“We say we are standing in solidarity with people of Latin America,” Voss told the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer on Saturday. “When those people are forced from their home country because of SOA violence, they are being mistreated. We extend our solidarity with them.”

The weekend of action expanded its focus to include Stewart Immigrant Detention Center about nine years ago. “We have to address the root causes of migration, which to a major part lie in the deplorable economic and military policies, which the United States has imposed on Latin America,” Borgeois said.

For many activists, SOA has become a notorious symbol of U.S.-backed human rights abuses in Latin America. The taxpayer-funded school now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation educated several dictators from the region, as well as their military officials, and included torture, extortion, and execution in its curriculum. Yet as SOA Watch points out, despite evidence of human rights abuses connected to the school’s graduates, “no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place.”