For Immediate Release
January 3, 2015
Contact: Olga Tomchin, olga@ndlon.org
Obama’s New Years Resolution Should Not Be to Deport Families Fleeing Violence
Los Angeles, CA – Right before Christmas, and after a federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release families from immigration detention, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration would instead begin mass deportations in the new year. Sources described a “large-scale effort to deport families who fled violence in Central America.”
Yesterday, we heard the first reports that U.S. authorities have begun to implement this plan in at least Atlanta. In one family, a woman reported that immigration agents came to the door saying they were looking for a “black person” (una persona de la raza morena). She said that no one lived there by that description. The agents rounded up everyone at the house, including the children, and left with a Honduran mother and her nine-year-old son.
Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) made the following statement:
”Obama must stop the raids. What message is sent by a president whose first action in the new year is to destroy families—to rip children from their homes and communities? In recent years, too many lives have been ruined by heartless and racist deportation policies. Home raids are inherently destructive and terrorize immigrant communities. Now is not a time for mass deportations, but for increased humanity.
“Dangerous political rhetoric is scapegoating, criminalizing, and dehumanizing immigrant communities. The President’s actions are far more harmful than Trump’s demagoguery. While Trumps’s dangerous rhetoric stigmatizes our loved ones, President Obama actually deports them.
“ICE is distrusted by our communities and rightly so. Reports indicate that ICE has been using racist lies to trick people into letting ICE into their homes. Immigrant communities must be warned to not open their doors to ICE unless they have a warrant.
“We need an immigration policy that recognizes the human dignity of migrants and does not use them as political pawns. Anything less is unconscionable.”
More information about what to do in the event of a raid is available here:
http://iceoutofla.org/
To report a raid, call:
844-878-8071
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