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Dear {{ user.first_name|default:”Friend” }},
There’s no other way to say it. It’s a slap in the face of our community.
Back in June, President Obama told us — told the world — that he would use the power of his office to stop as many deportations as he could by the end of the summer. Then, last Saturday morning, when he thought no one would be watching, he went back on his word, saying that he would delay any announcement until after the midterm election. He decided it was more important to bow down to nervous Democrats and power-hungry Republicans worried about political fallout.1,2,3
We’re sad. We’re angry. And most important, we’re tired of the broken promises. More than 1,000 deportations per day were recorded last year alone.4 With each passing day, even more of our families are torn apart in traumatic home raids by ICE. Children have had to witness their parents being handcuffed in front of them in the middle of the night, and are sometimes even put in detention centers, alone, when they have no other family to care for them in the U.S.5
And the truth is that the longer the President waits to take action, the less likely it is that he will take action at all. He’s already delayed making a decision several times and there are no guarantees that he will not delay again in response to some other political game that might pop up in the future. We need to put President Obama and both political parties on notice that delaying executive action to stop deportations is NOT acceptable. We will not tolerate being treated like political pawns any longer!
Let’s be clear. The President was elected twice to the White House in large part because of the support of the Latino vote. We poured our hearts and souls into turning out to vote in record numbers. And this is how he’s repaying us — allowing the assault on our families, friends, colleagues, classmates, and neighbors, who will face the horrors of mass deportations, to continue.
Frankly, it’s hard to trust anything President Obama says about immigration reform any longer. He spent years denying that he could take executive action to end the flood of deportations decimating our communities. He’d already deported more than two million people by the time he admitted that he didn’t have to wait for Congress to act.
Making things worse, Democratic political operatives hope that delaying executive action will help the party keep control of the U.S. Senate. But the public already knows that President Obama plans to act unilaterally — whether or not he acts should have little consequence.
The debate over executive action from the President can’t be about political games, as if we were talking about a mere game of tit for tat. We are talking about a real crisis, with real families being torn apart by deportations — members of our community who have waited long enough for relief. We all need to take a stand right now if we want to drown out the voices hell-bent on stopping an executive action that would provide relief to the 11 million immigrants waiting for an end to deportations.
Thanks, and ¡Adelante!
Arturo, Refugio, Mariana, and the rest of the Presente.org Team
P.S. Can you donate $5 to support our work? We rely on contributions from people like you to see campaigns like this through.
Sources:
1. Immigration activists rip Obama, The Hill, September 6, 2014
2. White House pursuing plan to expand immigrant rights, Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2014
3. Immigration crisis forces Obama to ‘act alone’ with executive orders, The Guardian, August 4, 2014
4. Obama’s immigration action could set off political firestorm, MSNBC, August 6, 2014
5. Steve King: Obama immigration move should spark impeachment talks, Politico, August 3, 2014
6. Obama Delays Immigration Action, Yielding to Democratic Concerns, The New York Times, September 6, 2014