Activists Stage 2-Day Demonstration To Protest Deportations
By aaroncynic in News on Apr 9, 2014 6:00PM
Immigration rights activists stage a sit-in Tuesday in suburban Broadview. (Photo credit: Illinois Coalition for Immmigration and Rrfugee Rights Twitter feed.)
Nearly a dozen demonstrators were arrested yesterday in suburban Broadview Tuesday after blocking traffic outside of a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, part of a two-day protest against deportations of undocumented immigrants. Protests began Monday in 40 cities across the country, urging President Obama to exercise executive authority to put an immediate halt to deportations and make good on his promises of immigration reform.
According to WBEZ, hundreds marched through the Loop Monday, beginning at the ICE offices on Congress Avenue, the site of several previous protests and sit-ins. Protesters continued their march through Pilsen and some marched 10 miles to suburban Berwyn, where they held a prayer vigil.
Rosi Carrasco, an activist with the group Organized Communities Against Deportations said:
“Two million is too many. It is possible to stop deportations with the organization, determination, and strength of our community. President Obama can use his executive authority to avoid that detention centers continue to profit from human suffering.”
Organizers of the demonstrations argue deportations break up families, particularly ones where a child is a documented U.S. citizen. “How do you explain to a 4-year-old about a border,” Maria Paz Perez, a 43-year-old naturalized citizen whose husband was deported from the Broadview detention center in November, asked the Sun-Times. ““I stay up at night wondering what the government wanted, what they gained from this.”
While Obama has said his deportation policies would focus on “violent offenders and people convicted of crimes, not families, not folks who are just looking to scrape together an income.” Activists however, have said the majority of deported people however, have been members of families just trying to make it in America. According to a report from Al Jazeera America, statistics show most undocumented people picked up by immigration authorities have either no criminal record or at least a non-violent record.
“In fiscal year 2013, for example, ICE deported 368,644 immigrants. Of these, 1 in 5 were Level 1 deportees, convicted of an aggravated felony. But in recent years, Congress has steadily expanded what “aggravated felony” means. Whereas the initial definition covered murder, federal trafficking of drugs and arms, it now includes more than 30 forms of offenses, including failing to appear in court and filing a false tax return.”
At a lunch break held at St. Pius in Pilsen in the middle of the trek from ICE in the Loop to Berwyn on Monday, 15-year-old Saul Arellano, son of immigration activist Elvira Arellano and a U.S. citizen, told AB7 “I had to move with my mom to Mexico. It's really difficult because I didn't know no one over there.” Elvira Arellano was deported seven years ago, returned legally and is asking to stay without being deported again.
As police in riot gear made arrests at the Broadview detention center, Reyna Wences from the group Undocumented Illinois told Progress Illinois their fight would continue:
“We're going to ask the community to continue to come out. Go to Broadview, go to McHenry, go to Downtown Chicago — make sure that Obama gets the message that two million is too many."