Multiple Latino activists in the Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest movements warn that the $90 million police training facility —and the repression tactics being used against those who oppose it— is U.S. imperialism brought home.

In what’s being hailed as a major victory for those looking to halt construction of a police training facility in a forest near Atlanta, a federal judge in Georgia ruled Thursday that a ban on non-Atlanta residents collecting signatures for a potential ballot measure is unconstitutional.

After her child “Tortuguita” was killed by Georgia State Patrol in January of this year while defending Atlanta’s South River Forest, Belkis Terán, a Venezuelan native now living in Panama, quickly took up the cause that they died fighting for.

The plan to build the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed “Cop City,” has seen people of all backgrounds unite and organize against it, including Atlanta’s Black residents, various religious organizations, Indigenous people, climate activists, college students, and families affected by police violence.

Threatened, arrested, attacked, and shot, Puerto Rico’s environmental activists have endured a lot while trying to enforce the environmental protection laws they feel the government refuses to enforce. Still, most of them refuse to back down.

Manuel “Tortuguita” Páez Terán was shot and killed by a Georgia State Patrol officer on January 18 during a multi-agency sweep to remove land defenders from the Weelaunee Forest in southeast Atlanta—one more in a long legacy of murdered land defenders around the world.