This is my third article today, and I imagine there’ll be more before the weekend is out. There are too many things you need to know, Dear Reader, and too many things to do.
Summary
Immigration is rounding up and deporting illegal aliens, and they don’t appear to be prioritizing criminals. There is a protest in Washington D.C. on Saturday, Feb 11 at 4pm, and there may be sister protests elsewhere.
Source: Washington Post.
Details
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are happening in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina. They’re rounding people up to deport them.
[The President] has pledged to deport up to 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Last month he also made a change to the Obama administration’s policy of prioritizing deportation for convicted criminals, substantially broadening the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.
The idea, supposedly, is to get illegal aliens who are criminals out of the country. But “undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported…” And it’s not just limited to those 6 states.
Immigration activists said the crackdown went beyond the six states DHS identified, and said they had also documented ICE raids of unusual intensity during the past two days in Florida, Kansas, Texas and Northern Virginia.
And, Rumors
I have NOT seen this confirmed yet, but people are also reporting checkpoints, raids outside of schools, door-to-door sweeps. People are worried that this is the first step toward internment camps. Even if these aren’t true, it’s indicative of the kind of panic that ICE is causing. At best, this is horribly timed.
What to do?
Keep these information cards from United We Dream on hand, on your phone. I’ve asked them for printable versions (here’s a version I made, using the ACLU images as a source), for handing out and posting on bulletin boards. Keep the “MigraWatch” number on hand, too:
Find a march, if that’s your thing, and show up. Maybe a good idea would be to protest at the ICE field offices?
I’m sure we’ll have clarification on who we can write and call soon.
-YANA
P.S. Keith Olberman on how this could, possibly, go:
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The 5 Minute Activist 