Activists Chain Themselves Together to Challenge Crisis of Immigrant Incarceration, Deportations

Immigration reform activists chained themselves outside a detention facility in Arizona on Monday continuing of a campaign of civil disobedience that calls for an end to inhumane incarceration and deportations that plague the current national immigration system.

The action targeted the Corrections Corporation of American (CCA)-owned Eloy Detention Center and was part of the NotOneMoreDeportation campaign, a collaborative project of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON).

The Obama administration has deported a record number of people, and Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the NDLON, says this is a “human rights crisis.”

“I know Republicans are blocking immigration reform but it’s President Obama who has the power to stop deportations,” Alvarado told NBC Latino. “If they did it with the students, now they can do it with the parents.”

Colorlines‘ Aura Bogado points out that

Campaigners say that the notorious Eloy Detention Center is symptomatic of the detainee quota U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is forced to meet.  The Washington Post reported that

“Behind these walls are thousands taken far away from their families and the better lives they came here for,” said Tomas Martinez of the Atlanta-based Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. “For Washington, detainees are just a number, but for us the people inside Eloy are our sisters and brothers.”