #NoBusinessWithICE, #DignityNotDetention, #ShutDownICE, #AbolishICE and #CloseTheCampsNYC in social media.

About Close the Camps Close the Camps NYC is a coalition of groups and organizers working to close concentration camps in the United States and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to demilitarize immigration processes. Three other social and environmental justice groups sponsor Close the Camps NYC and its nonviolent direct action: Cosecha; Extinction Rebellion; and Earth Strike NYC.

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#NoBusinessWithICE, #DignityNotDetention, #ShutDownICE, #AbolishICE, #CloseTheCampsNYC, and #CloseTheCamps on social media.

Website: https://www.closethecampsnyc.com
Email: info@closethecampsnyc.com
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Endorsements:
-Mijente
-Housing Works
-Cosecha
-New Sanctuary Coalition
-Rise and Resist
-South Asia Solidarity Initiative
-SURJ
-National Writers Union
-Doctors for Camp Closure
-NYC DSA Immigration Justice Working Group
-Brandworkers
-Indivisible Brooklyn
-Hand in Hand: Domestic Workers Alliance
-South Asian Americans Lead Together
-Congregations for Justice and Peace