Agencia EFE December 11, 2013 12:46pm December 11, 2013 12:46pm

22 Arrested at anti-deportation protest in New York

(Globalpost/GlobalPost)


New York, Dec 11 (EFE).- Twenty-two people were arrested after they disrupted traffic in front of the New York headquarters of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to demand a halt to deportations.

Shouting slogans like "Undocumented and fearless" and forming a human chain, the group stationed itself on Broadway Ave., which passes right in front of the federal building in Manhattan.


One by one, police handcuffed the protesters and took them to a truck, while the rest of the group and those who showed up to support them continued shouting slogans a few steps from city hall.


"I'm doing this for the first time for my undocumented community. I'm a DREAMER and I'm doing this because 45 families are separated by deportations every hour and 1,100 every day," Avelino, a 19-year-old undocumented student who was one of the first people arrested, told Efe.


His parents, who brought him to the United States from Mexico when he was 10, opted to return to their country "because they got tired of waiting for 12 years for an immigration reform that didn't arrive," Avelino said.


The New York Police Department is not cooperating with ICE in providing information to it about immigrants.


Among those arrested were U.S. citizens, including an activist of Ecuadorian origin - Angelica Otero, with the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development - who participated in the protest in support of the immigrant community.


Mexican immigrant Aracelys Cruz and her two daughters asked President Barack Obama to halt deportations so that other families would not be separated.


Her husband was detained and deported in November 2012 and her daughters, ages 8 and 9, do not understand "why their father is not with them."


http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/n...otest-new-york