Ill. congressman visits Providence to talk about immigration policy

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 3, 2011

By Tracy Breton

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE –– U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill., and hundreds of Rhode Island immigrants, both legal and illegal, gathered at a town-hall style meeting Saturday afternoon to draw attention to the toll that deportation is taking on families.

In just one year with Barack Obama as president, Gutierrez pointed out, 400,000 people were deported from the United States –– more people than any other president has deported, he asserted. And most of them, Gutierrez said, are not violent criminals, but law-abiding, hard-working people.

Speaking almost entirely in Spanish to a standing-room-only audience that packed the auditorium of the former Oliver Hazard Perry Middle School, Gutierrez said he favors ridding the country of illegal criminals. But he said there should be a “parole-in-placeâ€