Hunger Strike to Stop Deportations Moves to Douglas Park
Comite 10 de Marzo
One day after Immigrant Rights Organizers launched the Moratorium on
Deportations Campaign…
Hunger Strike to Stop Deportations Moves to Douglas Park
What: Hunger strike by local priest moves to Douglas Park.
Who: Rev. José Landaverde has held a hunger strike for 12 days,
demanding an end to immigrations raids and deportations by the Obama
administration
When: Wednesday, June 30th, 2010, at 10 a.m.
Where: Douglas Park, Marshall Blvd. and 19th Street, in front of St.
Anthony Hospital.
Why: President Barack Obama has continued –and increased- George
Bush’s enforcement of a broken immigration law, deporting over 300
thousand immigrants in 2009, and has set a goal of 400 thousand for
2010.
Despite arguments that deportations are focused on “dangerous
criminal aliens”, David Venturella, Executive Director of the Secure
Communities program, recognized in April that since the program was
introduced it has “resulted in the identification of over 12,000
criminal aliens, of which 862 were identified as dangerous criminals.”
ICE's Web site states that in its first three months their database
identified only 5,707 undocumented immigrants with criminal records
and only 124 violent or narcotic offenders, but ICE issued detainers
against 955 people, which means they are using the program to target
lower-level offenders. Altogether, ICE is deporting an average of
1,100 immigrants a day, mostly for driving without driver’s license
and other minor traffic violations.
Rev. Landaverde states: “It is obvious that over one thousand of the
1,100 daily deportees are common workers, parents, nannies, hotel
maids and carpenters. We demand a moratorium to raids and deportations
by Executive Order by President Obama, while a bill is introduced in
congress in the fall session”.
The hunger strike by Rev. Landaverde began at Federal Plaza on June
17, relieving Rev. Martin Santellano, who went 32 days without solid
foods. The hunger strike has received support from Mexican home town
associations and pro immigrant groups, and now it will be supported by
the Cermak Road Chamber of Commerce, as it moves to Douglas Park.
"I am not doing this because I think something big is going to
happen" as a result from Congress or the Obama administration, said
Landaverde from Our Lady of Guadalupe Anglican Mission, the Episcopal
Diocese of Chicago storefront church in Little Village where he is
pastor. "It is more to create conscience; what I am doing is just
raising conscience in the people." (Chicago Tribune, 6/27/2010.)
The hunger strike is part of the Immigrant Youth Justice League,
March 10th Committee and other organizations’ campaign to End Raids
and Deportations, and against Arizona’s SB 1070 law, which legalizes
racial profiling against immigrants.
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Jorge Mujica