Immigration protest held as 5th Circuit hears oral arguments
13th July 2015 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
cash loans to my door Contributing Writer
As he was loading passengers and fellow protestors into his minivan parked next to Lafayette Square Friday morning, local civil rights activist Alfred Marshall was hurrying to get to the local headquarters of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement regional office on Poydras Street.
“They’re going to get arrested,” he said, almost giddily excited about what was taking place as hundreds of marchers proceeded to march from the steps of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to the ICE headquarters.
As the court ground through its hearing on the joint lawsuit filed by 26 states to block President Obama’s deportation relief program, protest leaders confirmed along the route that several protestors had decided to block the intersection at Poydras and Loyola streets to stop traffic and spur police action.
Meanwhile, as Marshall hustled off to the cement battleground at ICE, he signaled his support for the protest and for the rights of Latino immigrants, linking their plight and fear of law enforcement action with that of the local African-American community.
“I’m here to show how [anti-immigrant policies] affect not only Latinos in our city but African Americans in New Orleans,” he said. “I understand that [the plights of both ethnicities] is the same thing. I understand what it means to be separated from our family. I understand the need to fight, because sometimes we African Americans feel like immigrants here in our New Orleans.”
At the start of the protest, activists carried placards emblazoned with slogans like, “Stop Inhumane Detention and Deportation of All Migrants,” and, “ICE: Civil Rights payday loan stores in joliet il Abuser and Rogue Enforcement.” Other protesters bore shirts that read, “No Papers, No Fear,” as photographers clamored and skirted through the crowd to document the event. Demonstrators chanted slogans in both Spanish and English and sang songs of defiance and unity.
Marchers — a mix of Latino, African-American and white demonstrators, a mélange that reflected Marshall’s thoughts about cross-racial unity and empathy — were accompanied by a full brass band and led by Congress of Day Laborers organizer Fernando Lopez, who rallied the crowd together on the courthouse steps, his face beaded with sweat from the humid, 90-degree heat.
When the grouped arrived at ICE headquarters, dozens of participants flooded into the intersection. Law enforcement authorities arrived and issued an order to disperse or face arrest. A core of about a dozen protesters defied the dispersal order and were arrested by police peacefully as the rest of the marchers continued to shout chants of support and defiance.
After it was over, 14 protesters had been arrested after sitting down in the street, a banner emblazoned with “Shut Down ICE” resting on the pavement in front of them.
The event, which was organized by New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice’s Congress of Day Laborers, the #Not1More Campaign and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.
The protest drew dozens of concerned citizens from across the country, who descended on New Orleans for the 5th Circuit Court’s hearing, which was expected to be completed by early afternoon. By that time, more than a dozen people protesting the hearing were in jail.
NOWCRJ spokeswoman Jolene Elberth said that in the immediate aftermath of President Obama’s order last November setting in place administrative deportation relief, “the ICE stopped terrorizing the immigrant community” in New Orleans.
But gradually, she said, the ICE again ramped up its allegedly unfair and almost arbitrary harassment of migrants. She also said the ICE has recruited help in its efforts to allegedly defy Washington’s new directives.
“We’re also seeing a lot of collaboration between ICE and the local police,” she said. “Police will arrest someone for just standing somewhere, then turn them over to ICE. We’ve seen a lot of inhumane civil rights violations.”
Elberth cited the case of Walter Vallecillo, a 10-year city resident, and his family as evidence of what she called ICE’s return to brutally frightening the local migrant community.
According to NOWCRJ, ICE agents launched an early-morning raid of Vallecillo’s home, where they allegedly forcibly pulled Vallecillo’s wife, Irma, outside by her arm when she refused them consent to enter the premises. After she was handcuffed, they threatened the couple’s children with the deportation of their parents and the children’s placement in foster care.
Efforts to contact a representative of the New Orleans ICE office by The Louisiana Weekly were unsuccessful. A phone receptionist at the office said the administration there had no one who could comment to the media about the protest or the marchers’ allegations of brutal and inhumane treatment by ICE officers.
“No sir, there’s not,” she said.
This article originally published in the July 13, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
