President Obama was called on to provide undocumented immigrants with more protection and use his executive powers to stop deportations through rallies at detention centers and government buildings across the United States on Saturday, Examiner reported.
As part of a "National Day of Action," cities across the U.S. took it upon themselves to urge Obama to place a freeze on deportations in the country, ABC News reported.
While hundreds of people rallied outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Manhattan, dozens of people protested in front of the Wake County Detention Center, N.C., against deportations, NY1 reported.
Over five years, the Obama administration has exceeded 2 million deportations. It had taken the Bush administration almost eight years to deport the same number of undocumented immigrants.
"Their family loses their contributions, and also, they're just separated from their children," said Nadia Marin-Molina, workers' rights coordinator at the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. "Sometimes, the children are born here in the United States. They lose their father, their mother."
"One of about 50 rallies planned by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network took place on Friday in Columbus, Ohio." Examiner reported. "About 75 protesters marched past the LeVeque Tower, which houses offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)."
Examiner added, "They chanted 'Two million too many!' and 'Not one more!'"
Through the Deferred Action Program, created in 2012, a dehumanizing process can be stopped through the expansion of protection rights for immigrants, they said.
For now, "it grants people who came to America as children and meet certain guidelines the opportunity to live and work here for two years while they are becoming citizens," NY1 reported.
"Expand it to include everyone," Marin-Molina said. "So rather than just limiting it to a small group who came when they were children, he could expand that for everybody who would qualify, for example, under one of the federal pieces of legislation."
