Sioux Falls Public Library should not allow Customs & Border Protection to hold job recruitment event at downtown facility
The Sioux Falls Library Board is allowing the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) to reserve the Downtown Library community rooms for a job recruitment event for border patrol agents April 7-9. The library should post a highly visible public safety warning for the duration of the event.
Regarding use of meeting rooms, the library website says: “Our intent is to make Siouxland Libraries’ meeting and study room space available on a widespread and equitable basis for educational, informational, community meetings.” I don’t think a job recruitment event for CBP is particularly educational or “community-related,” considering Sioux Falls is 354 miles as the crow flies to the closest international border; but I can’t argue with “informational.” I suspect board members did what they thought they had to do.
I wish to share information about CBP in advance of the event so readers understand some of the accusations against the types of people who are being recruited. In well-documented reports in AP, The New Republic, The Ohio Immigrant Alliance and Human Rights Watch, CBP agents have been credibly accused of physical and sexual violence against detainees, including against women and children.
These data indicate CBP does not always attract or hire the nation’s finest, although their career website would lead you to believe otherwise.
Of the city’s libraries, the Downtown Library attracts the greatest ethnic, racial and economic diversity of patrons, based on whom I see coming and going. For three days this week, a good percentage of library patrons will be afraid to use this library — especially people of color and anyone who identifies as Hispanic white. Even Native Americans in the vicinity will likely feel unsafe given the abduction and detention of four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Minneapolis on Jan. 8. A Red Lake Nation member was also reported to be detained during the 10-week ICE/CBP reign of terror known as Metro Surge.
I love and support our libraries. As a Sioux Falls resident, taxpayer, and frequent library patron, I think this recruitment event is a terrible stain upon the reputation of our city libraries and an affront to patrons of the Downtown Library in particular. This should not happen, now or ever.
Julia Natvig of Sioux Falls is a retired nurse, a community health educator, a social justice activist. I am co-leader of the organization Common Grounds Indivisible SD, which meets in Sioux Falls. It is not a 501c3 or 501c4, but is part of the national organization Indivisible.org, which is both.
Photo: ICE agents making arrest, public domain, wikimedia commons
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