Hundreds of activists marched through downtown Atlanta Saturday morning, decrying how the Obama administration has carried out record numbers of deportations in recent years.
Representing numerous civil and immigrant rights groups, the demonstrators called for an expansion of a federal program that grants young people temporary relief from deportation. They want the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program expanded to include all immigrants living illegally in the U.S.
The government reported 368,644 “removals” – or deportations — in the fiscal year ending in September. That is down from 409,849 in fiscal year 2012 —- the largest number removed in ICE’s history and a 3 percent increase from the year before, when the previous record was set at 396,906.
Eleazar Apcho joined the demonstration, carrying a homemade sign about his Peruvian-born son, Rene. He said Rene, 26, was arrested for illegally entering the country after he was deported. Rene, who is being held in an immigration detention center in San Diego, was deported after he was arrested in 2009 for driving without a license in Gwinnett County.
“I want him to reunite with the family and go to college,” Apcho said of his son. “He’s a good man. He’s not a criminal.”
Wearing white T-shirts that say “Not One More Deportation,” the demonstrators were planning to march from the state Capitol to the Spring Street offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Democratic-led Senate passed omnibus immigration overhaul legislation on a bipartisan vote last year, but the measure is stalled in Congress amid Republican opposition in the House.
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