About 2,000 people demonstrated outside Irving City Hall on Wednesday night to demand an end to a police program that's led to a high number of deportations.
Advocates are collecting information about cases where they say police are racially profiling people in order to stop them and verify their immigration paperwork. They asked the crowd to begin calling City Hall on Thursday to tell the mayor to stop the Criminal Alien Program.
Irving started participating in the nationwide program last year. It allows jailers to identify suspected illegal immigrants and refer them to immigration authorities, but the Mexican Consulate and immigration advocates say police are being overzealous while patrolling and trying to stop Latinos in order to arrest them.
Police Chief Larry Boyd denies that police are trying to enforce immigration laws and says they are not targeting specific groups of people. He says the identification of suspected immigrants is happening at the jail, not on the streets.
The Mexican Consulate in Dallas, which covers half of the state of Texas, said that half of the people they have interviewed in the last few weeks who are being deported were arrested in Irving.
There were about a dozen counter-protesters who placed themselves in the middle of the demonstration Wednesday night. After one of several shouting matches erupted between the two groups, police say two people were arrested on misdemeanor assault charges and taken to jail.
3 comments:
The Federal Government has done virtually nothing in the battle of Immigration. It makes me sick to my stomach to hear these illegals are actually protesting the fact that they are being deported. I don't care if an illegal has been here for 20 years, the bottom line is that they ARE ILLEGAL!! The reason they have been here for so long is a result of the failure of the federal government to enforce these laws. KUDOS TO IRVING!!
I am an American, born and raised.
My wife is Bangladeshi, born and raised.
Even as a combat veteran,I am going through h*ll trying to get her a visa to come to the U.S. - THE COUNTRY I FOUGHT FOR AND RISKED MY LIFE FOR IN IRAQ!
And everyday I look at criminals (yes, if you came into the country illegally you are a criminal) flouting their criminal behavior.
Yes, I want ALL illegal aliens kicked out. Let them come legally or not at all - just like my wife.
OMG! i just saw the video and there was a man that was interviewed who has been living in the US for 26 years and he is an undocumented worker. he could have become a citizen in all those years but instead he chose to stay illegal. all those pro immigrant people keep saying that illegals want to assimilate. really? why didnt this guy? they choose to keep to themselves, they do not abide by the law and thaey continue to take, take take and they dont give back. i heard the former mexican president the other night on tv. he actually said that mexicans are an assett to the US and that bush is wrong to deny these people the same rights and privelegs given to those born and raised here. its sickening.
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