John F. Kennedy Federal Building, on Sudbury Street in Boston, site of Saturday’s planned rallies. (GoogleMaps)
BOSTON — A virtual powderkeg of passions is expected to explode on the streets outside the Hub’s John F. Kennedy Federal Building on Saturday, where dueling groups of demonstrators with vastly different political leanings plan to meet.
The noon demonstrations between a pro-borders group calling itself “Resist Marxism” and a coalition of local socialist organizations revolve around the deportation of Siham Biyah, a Moroccan national and mother of an 8-year-old boy who has been living stateside since 1999 despite facing multiple deportation orders.
Resist Marxism stated in a recent press release that while the group “respects the Marxists’ right to hold a rally in support of their views and will not attempt to disrupt their activities,” the organizations reserves the right to “come out in support of the ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers who are being attacked for nothing other than enforcing the law on the behalf of the citizenry.”
The organizations demonstrating on behalf of Biyah — Boston Feminists for Liberation, Boston Socialist Alternative, Boston Green-Rainbow Party, the Boston branch of the International Socialist Organization, and the Boston May Day Coalition — claim that “ICE and the Trump administration have ramped up their attacks on immigrant rights activists as well as large sections of the immigrant community,” and noted that Byah happened to be a “member of our Boston activist community” prior to her December 27 deportation.
According to a Boston Globe report, Biyah’s son was taken into state custody in November. Biyah, meanwhile, has been applying for stays-of-removal since the mid-2000s, when she first faced a deportation order. The applications required her to check in with local ICE authorities on an annual basis. Her attorney, Matt Cameron, told the Globe that when Biyah checked in with authorities in Burlington in November, she was taken into custody.
Resist Marxism meanwhile is using the memory of Kate Steinle, an American woman gunned down in July 2015 on a San Francisco pier by an illegal alien with a criminal record and a history of deportations, as its own rallying cry.
“We will be there to educate the public on the threat that illegal immigration poses to the safety of Americans and to remember that Kate Steinle still has not receive justice after being murdered by an illegal immigrant,” the group stated, referring to the jury’s decision not to convict Jose Inez Garcia Zarate of murder after he claimed that the gun accidentally fired after he discovered it and subsequently picked it up off the ground. “We will stand up for the right of Americans to enforce our borders in accordance with our interests and preferences.”
Resist Marxism has been involved in several attention-grabbing rallies held on Boston Common last year. Each time, police actively prevented the co-mingling of Resist Marxism members and counter-protesters by erecting a series of barricades designed at keeping the two sides about a football field’s length apart.
As of Friday afternoon, Boston Police has yet to make any announcements regarding Saturday’s dueling demonstrations. Boston Police did not immediately respond to an inquiry from New Boston Post.
Saturday’s demonstrations will happen days after the U.S. Justice Department, under Donald Trump, sent a series of warning letters to almost two dozen so-called sanctuary cities, including Lawrence, informing the municipalities that if they continue to ignore requests from ICE for information on people local police arrest then they risk losing federal grant dollars.
Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera, who initially opposed his city council’s successful 2015 efforts to enact sanctuary city policies, responded to the letters by accusing the Trump administration of “focusing on imaginary bad guys” and “bullying.”
John F. Kennedy Federal Building, on Sudbury Street in Boston, site of Saturday’s planned rallies. (GoogleMaps) 
