Hunger strikes and mass demands for cases to be reviewed are some of the ways people are using to try and force the system to change; pressure on Obama is growing in relation to his policy on deportations; hispanic immigrants would prefer the deportations to end rather than to gain citizenship.
How much more will the United States government be able to take before it makes a legal or administrative change to immigration laws? You have to ask the question after 2 million people have been deported, and the shock tactics of activists who are trying to bring about radical change have intensified.
When talking about the 10 months that her husband Manuel has spent in the Joe Corley Detention Facility in Conroe, TX, the first thing that comes out of Ernestina Hernández’s mouth is, “Obama is deporting American citizens.”* He is on hunger strike demanding an end to the deportations.
“Some time ago, when he went to Mexico, they kidnapped him and beat him up. That is the life that he will have to return to. What are we going to do? If they deport him, how will I explain it to my daughter that we let her father go? And if we go with him, what kind of future will my daughter have there?”* she said indignantly.
After five years of the Obama administration, life under the current system has stretched the patience of many. The pressure for change is boiling over to the doors of government agencies.
The hunger strike in the Joe Corley Detention Facility in Texas follows similar action first taken in Tacoma, Washington, where a huge fast began at the beginning of March. The hunger strikes are one of many shock tactics that are making the outlook complicated for the government. Obama will now have company indefinitely in front of the White House. Activists from the Dream Action Coalition will remind anyone who passes by there how the deportations phenomenon has impacted them. The campaign will prominently make the case that the exodus of people who have not committed any crimes must be slowed down.
“We can’t wait a day longer. A 90-day review period will mean 99,000 more deportations,”* claimed Erika Andiola, co-head of the Dream Action Coalition, referring to the implied time period that, according to many activists, Obama mentioned in a meeting at the end of March, where he promised to review the current system.
The topic has not been far from the president’s agenda, even when he has been out of the country. In his recent visit to the Vatican, the media’s attention was focused on Jersey Vargas, a 10-year-old girl, who managed to approach Pope Francis in a public audience and ask him to call on Obama to slow down the deportations and release her father, who had been detained by immigration authorities.
“We think that our grassroots movement is spreading across Washington. Throughout the country we have people talking about the deportations. We are not doing this because we think that immigration reform is dead, but because we think that there are some steps that must be taken now,”* argued Tania Unzueta, strategist of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
Borderless
On the border, the situation is even more tense. On the April 1, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held a mass in Nogales, Arizona, in honor of the approximately 6,000 undocumented immigrants who have died since 1998, while trying to cross the desert.
“In the end, this is about 11 million human beings living in the shadows. We cannot wait until the political winds change. We have a moral obligation to act as soon as possible,”* said Kevin Appleby, director of migration for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
At the end of the homily, two people who had been recently deported from the Phoenix Detention Center, Jaime Valdez and Ardani Rosales, appeared at the border gate to ask for their cases to be re-opened and to be granted humanitarian parole. Both had been deported after taking part in a hunger strike.
Immigration officers have had to make changes to the system for these types of cases, after a wave of people arrived at the border with the same goal. At the beginning of March, a group of 150 people arrived in Otay Mesa in California. Among them were traveling children, young people and parents who had been deported or had left the country, so that their families were not separated.
The group called itself Reform 150 and arrived in the U.S. as part of the Bring Them Home campaign. Some of them have been able to re-unite with their families, while others are waiting to leave San Diego Correctional Facility. Organizations like the National Immigrant Youth Alliance are behind this push, as well as similar groups like Dream 9 and Dream 30. It is part of a series of increasingly extreme actions, which are characterized by the fearlessness of this group of people who have nothing left to lose.
*Editor’s note: Quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.