WASHINGTON (VR) – Cynthia Díaz just wants her mother back home.
“She was deported on May 2011 when ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raided our home,” Díaz, an 18 year old Phoenix, Arizona native said. “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] came to our home, my mom answered, and she had an order of deportation, and they took her just like that in her pajamas.”
She remembers waking up to the screams of her father, asking agents to reconsider. “And so I woke up confused and I approached the front yard and I saw my mom being handcuffed and pushed into a van. And I saw 10 officers in my front yard.”
Right there, her desolation – and her fight – began.
“And within 15 minutes my mom was gone. Within 15 minutes my family was separated. I was 15 at the time,” she added.
Cynthia Díaz, 18, speaking with Radio VR. Photo: Sean Nevins.
Díaz is part of the contingent of Arizonans who are staging a hunger strike at Lafayette Park, right in front of the White House, requesting from President Barack Obama a halt on the deportation procedures, which have dramatically increased during his administration, and a comprehensive immigration reform.
Three hunger strikers, including Díaz, along with other families and supporters staged an action at the front gate of the White House to raise awareness about immigration reform and deportation. The group, about 25 in all, approached the front gates of the White House and demanded to speak with President Obama.
“The message is, you came and knocked on my door so we’re going to come and knock at your door”, said Julio Zuniga, 24, from Phoenix, Arizona, who helped organize the demonstration.
The group, part of the ‘Not One More’ movement, arrived on Tuesday, April 8, from Phoenix Arizona to call for an end to deportations and to have their loved ones and family members released from detention. Zuniga told Radio VR that they decided to come to Washington because they had exhausted all other options. In Phoenix, they had staged a hunger strike and other demonstrations but to no avail.
Immigration activists from Phoenix, Arizona meet in Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, April 10, 2014. Photo: Sean Nevins.
Zuniga said that they decided to escalate the situation to show that “we’re done with living that way, living with our family being separated, and we decided to come here and do the hunger strike in Obama’s front yard.”
Zuniga’s brother was deported in 2011 when he was 19 years old to Mexico City. He lived in the United States since he was 7 years old and is now living with family in Mexico that he did not know while growing up in the U.S. He has not seen his brother for the last three years.
Demonstrator José Valdéz, 55, also from Phoenix, told Radio VR that he has a son who was deported on March 25, allowed to return to the U.S. on April 1, but then taken into custody and jailed in Flores, Arizona.
Valdéz told Radio VR that “this is not a political issue – we are neither Republicans nor Democrats. The only thing we want is for Mr. President to hear us, to listen to us.”
Anselma Lopez, 47, from Phoenix, who also has a son in a detention center in Arizona, voiced similar concerns. She said that her son has been imprisoned for two years awaiting his asylum case.
“I want to ask them that they release him and allow him to fight his case in court as a free man,” she added. “We are suffering, when a loved one is gone there is suffering for all the families and when [President Obama] was campaigning he offered us many things, including immigration reform and so far nothing. We want relief for everybody because our homes are cold, our homes are empty.”
Anselma Lopez, 47 whose son is in a detention center in Arizona speaks with Radio VR. Photo: Sean Nevins.
Julio Zuniga said that two little girls that accompanied the group to Washington from Arizona wanted to join in on the hunger strike because their father is currently in a detention center as well. Zuniga said, however, that their incarcerated father forbid them from fasting because it would defeat the purpose of his taking the chance of coming to the United States in the first place, which was to give his children a better life.
“We tried to get a permanent solution to immigration reform but we know that’s not going to happen with how Congress is right now,” he said. “So we decided to stop deportations – that’s all we want. We just want our families to stay together and we know that there’s one man that can do that and he’s in the White House.”
Immigration activists walk away from the gates of the White House after attempting to meet President Obama. Photo: Sean Nevins.
