Various immigrant rights organizations held an emergency press conference on July 3 in Oakland to protest the Obama administration’s plans to deport thousands of unaccompanied undocumented children back to their home countries by changing a law that was put in place by the Bush administration in 2008 that provided protection to asylum seekers.
“That law has been implemented since 2008 and currently with the wave of all this migration of children and their families, their intention is to change that law,” said Blanca Vazquez of East Bay Immigrant Youth Coalition (EBIYC). “This would open a window for them to massively deport thousands of children as well as their families.”
The press conference took place in front of the Oakland Federal Building on Clay Street. In addition to EBIYC, several different organizations showed up in solidarity including the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA), Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights Through Education (ASPIRE), 67 Sueños, and Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
Members of 67 Sueños, an organization that works with undocumented youth and allies, recited an emotional poem for the crowd of about 30 at the beginning of the press conference that highlighted the realities of the struggles that young people face when they are forced to flee from their home country and cross the border into the U.S.
One of the organizers, Edgar Aldana, spoke out about his experience with being held in detention for two and a half months after being detained while crossing the border back from Mexico, where he went to care for his family.
“As someone who was detained in one of these awful detention centers, I cannot imagine the trauma that these kids have been going through. I was lucky to have a cell but these kids are packed up in small rooms with up to 30 or 40 of them,” said Aldana, an organizer for Immigrant Youth Coalition. “These kids are not being smuggled, these kids are not being sent with drugs, these kids are running for their lives, just like many of us refugees that come to this country for a better life.”
One of the main points being made by organizers was that these children were not coming here for the American dream but for survival.
“In El Salvador right now there are over 60,000 gang members. 200,000 El Salvadorans are being murdered on a yearly basis,” said Vazquez. “We’re talking about roughly 10-11 people being murdered everyday. With these statistics, it’s no wonder these children and their families are coming here.”
Members of the California Immigrant youth Justice Alliance stressed how important it is to pressure the president until something is done.
“These children need our help,” said Sandy Valenciano of CIYJA. “Until he does something about these deportations, we as people want to let him know that we will no longer wait and we will push until he acts and stops separating families.”