by Fernando A. Torres
Special for El Reportero
More than 50 young students, most of them from UC of Berkeley and Mills College, held a protest in downtown – Monday, March 14 – to demand the Democratic Party and the Obama administration, the immediate expansion of the (TPS) Temporary Protected Status program to stop the imprisonment and deportation of Central American refugee children fleeing violence and economic, political and environmental devastation.
David Lemus, UC Berkeley student and spokesman for Central American Refugees in Action, CARA, acronym in English, said that refugee children are the most suffering “because violence in Central America is tremendous. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, are the most violent countries in the world, therefore we know that any child or any person who is deported it is very possible that he will be killed. The Central American community has suffered violence and trauma for decades, civil wars and genocides. Then we are saying that we don’t want that community to suffer. We want that the children who are fleeing the violence remain here,” said Lemus.
According to data released by the Organization Alliance for human Rights, between 2009 and 2015, more than 60,000 children have escaped from Central America and hundreds of them are experiencing incarceration in private prisons managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Surrounded by police and private guards, nine students are chained lying in the lobby floor of the building where is located the office of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein – member of the Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on immigration, refugees and border security – blocking the entry and the exit of the main building at Post and Market streets.
In January, more than 140 members of Congress sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding an immediate stop to the raids of deportation. Politicians, mostly Latinos, denounced and strongly condemned the Department of Homeland Security and asked to immediately implement the temporary protected status until the Government proposes a comprehensive strategy towards refugees.
“Dianne Feinstein did not sign it. We want that the children remain and not to send them to detention facilities because a Center is a prison. The deportation is something very cruel, is to remove you from the street and get you into a place for months. Some of these children come running away from much trauma, and come to experience more traumas in detention centers! We have to get them out of there, those kids have to stay, they have to go to school,” said Lemus.
Holding a huge banner, Christopher López, UC Berkeley student, said that this situation has been transformed into a crisis which roots lie in the policy of the United States to Central America.
“We want Sen. Feinstein to hear us, because she has been a Democrat who has criticized the money that the Government the United States continues to give to the armies of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. We think that now is the time to demand that it stop all raids, deportations and that please expand the TPS because we are in a humanitarian crisis,” López said.
The students, who kept themselves shackled for more than three hours, were arrested by the police but (detention) “is the risk that some will take to ensure that this is heard not only in San Francisco, but throughout the nation with the intention that in presidential debates talk about the deportations,” said López.
According to Lemus as Democrats owe much to Latinos and therefore “we are trying to charge them a political price … because President Obama and all Democrats came with promises saying that they will help the community, but who order the raids is the President. We have to remember that at the moment, that were the Democrats who deported those refugee children. Instead of deporting them we are asking to give them a TPS so that they can stay,” said Lemus.
Arely Zimmerman, Professor of Ethnic Studies at Mills College, said that the Democrats have a debt.
“Latinos have supported them (to Dianne Feinstein) and have supported the Democratic Party in the elections, and it is time that they respond to issues that matter to us. That they should not pay us attention only when there are elections, and they want our vote. That they really work with us and especially with these young people who are the next civic and political leaders of this country,” she said.
