Immigrant families and supporters rally in front of Chicago immigration building joining dozens of groups around the country to call attention to the cruelty of immigrant detention.
CHICAGO—(ENEWSPF)—July 7, 2015. Immigrant advocacy groups and families will gather on Wednesday, July 8 at noon in front of the Chicago Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, 101 W. Congress Parkway, Chicago, to hear testimonies of those formerly detained and to call for an end to immigrant detention. Many of the immigrants held in detention are not threats to public safety and many are detained only on the basis of immigration violations but even under the best detention conditions, immigrants experience isolation, depression and trauma. This event is part of a national week of action to end all immigrant detention.
Formerly detained community members will speak out against detention with support from immigrant groups and Chicago-based community organizations. The event is being led by members of Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), a part of the national Not One More Deportation campaign.
Every day there are 34,000 people detained in private and federally run detention centers across the U.S. Immigrants detained in the Chicago area are held at the McHenry County Jail in Woodstock, the Tri County Detention Center downstate and county jails in Dodge and Kenosha Counties in Wisconsin. While court battles continue over the expansion of deportation relief programs, immigrant communities continue to be criminalized and persecuted. The deportation machine has not stopped, mothers and children, LGBTQ immigrants, and individuals in detention centers continue to be brutalized and separated from their families and communities. Immigrant detention centers are part of the system of mass incarceration in this country, they continue to rake-in profits for the private companies that run them at the expense of the humanity of the people who are inside. Detained immigrants across the country have staged a series of protests, including hunger-strikes, to denounce the abuse they suffer inside, tomorrow we will join them in calling for an end to all immigrant detention.
Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) is a Chicago-based, undocumented led, community group organizing against immigration detention and deportation.
Source: Organized Communities Against Deportations
