Thread: Protest at jail for Illegal Immigrants

Protest at jail for illegal immigrants
By Yonat Shimron
yonat.shimron@newsobserver.com
Posted: Friday, Apr. 02, 2010
CARY In a quiet office park off Evans Road is a two-story red brick building with tinted glass windows and shades. There's no sign outside, no U.S. flag nearby.

But about 40 protesters bearing wooden crosses drove there Thursday to inform its tenants they know what the federal government does inside - and they're outraged.

The building, at 140 Centrewest Court, is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office where illegal immigrants are detained before being brought before an immigration judge and, in many cases, deported.

Using familiar civil rights tactics, the protesters sought to bring attention to the building and demand transparency, including a list of detainees and access to lawyers and family members for those held there.

"The inhumanity of detaining people without representation is against the fundamental foundation of who we are as a country," said Rick Miller-Haraway, regional director of Catholic Charities and one of the protesters.

No one was arrested at the demonstration; ICE agents and Cary police stood on the sidelines.

The protest was timed for the day during Holy Week that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, before his crucifixion on Good Friday. The protesters, many of them Christians, arrived with a wash basin and several gallons of water. As people chanted Psalms and read Scripture passages, the Rev. Isaac Villegas, pastor of the Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship, washed the feet of about five of the protesters before an unmarked white van rolled in, dispersing the group.

A handcuffed man in a white T-shirt was then let out of a windowless white van and escorted inside.

The protesters quickly hung yellow tape on the black metal gated area in the rear of the building.

"By our yellow crime-scene tape, we've identified this as a crime scene," said Patrick O'Neill, one of the protesters.

Gail Phares, one of the group's leaders, then led the protesters in "We Shall Not Be Moved," a spiritual adapted by 1930s activists.

Brian Padian, the supervising agent at the ICE office, told the protesters their pleas could be more constructive elsewhere.

"I don't mind you guys protesting," Padian said. "But we're just law enforcement. You should be talking to Congress."



Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/0 ... z0jutrwDjU

The protesters quickly hung yellow tape on the black metal gated area in the rear of the building.
"By our yellow crime-scene tape, we've identified this as a crime scene," said Patrick O'Neill, one of the protesters.




We should hang long yellow tape across our southern border. The biggest "crime scene" in America!