It's simple.

Barring collaboration between the Milwaukee Police Department and ICE — and barring collaboration between any local law enforcement agency in Wisconsin and ICE — will decrease racial profiling, improve public safety, and keep families together.

Many people get into immigration detention by being stopped or arrested for minor offenses — traffic tickets, non-payment of parking fees, vandalism, etc. When a local police department shares information or collaborates with ICE, it inevitably increases the number of detentions and deportations in that community.

Police department's collaboration with ICE makes a community vulnerable to family separation, incarceration, and deportation. it decreases collective well-being.

In Milwaukee in particular, immigrant rights groups are asking for stronger safeguards against any collaboration. The current language leaves too much room for discretion.

ICE is terrorizing our communities and as Jews living in Wisconsin, we have a responsibility to stand against it and to protect our neighbors. We've seen this before — and we know from our own history what happens next.

We know how the horrors of the 1940s relied on our non-Jewish neighbors to do nothing, to stay silent, to feed the machine, to follow orders, to turn a blind eye. And we now find ourselves in that role.

Raise your voice, take a stand, and add your name to this petition demanding the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission — and similar bodies across the state — bar any collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE.

We will not let anyone take our neighbors and community members away. We will resist and protect each other.