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Campaign underway to
stop deportation of Latina mom
By Kevin Milliken for La Prensa
Citizen groups are picking up the cause of an Ann Arbor mother
of three, hoping to stop the deportation of Lourdes Salazar
Bautista, who first came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1997.
Mrs. Bautista was detained for more than three weeks by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in July 2010. A
deportation hearing was to be held Dec. 27, 2011, but she won a
temporary reprieve just before the holidays.
ICE officials have decided to
“defer action” on her deportation order, so, at least
temporarily, she can remain in the United States with her
children.
Mrs. Bautista made an
emotional plea for assistance in early December before Ann Arbor
City Council, telling elected officials through a translator
that she was only allowed to stay in the U.S. because her
husband was deported. She stated ICE was out to send her back to
Mexico, too, which would leave her three children—two daughters
and a son, ages 7, 9 and 13 —stranded stateside.
About three dozen
supporters attended that council meeting, many of them carrying
protest signs. Activist groups and a community-wide coalition
are seeking public awareness and the help of local leaders to
prevent what they call the unnecessary breakup of a family. They
have been gathering signatures on a letter sent to ICE
director John Morton to halt deportation proceedings.
“In the last decade,
Lourdes started her own cleaning business, purchased her own
home, and paid property taxes. She has also raised a family, and
has earned the respect of the Ann Arbor community through her
regular participation in her children’s public school
activities, and her contributions to St. Mary’s Student Parish,”
the letter states.
Friends and neighbors
describe her as a hard-working taxpayer who deserves better for
her children. Supporters who have rallied to her cause staged a
rally and prayer vigil in November at the Catholic Church where
her family attends. Supporters also asked Washtenaw County Board
of Commissioners to publicly commit to her cause.
Supporters also believe
there is cause for concern with other Latino families in
Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, simply because of the
region’s proximity to the Canadian border. They maintain ICE is
targeting undocumented immigrants near the border in the name of
homeland security—whether they have a criminal record or not.
The Washtenaw
Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights maintains that
President Barack Obama has made it a public policy to target
criminals for deportation. However, the group stated that more
than half of the 400,000 immigrants deported in 2010 had no
criminal record. Mrs. Bautista has no criminal record,
either.
“She has been working her
fingers to the bone weekdays and weekends to pay her bills and
to earn enough to pay the extraordinary legal fees some of the
lawyers in this case have charged,” wrote neighbor Linda
Kurtz in a recent letter to the editor published in Ann
Arbor.
President Obama announced
last August that the federal Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS)
would implement a policy of “prosecutorial discretion” in cases
similar to the one facing Mrs. Bautista. Under those new
guidelines, the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant
Rights advocates that she is not “deemed a priority for removal
by DHS and merits a favorable exercise of discretion” in its
letter to the ICE director.
The group maintains it has
seen more than 300 calls from immigrant families over the past
four years, many of them involving detainment or deportation
issues which could leave dependent children in foster care,
while their parents are sent back to their native country.
Almost all of those children are US-American citizens because
they were born on U.S. soil.
Mrs. Bautista, like many other Latinos in this region, is the
daughter of migrant farm workers.
A coalition of civil rights groups, including the Washtenaw
Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Social Work Allies
for Immigrant Rights, Dreamactivist.org, Alliance for Immigrant
Rights, Migrant Immigrant Rights Advocacy, Immigrant Rights on
Campus, St Francis of Assisi Parish, Michigan Immigration and
Labor Law Association, St. Mary Student Parish, and others have
taken up Mrs. Bautista’s cause as part of larger fight to reform
the immigration and deportation system.
Those groups are part of a
coalition of faith, labor, and grass-roots organizations known
as Alliance for Immigrants’ Rights and Reform Michigan
(AIR-Michigan). The coalition plans to get more involved in a
strong immigrant movement to fight for the civil and human
rights of all immigrants to live united with their families and
without fear.
Meantime, federal
immigration officials also have announced the creation of a
toll-free telephone hot line to ensure that immigrants held by
local police are informed of their rights. ICE officials stated
the toll-free number (1-855-448-6903) will field questions from
detainees held by state or local law-enforcement agencies “if
they believe they may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime,”
according to an ICE statement.
The hot line will be
staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by ICE personnel, with
translation services available in several languages. As part of
the new initiative, ICE officials plan to issue a form letter to
all detainees explaining that ICE will assume their custody
within 48 hours, according to the statement. Both translation
services and the form will be available in Spanish.
“It also advises individuals that if ICE does not take them into
custody within the 48 hours, they should contact the police
agency or entity that is holding them to inquire about their
release from state or local custody,” the statement said.
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