BAMN’S Community Defense Stops Deportations
Oriana Benavides and Annelise Pineda WIN Asylum!

For Printable Copies of the Statement on the Victory of Asylum for Annelise and Oriana Click HERE

For Printable Copies of the Statement on the Victory of Asylum for Annelise and Oriana in Spanish Click HERE

On Wednesday October 28th, close to 100 community supporters showed up to San Francisco immigration court to stop the deportations of two members of the Benavides/Pineda family. Oriana Benavides, a student a Berkeley high school, and her mother Annelise Pineda from Venezuela won their right to asylum based on fear of political persecution. Students from Berkeley High, including members of the football team, parents and teachers, UC Berkeley students and members of the Bay Area community organized by BAMN picketed in front of the court with signs and chants like “We want asylum, we want it today! Oriana and Annelise have to stay!”

The demonstration drew supporters from people walking by, coming into court, drivers and garnered supportive news media coverage. The demonstration was not a typical day for court employees, government attorneys and judges. By the starting time of the asylum trial, news of the demonstration had reached security and the judge who made arrangements for the public. Close to 30 people were allowed to enter the courtroom while the majority of the supporters packed the halls outside of court. Foreshadowing his attitude during the trial, the government attorney complained about feeling “unsafe about people holding signs” (!) at the demonstration and asked the judge to not allow public in court. When his request was denied, he asked not to have supporters sitting in the bench section behind him. He ultimately had to relent to BAMN’s legal team sit behind him. 

Once the trial began, in an unusual manner, the Government attorney accepted the expert’s report on Venezuelan country conditions done by Dr. McCoy, a professor at the University of Georgia. The report detailed the different ways the Venezuelan Government targets and suppresses opposition. The US Government attorney also accepted the expert testimony of Dr. Victor Pineda, world renowned leader on disability rights, UC Berkeley alum and family cousin who has been targeted and banned from presenting his work in Venezuela because of the family name Pineda is associated with the opposition. The judge also did not challenge the expert reports.

The majority of the trial was spent on the testimony of the mother, Annelise Pineda. Oriana was asked to step outside the court as a potential witness. Annelise was an orthodontist in Venezuela and descendant of the prominently political Pineda family.

Although it was extremely difficult to testify without her close family present and having to relieve her nightmare in Venezuela, Annelise spoke out bravely about her and her family’s experiences of having been physically attacked and psychologically tortured in Venezuela, and her continued work in the US as an outspoken oppositionist against the Maduro regime, and the guarantee of persecution and death if ever she were to be returned to Venezuela. 

Judge Ann Little, Trump appointee, head of the New Jersey Tea Party, and leader in New Jersey Militia, was the presiding judge over the case. Little behaved like someone consciously accustomed to have the power to decide who stays and who is deported, and in some instances, who lives and dies. In this case, in the face of a courtroom packed with supporters, and many more kept out but picketing in front of the building, she chose to appear merciful (especially in front of an audience).

In another uncommon scene in immigration court trials, Judge Little delivered her decision from the bench immediately after the trial, announcing the victory for Annelise and Oriana. The decision resulted in cheers and applause from the public in court, while the government attorney was halfway packing his stuff and, in a hurry, to get out of the court. The government always reserve the right to appeal, in this case, he “submitted.”

For almost two years, members of the Benavides-Pineda family have continually spoken out at public tribunals, rallys and done news interviews about their experience in Venezuela in an effort to seek public support for their family’s asylum case. Their leadership in the immigrant’s rights movement has not only helped to build community support to win their case, but also to inspire other immigrants and communities in the Bay Area. 3 more members of the family have asylum cases pending, this victory almost guarantees victory for their cases.

Outside the court, the rest of the supporters who did not make it inside the court were still picketing and chanting when the case was over. We held a rally where the family announce the victory to a cheering crowd. Immediate lessons were made to the crowd of the importance of fighting immigration cases publicly and collectively.This victory is the model to follow for fighting future immigration cases, and also for political struggle in general. It’s a stunning example that if you fight through the BAMN method of building independent mass power of our communities, in the face of adversity and opposition from racist demagogues like Trump or ICE: stand up, mobilize the movement, and we can WIN. 

***** Read About the Campaign to Stop the Deportation of the Benavides Pineda Family and Win their Asylum Below********

Stop the Deportation of Berkeley’s Benavides-Pineda Family!

Stop Trump’s Child Separation and Indefinite Family Detention Policies!

Shut down the concentration camps! Free all immigrant detainees!

No ban, no wall, sanctuary for all!

Pass the Federal DREAM Act! Defend DACA and TPS!

