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AMV Bulletin - April 2, 2007
AMV condemns ICE raids
The American Muslim Voice strongly condemns the federal ICE raids that are displacing families throughout the United States. Targeting the undocumented immigrants and deporting them will not make America safer, stronger or richer. These hard-working people are not the problem; they are symptoms of our broken immigration system.
On February 28, 2007, the lives of four Palo Alto school children, all U.S. citizens, were thrown into chaos when their parents were arrested in a federal raid. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Pedro Ramirez and Isabel Aguirre, both undocumented immigrants who had been working and paying taxes here since 1985 and 1989, respectively. Ramirez was deported within an hour of his arrest with only the clothes on his back. He was not allowed to cash in his paycheck, making him instantly homeless. Aguirre was placed under house arrest and shackled with a tracking device that monitors her every move.
The Ramirez-Aguirre family is caught in a vicious catch-22 and the children stand to suffer the most. Aguirre must present plane tickets for her and her children to the ICE office in San Francisco by Wednesday, and the tickets must show that they wil board the plane to Mexico on Friday, April 6th. Aguirre's 30-day reprieve is already over and she still cannot afford to pay for five plane tickets since being on house arrest forced her to lose her income. Her deported husband could not get the necessary paperwork notarized, authorizing their children's transportation across international boundaries. If Aguirre cannot produce the plane tickets by the imposed deadline, ICE will immediately place her children in foster care. Aguirre will be subsequently arrested and deported.
ICE presents this lose-lose scenario as a choice: Leave the country and take your children with you or leave the country and leave your children in foster care, an overflowing system with many flaws of its own. The Ramirez-Aguirre case shows that there is no such choice at all. The parents must leave U.S. born children behind when loopholes in the immigration system make it nearly impossible to remain together.
These federal enforcement tactics have not been effective in the past nor will they be effective in the future. Tactics like the ICE raids only create fear in our communities. AMV National President Khalid Saeed stated, "By separating families, we are not just hurting them, we are further tarnishing America’s image as a humane nation."
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