Thread: Activists urge Bush to stop deportations

Posted on Sat, Mar. 03, 2007reprint or license print email
IMMIGRATION
Activists urge Bush to stop deportations
Immigrant rights activists are asking the Bush administration to stop deporting undocumented immigrants picked up in stepped-up immigration enforcement.
BY ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@MiamiHerald.com
The loud knocks on the door awoke Verónica Ruiz and her family at 5:59 a.m. Feb. 6.

''At first I thought it was a robbery, but then I knew,'' Ruiz said. ``Immigration agents were outside looking for me.''

Ruiz jumped out of bed, gathered her husband and two children in a room of their Miami-Dade apartment and hid for five hours as immigration officers outside shone flashlights through windows. Eventually, the officers left without making the arrest -- and Ruiz went into hiding.

The 31-year-old Colombian thus joined the nearly half a million fugitives nationwide who are ignoring deportation orders -- prime targets of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as agents step up efforts to track down immigrants evading expulsion.

Immigrant rights activists hope to shield Ruiz and millions of other undocumented immigrants from deportation so they can benefit from any new legalization law passed by Congress.

Activists are urging President Bush, who supports legalization, to halt detentions and deportations -- as long as the immigrants have no criminal record.

A moratorium may come too late for Ramón Cacique, though. Immigration agents arrested the Venezuelan in Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 17. His companion, Alba Delgado, said two agents came to the couple's home at 7 a.m. and whisked him away.

Cacique and Delgado requested asylum separately because they are not married. They claimed persecution for opposing President Hugo Chávez. An immigration judge allowed Delgado, who has liver cancer, to stay but ordered Cacique deported. He is now at a detention center in Texas.

Since last May, when Homeland Security launched Operation Return to Sender, the number of targeted immigrant arrests increased nationwide. There has been a surge in U.S.-Mexico border arrests, a decline in illegal border crossings and more systematic and frequent detentions of immigrants with final deportation orders.

FAMILIES BROKEN UP

''It is a great tragedy,'' said José Lagos, president of Honduran Unity, a Miami immigrant rights group. ``Families have been broken up. People's lives have been disrupted and panic has gripped our communities, all on the eve of possible legalization. These people are being denied hope.''

Lagos' group is among those behind the moratorium movement. Others include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, Haitian Women of Miami, League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement.

Supporters of immigration reform in Congress have yet to weigh in on a moratorium. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and brothers Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart support legalization for millions of undocumented workers. But when pressed on the moratorium, they and others who worked on immigration reform last year -- including Rep. Kendrick Meek and Sens. Mel Martinez, John McCain and Ted Kennedy -- declined to comment further or did not respond.

Officials in some major cities have passed or are considering resolutions urging the White House to stop most deportations. The Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners last week unanimously approved a moratorium resolution sponsored by Commissioner Katy Sorenson. The Broward County Commission so far has no plans to adopt a similar resolution.

ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said detentions and deportations will continue.

''This department has a moral and legal obligation to enforce our immigration laws, and we take that obligation very, very seriously,'' he said. ``We are simply not going to sit back and await policy discussions to carry out the responsibilities the American public and the Congress have entrusted us with, and that is swift and responsible enforcement of our immigration laws.''
Steven Forester, a senior policy advocate at Haitian Women of Miami, said there is precedent for a moratorium. In December 1997, then-President Clinton suspended deportations of certain Haitians who were later granted U.S. residency under a new law.

Homeland Security officials note that immigration agents are not rounding up all undocumented immigrants, estimated at 12 million people, including about one million in Florida.

Ruiz was ordered deported to Colombia last year after an immigration judge denied her asylum. She said she feared returning home because her father, a cattle rancher, was kidnapped and never returned.

She arrived seven years ago and eventually married a Nicaraguan green-card holder, José Rodríguez. Ruiz said she plans to remain in hiding until immigration reform becomes law -- hoping to qualify for legalization.

''I pray every day that the law passes,'' she said. ``It's my only hope.''

LIVING IN FEAR

Elisa Gómez, a Guatemalan in Miami, says she has not slept well since learning in August that she is subject to deportation.

''I fear any knock on the door, thinking it's immigration agents coming for me,'' she said in a telephone interview.

Jorge Rivera, Miami immigration attorney for Gómez, Delgado and Ruiz, said the only way his clients will benefit from legalization is if any new law were to revoke their deportation orders.

''If not, many of these people are going to be in the same situation as before the law changes,'' he said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/29973.html

I feel really aggravated when they put on a sob story for our President. We have a much sadder story to tell him about the number of U.S. citizens being killed everyday as a result of illegal immigration. There are so many sad stories which Americans could tell about the negative effects illegal immigration is having on them. Very serious stories.

Funny how he is so vulnerable to their sob stories, yet the negative effects that illegal immigration is having on Americans hasn't seemed to bother him. Please help us, God. We are trying to tell him and Congress, please help them to believe us and listen to us.

What bothers me more than anything is that these people think that they have the same rights as Americans simply because they refer to themselves as immigrants. It's as if they have every right to be here uninvited. Their brazen chants of we aren't leaving further infuriates me. The longer the idiots in our government allow this lawless chaos to continue the more intensely heated this situation is going to become. Anyday now there will be bloodshed on a monumental scale over this situation, the tension is escalating to a breaking point while they sit on their worthless behinds worrying about their futures in politics.

Keep enforcing the laws and arresting, the only thing I want you to change is a speedier deportation, every day they stay here is costing us more money!

An immigration judge allowed Delgado, who has liver cancer, to stay but ordered Cacique deported. He is now at a detention center in Texas.

These bleeding heart judges are costing the American taxpayer a bundle!