Community Ride Project
Neighbors helping neighbors to get where they need to go!
The Community Ride Project provides rides and support to our undocumented neighbors in Western Massachusetts as they attend mandated ICE check-ins, immigration court dates, and ankle bracelet company appointments in Hartford, CT, Burlington and Boston, MA. We work with people who don’t have reliable access to transportation to get to and from important appointments necessary to dealing with their immigration status and keep them safe from detention. We train and verify community members who can accompany and provide the transportation to those who need it with no strings attached to those who receive the service.
In 2019, a young mother was let into the U.S. and settled down in Western Massachusetts with her daughter. Routinely attending militant check-ins with ICE, she often relied on TRC’s Community Ride Project. After one appointment, this mother was told by ICE that she needed to bring a plane ticket to her next appointment. Through the ride project’s follow-up process, we were able to identify this as unusual and set her up with a lawyer for free legal consultation. Her family narrowly avoided a rogue deportation through community solidarity. We are called to ask ourselves: how many others have fallen through the cracks?
Under the administration’s current agenda of division and discrimination, we are beginning to see more folks being targeted for detention and deportation as they attend or accompany family members to these mandatory appointments. That’s why it’s so important for folks with documents to provide rides and stand in solidarity with immigrants as they attend check-ins and court dates. This shows ICE, DHS, and affiliated ankle-bracelet companies that undocumented migrants are not alone – they have the support and solidarity of their communities, who are keeping a watchful eye on the federal government’s anti-immigrant abuses.
