Protesters to target Phoenix ICE office

Agency urged to end deportations

By Daniel GonzálezThe Republic | azcentral.comMon Oct 14, 2013 12:35 AM

As momentum for immigration reform fizzles in Congress, acts of civil disobedience are growing in intensity as frustrated advocates push President Barack Obama to take action on his own to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

Hundreds of immigration-reform advocates from around the country hope to bring that intensity to a head today by attempting to shut down deportation operations in Phoenix.

But their plans for a large-scale act of disobedience may have been thwarted. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has temporarily closed its offices in Phoenix until Tuesday. It was unclear whether deportation operations had also been suspended, and reform advocates still plan to continue with their protest, they said Sunday.

Today’s protest follows a series of similar demonstrations, most recently in Tucson, where dozens of reform advocates on Friday attached themselves to detention buses and blocked a federal courthouse parking entrance.

Advocates say they are frustrated that theObama administration continues to deport more than 1,000 people daily, separating families in the process, even though many of those same people might qualify for legal status should Congress pass a bill that includes a legalization program.

They want Obama to use his executive authority to expand to all illegal immigrants his year-old deferred-action program for young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as minors.

But Obama has already ruled out expanding the program. Analysts say to broaden the reach of the program would have further risked alienating Republicans in Congress from voting for reforms. The move also would have likely intensified criticism from enforcement advocates who say Obama has already used his executive powers to back off from immigration enforcement.

“When we don’t enforce our laws, they lose their meaning,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C., think tank that favors less immigration and more enforcement.
Starting at noon today in Phoenix, reform advocates plan to march from Margaret T. Hance Park on Third Street to the Central Avenue offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A sign posted at the front gate, however, said the ICE offices had been temporarily closed since Friday and won’t reopen until Tuesday. The sign gave no indication that the closing was related to today’s Columbus Day holiday. The agency could not be reach for comment Sunday.

If deportation operations are still in progress today, protesters plan to physically block deportation buses loaded with immigration detainees from leaving, Marisa Franco, a community organizer with the National Day Labor Organizing Network, said Sunday. The Los Angeles-based advocacy group is organizing the protest along with members of Phoenix-based Puente Arizona.

As many as 300 people plan to take part, including about 200 from more than a dozen other states, Franco said. The protesters will include families with children who have been affected by deportations.

Franco noted that the government has deported almost 2 million people since Obama took office in 2009, peaking in fiscal 2012, when 409,849 people were deported, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. That comes out to 1,122 deportations a day on average.

The pace of deportations slowed slightly in fiscal 2013, when 311,387 people were deported during the first 10 months, 1,014 per day.

Calls for Obama to expand deferred action have intensified since he said during an interview in September on Telemundo that he would not consider freezing deportations of parents of young undocumented immigrants granted deferred action.

He also ruled out expanding the program.

“If we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that is not an option,” Obama told Telemundo.

The current policy allows undocumented immigrants under the age of 31 brought to the U.S. as minors to apply for deferred action. Those approved can stay and work in the U.S. for two years without the threat of being deported.

Since the program took effect Aug. 15, 2012, more than 455,000 undocumented immigrants have been approved nationally, including more than 16,700 in Arizona.

Organizers hope today’s protest in Phoenix will be among the largest so far. They want to spur similar efforts across the country, Franco said.

This could be the second time in less than two months that protesters try to disrupt deportation operations in Phoenix.

In August, four people were arrested after chaining themselves to a parking-lot gate at the same ICE facility.

Two more were arrested the same day after trying to keep a bus carrying immigration detainees from leaving.

Similar protests have taken place in other cities, including the incident in Tuscon on Friday, when about 80 protesters locked themselves to the wheels of buses carrying immigration detainees and blocked entrances to a federal courthouse parking lot.

On Tuesday, Tucson police used pepper spray to disperse more than 100 people who tried to block a Border Patrol vehicle from leaving with two immigration detainees taken into custody following a traffic stop.

In Washington, D.C., eight Democratic lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Tucson, were among 200 people arrested Tuesday after blocking a street to protest the lack of progress on immigration reform in the House.

But immigration reform remains on the back burner while lawmakers haggle over the government shutdown, spending cuts and whether to raise the debt ceiling.

GOP leaders in the House also have refused to consider the Senate’s comprehensive bill passed in June that included a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.

The rise in protests and civil disobedience isn’t likely to prompt Obama to consider expanding his deferred-action program, analysts say.

Republicans blasted Obama after he created the deferred-action program, accusing him of circumventing Congress to allow young undocumented immigrants to remain in the country.

Expanding the program to the parents of “dreamers” would further inflame Republicans, making it that much harder to pass reforms.

“I think it will be a very heavy lift politically,” said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University Law School. The nonpartisan institute supports broad immigration reform.

Chishti said Obama doesn’t deserve the blame for the record level of deportations.
“I really believe whoever was president” would have record numbers of deportations, Chishti said. “The number of people being removed is the result of the enforcement machinery put in place in the last 25 years, especially since 9/11.”

He also pointed out that Obama’s administration has tried to reduce the effect of deportations on families by directing immigration-enforcement officers in the field to place priority on deporting immigrants who commit dangerous crimes, as opposed to those with clean records and long ties to the community.

But Vaughan, at the Center for Immigration Studies, said Obama already has caved in to pressure from immigration-reform groups by backing off from immigration enforcement.

She cited Obama’s deferred-action program, which has caused deportations to drop this year, as well as policies instituted under his administration directing ICE officers in the field to use their discretion and not go after immigration violators considered low priority.

“He is already giving these groups what they want,” Vaughan said.

Those who plan to protest today in Phoenix don’t agree.

“This is a critical time to maintain momentum to win some sort of reform, whether it be legislative or administrative,” Franco said. “If (Obama) were to expand deferred action, (he) would essentially stop deportations.”

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