For Immediate Release
October 20, 2015
Contact: Salvador G Sarmiento, sgsarmiento@ndlon.org
NDLON Statement on Vitter: More, Not Less, Sanctuary Needed
(Los Angeles, CA) – In response to today’s Senate vote, Pablo Alvarado, Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), issued the following statement:
“Today’s bill was never meant to become law. It was introduced as an odious act of scapegoating. It is being used to defend unjustifiable deportations and it perfectly symbolizes the political cowardice of lawmakers both in Congress and within the Obama Administration and their collective failure to reform outdated US immigration policy. It is also a reminder that going forward, progress will and must be made at the state and local level by bottom-up community organizing, through courageous activism, and with litigation to uphold civil rights and constitutional values.
“While TRUST Acts and sanctuary cities are needed now more than ever to guard against the sickening demagoguery of the Trump Effect, they initially emerged as shields to defend against the Obama administration’s own disgraceful ‘Se Communities’ deportation policy. And today’s debate should not be used as an excuse to bully local jurisdictions into acquiescing to a lesser of two evils. The Vitter bill must be rejected, but so too must President Obama’s mutating PEPCOMM policy with its duplicitous goal of deporting ‘felons, not families’.”
“Below the surface of the shameful spectacle on display today, a national consensus is emerging about the need to redress structural racism built into the DNA of US deportation policy and criminal law. Communities of color have always been disproportionately criminalized, dehumanized, and deported. Today’s spectacle on the Senate floor makes this racism visible, and it further illustrates the need to kick ICE agents out of local jails.”
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