Thread: Immigration Protesters Arrested Outside Federal Building

Immigration Protesters Arrested Outside Federal Building

More than a dozen protesters chained themselves together on a downtown street.

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KTLA News
2:11 PM PDT, May 6, 2010

Immigration protesters stage rally Downtown (KTLA.com / May 6, 2010)

LOS ANGELES -- Police are arresting more than a dozen protesters who chained themselves together on a downtown street to protest Arizona's new immigration law.

Protest spokesman Nelson Motto says 14 activists locked themselves in a circle Thursday afternoon and lay down on a street in front of federal immigration detention center, blocking traffic for about four hours.

Dozens of helmeted officers surrounded the demonstrators before declaring an unlawful assembly and moving in shortly before 2 p.m. No injuries are reported.

Officer Gregory Baek says the protesters will be booked for delaying, resisting and obstructing officers.

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The activists said in a statement released via e-mail that they were protesting Arizona's recently enacted SB1070 and other federal, state, and local immigration enforcement laws.

"This detention center symbolizes the incarceration and internment of so many immigrants and the separation of families," the statement read.

"We are here to say that there will be no more business as usual at this detention center and that weneed to end SB1070, all detentions and deportations and the criminalization of our communities."

Protesters said they planned to block the entrance to the facility and to protest of the Arizona law they would refuse to cooperate with police by providing identification documents or their names.

"We are here in solidarity with the millions of undocumented immigrants and Latinos and other people of color labeled as illegal because of how they look and whose humanity is being denied by the inability to provide documentation proving their status," they said in the statement.

The statement also called for "an immediate and unconditional regularization (legalization) of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., the immediate repeal of SB 1070, an end to all racial profiling and the criminalization of communities of color, an end to ICE and police collaboration and an end to immigration raids, detentions and deportations."
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Related:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-198013-nelson.html+motto