Activists Enter New Surrey Migrant Detention Center on Multi-city Day of Action Against Detention
By Jeff Shantz and Eva Ureta, October 8, 2019
No borders activists, anti-police organizers, and prison abolitionists gained access to the new migrant detention center under construction located at 13130 76 Ave, Surrey, BC (Unceded Coast Salish territories) on the Multi-city Day of Action against the Canadian state's detention of migrants: October 3, 2019. The action disrupted a Canada Border Security Agency training session for their jail guards. A banner was also successfully unfurled inside the detention centre and viewable to passersby and motorists. It read: “Stop Detentions, Migrant Justice Now!”
The migrant prison is being built under much secrecy with little publicly available information. Gaining this kind of access by people opposing border controls, prisons, and state containment has not been possible previously at this site.
The new detention center is operated by the Canada Border Security Agency as part of the Canadian state's repression of racialized, precarious, migrant working class people. It is an institution of colonial and imperialist state violence.
In addition to the Surrey action, demonstrations were carried out against the other migrant detention centers in Canada—in Laval, Quebec and in Toronto—as well as in other cities within the Canadian state
(Photo: Eva Ureta)
Video of the Surrey action can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ud0kAnGMU