About 24 people memorialized the victims of ICE at the vigil hosted by University of Houston’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at Butler Plaza on January 22nd. The Instagram flyer was posted two days prior, and had amassed over 600 likes by the time of the event.
Renee Good, Keith Porter Jr, Silverio Villegas-Gonzales, and Jaime Alanis Garcia were honored with posters borrowed from 50501 and flowers.
One attendee, Lee Pham, expressed her frustration towards the situation. “I f—ing hate ICE, and I love immigrants. They make everything about this country good,” she said.
While she was unable to attend the vigil, one UH student, Cayli Superville, voiced her disdain of ICE and how long the naturalization process takes.
“ICE was never supposed to do what it’s doing today. Many people think this is about illegal immigration and just “coming the right way” but if that’s the case then why is ICE taking people off the streets while having no proof they’re undocumented? But also, the US makes it very hard for Hispanic and Latinos to come into the county “legally” and it’s because of racism. It often takes years to get approved and money that many people don’t have.”
The post now has nearly 700 likes, 91 reposts, and was shared elsewhere 85 times, showing that people are unhappy with the current state of law enforcement.
The list
For nearly five minutes, Bentley Gilcrist, the organizer of the event, listed 42 names of those “victimized by ICE.”
“When I made this list, I had 40 individuals on it,” said Gilcrist. The day after, he learned that someone else died in ICE detention. The list grew longer. The following Thursday, it grew again. Gilcrist added someone who died while fleeing an illegal ICE raid.
The list includes people who sustained injuries while in detention and succumbed to them outside of the facilities, suicides, and those who were indirectly and directly killed by ICE’s presence.
Saturday, January 25th, yet another U.S. citizen and Minnesota resident was shot and killed by ICE.
“And so, this horrific violence isn’t just occurring, it is expanding. It is intensifying,” the organizer told Paperboy on Thursday. He then brought up statistics. In 2025, 32 people died in the custody of ICE. This year, it’s 6.
“They have 73,000 Americans in these camps, where they don’t have adequate access to food, they don’t have adequate access to water, they don’t have adequate access to medical care…there’s been reports of 10 people in a small cell with a bucket to go to the bathroom. There’s been reports of people with rashes, with skin injuries, with sicknesses just left there for days on end before medical care is provided. And so I think part of this memorial is spreading awareness, and not just of the victims and of the horrific violence that is occurring, but also of what we as Houstonians, as students, as people, this university can do about it.”
The importance of mobilization
Co-chair of UHYDSA’S Immigrant Justice Campaign Nora Pierce says that the killing of Good sent “shockwaves” through the immigrant justice ecosystem.
“The veil of security I had as a white, fem presenting person, where I’m like, ‘ICE wouldn’t get me‘ [lifted]. They would.”
Pierce notes that ICE presence in Houston isn’t comparable to Minneapolis because HPD’s collaboration with ICE through their access to federal databases during things like traffic stops and subsequent calls to ICE on the scene, makes militarization unnecessary.
Which is why they encourage people to not let fear stop them from taking action. “We’re still not really in danger in Houston,” they said. “We need to do better because Harris County is still the number one county for deportations in the United States…If we continue the way we are now without escalation, we will end up in that place.”
“ICE has been murdering people ever since the beginning of its creation in a post-9/11 hellscape,” they adds. The fact that they’re now moving from people that they’re “allowed” to victimize from people they are not supposed to victimize, it’s creating a public shift of, ‘maybe ICE is bad.’
Pierce encouraged attendees to mobilize and handed out Know Your Rights cards. Considering the short notice, the turnout and reception on social media pleasantly shocked them. “People care. It’s just that they don’t get an opportunity to care like that.” They left the event feeling hopeful.
More ways to take direct action can be found on UHYDSA’S Instagram.
Humanization
Rafael Jimenez, senior in political science and philosophy and one of the Co-Chairs for the UHYDSA, wanted to focus on humanizing the victims and highlighted the ways people on the left and right dehumanize them.
“We see these people as tally marks, as markers to make political points,” said Jimenez. “We don’t see Renee Good as necessarily a mother, a poet. We see her as a victim… So what we wanted to really emphasize today was the importance of understanding that these people are people.”
In his speech, he highlighted the history of the dehumanizing language used to refer to immigrants, specifically how Border Control refers to migrants crossing the border as ‘Tonks’.
“A tonk is the sound a flashlight makes when it hits a head,” he told Paperboy. “And instead of calling people suspects or people or anything marginally better, they call them Bodies and Tonks, right? Body speaks for itself. Instead of calling these people aliens, criminals, illegal. We should call them by their name. Renee Macline Good, Keith Porter Jr, Jaime Alanis Garcia, Silverio Villegas-Gonzales.”
“These are people who have histories. A lot of these people have been in the U.S. for over 20 years, in cases like Silverio Villegas-Gonzales, longer than some of us in this crowd have been alive. So, it’s really important and it’s crucial for activists to take a step back and organize through the lens of humanity.”
Delivered by Shekinah Abolo
