Rallying in Denver, Immigrants Decry Family Separation

DENVER, CO – By Alex Burness. What is happening now at the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigrant parents and children are being forcibly separated under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy is “not some foreign reality,” said Celeste Martinez.

“This is something that is happening now and that our country is deeply responsible for,” Martinez, an organizer with Together Colorado, told a crowd of about 200 during a rally outside of Park Hill United Methodist Church on Thursday evening.

“The ‘zero-tolerance’ policy will continue to militarize our border,” she added, as members of the crowd held signs and banners decrying the federal government’s enforcement tactics at the border

Together Colorado, along with other organizations including American Friends Service Committee and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, led Thursday’s event— a short march just east of City Park from one church to another, where the group rallied for an hour.

Similar events took place in Pueblo and Aurora.

During the first half of the rally, the crowd heard firsthand testimonials from immigrants and organizers. The second half was a series of brief speeches from Democratic politicians currently running for office.

Araceli Velasquez, who’s been living in sanctuary at Park Hill United Methodist and the adjacent Temple Micah for almost a year, told the crowd that she came to the U.S. in 2010 from El Salvador, “fleeing for my life.”

Many do not realize, she said, the absolute desperation that motivates people to try to cross the border without documentation. “If people are coming to the border with their small children, it’s because their lives are at stake,” she said.

“My asylum was denied,” Velasquez added. “And that’s the reason I had to claim sanctuary as my last option. … It’s been a very long 10 months, but I will keep fighting. What is most important is that I keep fighting for my family. That’s why I’m fighting so hard — to stay in this country with my family.”

Lupe Lopez, another immigrant, also spoke of the desperation she faced before fleeing her home and parents, alone, in Guatemala.

“For many of us, this decision happens one night to the next morning,” Lopez said. “I had to leave because my boss was sexually assaulting me.”

Lopez told a story of a time she was driving on I-70 in 2012, when a Colorado State Patrol officer pulled her over. Neither she nor her husband had drivers licenses, and both wound up detained for four days, unable to contact their children.

When they finally were released and united with their kids, Lopez said, the kids asked, “What happened? We thought you both were dead.”

“Don’t give up,” she implored the largely white crowd. “Don’t leave us in this fight.”

Read more at the Colorado Independent

Photo by Alex Burness

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