Click HERE for a Hard Copy Flyer of this Post

In the past 1-2 years, the Benavides-Pinedas entered the United States with legal travel documents. Active members of the opposition movement in Venezuela, Rafael and other family members have been physically beaten, tortured, attacked, and threatened for protesting the Maduro regime. Rafael Benavides, Annelise Pineda and their three children Simon, Leonardo and Oriana are part of the mass exodus of political refugees from Venezuela, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, seeking shelter in the United States and several other Central American, Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Rafael Benavides applied for asylum for himself and his family on November 12, 2017. Only days later, while vacationing in Southern California, the Benavides-Family accidentally drove across the border to Mexico, a common mistake on a confusing highway. This accident has put the family in an impossible and unnecessary situation, where, despite their pending asylum process, they were detained and placed in deportation removal proceedings.

After spending 8 long months in a Georgia immigration detention center, Rafael Benavides was finally released from detention. Despite tremendous pressure to give up and sign self-deportation papers, Rafael’s courage and persistence remained strong. His resolve was strengthened by the determined efforts of family and friends to mobilize support for Rafael. Together with BAMN, they publicly circulated petitions in the schools, spoke at city council meetings and to the media, gathered support letters from community members and educators and mobilized outside of the immigration court hearings in San Francisco. All this made it possible to stop Rafael’s deportation to certain death, reuniting him with family and friends where he belongs in Berkeley, California.

The struggle to stop Benavides-Pineda family from being deported is not over. They are still in deportation proceedings, and will have more hearings in immigration court in San Francisco in the upcoming months. But they are closer to victory than ever before because of their public struggle. The Berkeley community that they are now part of has helped to reunite them, prevented their deportation, and also shed light on the plight of thousands of Venezuelan family exiles in the United States.

Here in Berkeley, the most militant community of the Resistance, the Benavides-Pineda family’s courage, together with the leadership of BAMN, provides an urgently needed example that the movement can generalize and implement in order to win in the next months to come. Trump continues to expand his brutal child separation policy, tripling the tent city child concentration camp in Tornillo, TX and announcing his intention to restore the vicious policy of indefinite family detention through converting abandoned military bases into prisons to hold immigrant families for years at a time with no guarantee of even a bail hearing, much less freedom.

The political and economic situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate at a rapid pace, in part because of the direct intervention through sanctions by the Trump Administration, laying down the groundwork for a military coup and even more turmoil. People like the Benavides family who have had the courage to speak out and act against injustice in Venezuela, continue to be repressed, and in the worst cases tortured and killed. Massive food shortages, a dearth of medical supplies and services, and rampant violence has led to an outpouring of 2.6 million exiles to flee Venezuela in a desperate bid to survive. In the US, the number of migrants seeking asylum from Venezuela is almost 3x as many as from any other country. And yet the Trump Administration continues to turn its back on them and has, in fact, placed Venezuelans seeking asylum on the fast track for deportation.

We cannot rely on the cynicism or the political games of the mainstream political politicians. The national leadership of the Democratic Party is an ineffective and shameful opposition to obscene criminal abuses of Trump and the Republicans. In some cases they have enabled his attacks, more worried more about scoring votes for themselves rather than victories against Trump. They have religiously maintained their political policy in regards to Trump, “oppose, but not obstruct.” Their only obstruction has been to hold back the only power capable of stopping Trump, the national Resistance.

Any illusions of reliance in the legal system to provide justice and safety for refugees also evaporates as Trump appoints dozens of right wing federal judges prepared to carry out his only concrete policy of mass deportations of immigrants. It’s even worse now with the gross appointment to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh, a sexual predator and anti-immigrant ideologue who believes in giving free rein to Trump’s presidential authority with no legal restrictions whatsoever.

The last line of defense of justice and equality in America is the brave and independent leadership in action of the national movement of resistance against Trump. The mass independent actions of the movement have stopped Trump’s worst attacks like Trump’s first Muslim ban with mass demonstrations that shut down airports rendering his attack a dead letter in practice. The particular militant leadership from the ranks of the black, Latina/o, and LGBTQ communities, immigrants, and women continue to be a source of inspiration and direction for our movement.

Join us to hear the Benavides-Pineda family speak of their experience in their fight against deportation and for citizenship rights. But also, as we draw lessons of the victories we’ve had, the challenges we now face and also of the opportunities, we will have to win asylum for the Benavides-Pineda family and all other asylum seekers and to defeat Trump.

Sponsored By:

* Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)

* Women’s Empowerment Club – Diablo Valley College

* Associated Students (ASUC) – UC Berkeley

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