WASHINGTON (AP) — Una coalición de organizaciones latinas expresaron el miércoles su intención de presionar al Congreso para que apruebe una reforma migratoria en 2013, en sus esfuerzos proselitistas y educativos que se reflejó en una participación sin precedentes de votantes latinos en los recientes comicios presidenciales estadounidenses.
Juana Villegas said she was three days' from giving birth when law enforcement in Middle Tennessee took her into custody to be deported. She was shackled until minutes before she gave birth in a hospital.
Villegas was one of about eight women who took the stage Thursday night during a rally at a North Knoxville union hall to protest Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g), a federal policy that community groups fear will be adopted by the Knox County Sheriff's Office.
The policy authorizes local law enforcement to enforce federal illegal immigration law.
The We Belong Together Delegation to Alabama in March of 2012 shed national light on the human rights crisis in Alabama. Members of the Delegation heard powerful stories of families torn apart and children and parents living in fear. As we heard the stories, we began to see how laws like Alabama's HB56 are undermining all of our communities and how they hurt women, children, and families everywhere.
Our visit generated press locally and nationally. To read some of the press coverage on the delegation, click on the links below.
Those "outside agitators" fighting against Alabama's overreaching immigration law were back in town last week. "We Belong Together," a delegation of women from 17 groups from across the nation, held a roundtable Thursday organized and sponsored by New America Media to discuss the impact of the harsh law and, in particular, its impact on women and families.
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- We Belong Together, a delegation of women from 17 groups around the nation, was in Birmingham on Wednesday and today to look at the impact Alabama's immigration law has had on women and children.
Today the group held a 2-hour roundtable discussion at St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Birmingham to discuss the impact of anti-immigrant attacks on families and the role women can play in the struggle for immigrant rights. About 80 people attended today's event.
New York’s Asian community is among several immigration groups joining a movement called “We Belong Together.” The movement is petitioning the Obama administration to stop deportations and keep undocumented families together while the government works out the next steps in immigration reform. More than 5,000 letters from children urging Congress to keep their families together were delivered on Dec. 8, just before the Christmas into New Year’s holiday season.
As Christmas draws near, thousands of children in the United States wrote to the US government last week to stop separating families by deporting and detaining undocumented immigrants.
According to the Asian Journal, the pro-immigrant-family organization "We Belong Together" collected more than
4,800 letters from children who participated in their month-long holiday letter-writing campaign, some of them members of families torn apart by deportation.
Izamar is asking Congress for one holiday wish: to keep her family together.
The18-year-old from Waukegan, Ill., is facing a daughter’s worst nightmare: the prospect of losing a parent to deportation. Her father was arrested in February for driving without a license and is now in deportation proceedings.
“Sometimes I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything,” she writes. “I don’t know if I will be OK without him.”
Over 5,000 Letters
Al menos cinco mil niños de diverso origen escribieron cartas al presidente Barack Obama y al Congreso de Estados Unidos para pedir, como deseo de fin de año, que mantengan a sus familias unidas ordenando la suspensión de la política de deportación de sus padres indocumentados.