One million deported by Barack Obama: immigration religious leaders and Congressman Luis Gutierrez arrested at White House – VIDEO PHOTOS

Congressman Luis Gutierrez and ten immigrant rights activists and religious leaders were arrested at the White House yesterday, for protesting against mass deportations and incarcerations of immigrants, being executed by the Obama administration.

Since Barack Obama took office in 2008, more than one million migrant workers and their families have been incarcerated and deported. Most of them had no criminal records, whatsoever. President Obama doesn’t intend to stop his repressive policies, thus really tough times are coming ahead for our immigrant communities.

Photos by Anita Garrick, Adam Luna.

ONE MILLION workers, parents, students, veterans and children have been imprisoned and deported since 2008 in the United States by Homeland Security Department. Read a PDF file posted by ICE with official statistics of what they call “removals”.

This video shows the moment of the arrests while a rally was held across the street fr0m the White House by protesters, mostly indigenous Latinos and supporters of Immigration Reform and the DREAM Act.

Most corporate media reported on the arrests, this is what Reuters posted today:

Gutierrez was released and made it back to the floor of the House of Representatives in time for the final vote of the day after paying a $100 fine, said the spokesman, Douglas Rivlin. […]

Gutierrez and about a dozen other immigration protesters were arrested after sitting down in front of the White House, in an area where people are supposed to keep moving.

The arrested were part of a larger protest by groups which say that under President Barack Obama’s watch, more people have been deported than under any other president.

Among the detainees were: Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois), Deepak Dhargava executive director of the Center for Community Change, Gustavo Torres executive director of CASA de Maryland with CASA activists Delia Aguilar, Renato Mendoza, and Fernando Garavito . Also, Scott Roberts of Progressive Maryland, Jerry Torres a DC-based student and activist, and Reverend Lorena Hernandez, Ana Garcia-Ashley and John Norton of religious advocacy group Gamaliel.

Photos by Anita Garrick

We immigrants have a lot to worry about

Here we go again. Another rally for justice for immigrant workers and our families, more arrests of civil rights leaders, people risking their health by protesting in the streets of D.C. in the middle of this horrendous summer. It was another peaceful protest, this one seemed all planned.

The response of president Barack Obama was given one day before the protest while speaking at the NCLR Annual Conference: he is a law enforcer, not a reformer and he will continue deporting people. Again, he lied by saying he can’t stop deportations, but yes he can.

As right now, things are looking really bad for our immigrant communities because law enforcement will continue, the E-Verify system might become a federal law which will force employers to verify the workers immigration status. While the DREAM Act is being put on hold in the Senate another DREAmer was deported last night, and there is no way an Immigration Reform will happen in the next 2-3 years, at least.

With many Latino families focusing on surviving the current economic and unemployment crisis, it’s likely that those eligible to vote might not necessarily support neither the Democratic or Republican candidates for president and Congress. Immigration is the most important issue for Latinos right now, so we Brown communities feel that we are being disenfranchised by the Obama administration, we are being played as fools.

Surely, president Obama might get reelected, but the Democrats will lose the Senate and with a Republican-c0ntrolled Congress, we expect a really tough future for the immigrant communities in the next following years.

So be ready, mass incarcerations and deportations will continue happening and increasing, because it’s a profitable business and because the U.S. is still a deeply racist government that justifies its inhuman actions with a broken legislation.

Many U.S. citizens are still ignoring this crisis and the Nazi-style human displacement, because they think this is about the law and justice. but it’s not at all. This is about the U.S. becoming a prison nation and corporations and racist elites controlling this weakened democracy. Those who think they have nothing to fear, remember your time will come eventually if you don’t do what they want you to do.

Meanwhile, more indigenous families are broken apart and children are left completely abandoned. Thus, millions of lives of hard work and dreams have been destroyed, and one million people are now somewhere overseas trying to understand why the American Dream was denied to them by an obsolete legislation and a racist and insensitive president.

Will the people of the United States continue watching silently while this nation keeps falling apart? I don’t think so.