<ChicagoMayDay> Press Release:For Immediate Release-April 16@11am
JOSEFRO...@aol.com
Faith, Labor and Immigrant Rights Groups
are Holding
Prayer Vigil Outside of
Immigration Detention Center
SEIU, UFCW, ARISE Chicago, Jobs with Justice, Centros Sin Fronteras and Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Catholic Mission are Calling on DHS and ICE to Get its House in Order
CHICAGO– Today, dozens are gathering from faith, labor and immigrant rights groups for a prayer vigil outside of the Broadview Immigration Detention Center to protest recent immigration enforcement outrages and call on the agency to get its house in order. Rather than wasting limited funds to chase hard-working, tax-paying janitors, home-care providers and nannies, the groups will call on President Obama and Secretary Janet Napolitano to re-focus ICE enforcement on its original goals of targeting crooked employers and criminals.
“Until we have comprehensive immigration reform, families will continue to suffer as they are torn apart by our unjust laws which allow mothers and fathers to be "kidnapped" and deported away from their families,” says Rev. C.J. Hawking of ARISE Chicago. “As religious leaders, we want the suffering to end and we will not rest until it does.”
Despite promises made by the Obama Administration to clean up ICE, recent reports show that ICE has perpetuated and in some case exacerbated the misguided immigration enforcement policies of the Bush years—all while operating with little oversight or accountability.
The vigil is an effort to illustrate the ongoing, human cost of this agency’s misguided, out-of-control immigration enforcement strategy—which only serves to waste taxpayer resources, hurt hardworking people, and devastate local communities. ICE’s “strategy” of sewing misery in workplaces and communities not only fails to tackle the underlying issue of our broken immigration system, it also contradicts efforts to improve wages and working conditions of all U.S. workers.
What: Prayer Vigil
Where: outside of Broadview ICE Detention Center, 1930 Beach St. Broadview IL
When: TODAY, Friday @ 11:00 AM
Who: Faith, Labor and Immigrant rights Groups
SEIU’s Immigration Enforcement and Reform Principles.
SEIU believes that America deserves a professional and well-managed immigration enforcement agency that sticks to the constructive mission of punishing criminals and the most abusive employers. DHS and ICE must be able to distinguish between bad-actor-employers and those who are merely caught in a broken system. They should focus scarce resources on the bad actors who intentionally take advantage of our dysfunctional immigration system to exploit workers and push down wages for everyone.
SEIU also believes that over the long-term, the only real solution to our broken system is comprehensive immigration reform. As the largest union of immigrant workers, and also a union that represents more than a million workers who are not immigrants, we hope and expect that our nation’s leaders will enact workable solutions to our immigration problems and that they will recognize that punitive, anti-immigrant measures are neither realistic nor workable. Read more about SEIU’s Immigration Reform Principles and about Change to Win and AFL-CIO’s joint labor framework for immigration reform.
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Service
Employees International Union Local 1 unites more than 50,000 workers in Texas
and throughout Mid-America. SEIU security officers, food service workers, and
janitors are working with community leaders to advocate for the quality services
the public deserves and the good jobs our communities
need.
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