#Not1More Deportation

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While Deferred Action is Delayed, ICE Continues its Raids. New Orleans Workers Take the Streets to Stop Deportation of Two Civil Rights Defenders.

Credit: #Not1More Campaign

Credit: #Not1More Campaign

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

New Orleans, LA – More than a dozen undocumented immigrants are currently blocking the roads outside the federal New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office to demand an end to the raids and unjust removals they say are continuing after the President’s executive action announcement even as the deportation relief program is enjoined in the courts.

“When I wake up in the morning, I don’t think about what an appeals judge is doing,” explains Blanca Hernandez, one of the participants of today’s actions. “I worry about my husband being deported or whether ICE will show up at my door. The President and DHS have to do more to protect our families than just file appeals.” Blanca’s husband, Jose Adan Fugon-Cano is currently immigration custody and could face deportation as early as today.

The members of the Congreso de Jornaleros started their act of peaceful civil disobedience after leading a march from the Fifth Circuit Court where an injunction appeal in the anti-immigrant lawsuit filed by Republican leaders from 26 states is being heard.

“If ICE is going to be out in the streets than we will too. Our organizing is what won deferred action and we won’t stop until we have the relief and the respect that we deserve. We have the courage to do more, the President should too,” said Santos Canales, a Congreso member.

Citing recent cases where ICE agents dragged the wife of immigrant worker WalterVallecillo from their home and threatened her children with the deportation of their mother and with foster care if they did not produce their father to be taken into custody; or where ICE is seeking to deport Gustavo Barahona and Jose Adan Fugon after their civil rights were violated in a false arrest and detention by local law enforcement, during which they were held without charge and transferred to immigration custody solely for standing in a public place, protest participants say the rogue agency has not stemmed its abuses and its deportations must be put to a stop.

 

Contact: Jacob Horwitz, New Orleans Workers’ Center, 504.452.9159, jhorwitz@nowcrj.org

B. Loewe, Not1More, 773.791.4668, bloewe@onpoint.pro


Letter by Yestel Velasquez from South Louisiana Correctional Center, after ICE conducted a sweeping workplace raid in Kenner, Louisiana, based on racial profiling. [UPDATE: Yestel was granted a 1 year stay of removal and released from detention in August. Read more here]

Yestel and ZunildaMy name is Yestel Antonio Velasquez. I am a reconstruction worker from New Orleans. I am writing to you, President Obama, to share the experience of Latino communities in New Orleans.

Like many Latino families in the New Orleans area, I came to this city after Hurricane Katrina to help with the reconstruction and build a better future for the city. I am very proud of the work we have done. But now ICE and local police are terrorizing the Latino community. Because of the raids, our families are being broken apart and we are being disappeared. I am writing this letter from jail because ICE raided a Latino auto shop where I happened to be getting my car repaired.

President Obama, I hear that you care about the Latino and immigrant community and want to make things more humane for us. But here in New Orleans, across the South, and all around the country, we are facing the daily inhumanity of being hunted by ICE, torn apart from our families, and disappeared from the communities we helped rebuild. Is this what you want for us? Are we to prepare our families and communities we have worked so hard to build for their destruction?

I came to New Orleans in 2005, a few months after Hurricane Katrina hit the city. I remember that in those days New Orleans felt dead and desolate. There was so much sadness. It seemed like the city would never recover. As a reconstruction worker, I worked in waste removal, cleaning away the debris, mud, and dirt that covered the city. I helped reconstruct schools, homes, and many areas of the city. Read more


Edgar

Edgar has been looking forward to get the chance to fight for his innocence in court, but he may not get that chance because the New Orleans immigration office wants to deport him on the Friday before. Tell ICE to respect Edgar’s right to due process.

Part of why ICE wants to deport Edgar so fast is because they claim that he may be a member of a gang after seeing the tattoos he has that he says are from his younger days as an homage to his favorite rock bands. Edgar can’t defend himself against their claim because ICE wont release photographs they have of his tattoos so that they can be reviewed by an independent expert. Read more


18 immigrant workers and four community leaders, members of the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice, sat-in at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in New Orleans, demanding an end to a harsh new program of community raids by ICE that are tearing families apart and terrorizing the immigrant workers who helped rebuild New Orleans. Read more

18 immigrant workers and four community leaders, members of the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice, sat-in at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in New Orleans, demanding an end to a harsh new program of community raids by ICE that are tearing families apart and terrorizing the immigrant workers who helped rebuild New Orleans. Read more

MADREs

September 09, 2013

John Sandweg
Acting Director
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
George Lund

Enforcement and Removal Operations
New Orleans Field Office Director
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

RE: Positive exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion for immigrant parents detained during New Orleans immigration operations 

Dear Mr. Sandweg and Mr. Lund,

We, the undersigned write to urge that the Department of Homeland Security and the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office take significant steps to exercise prosecutorial discretion in the detention and deportation of parents and legal guardians of children, especially those encountered collaterally during Department of Homeland Security investigations and operations in Louisiana. 

On Friday, August 23, we welcomed the directive by Acting Director of ICE, John Sandweg, Facilitating Parental Interests in the Course of Civil Immigration Enforcement Activities. According to this directive, special consideration should be made in the placement, detention, and deportation of immigrants who are primary caretakers of minor children, regardless of the children’s immigration status. In addition, the prosecutorial discretion guidelines set by former ICE director John Morton in the June 17, 2011 memoranda Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion Consistent with Civil Immigration Enforcement Priorities of the Agency for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens and Prosecutorial Discretion: Certain Victims, Witnesses, and Plaintiffs set guidelines for exercising discretion for “low priority” removals taking into account the totality of the circumstances.  Read more


Sheriff Gusman


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