Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Sofia Sanchez
University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service

As President Barack Obama meets tonight with U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) over comprehensive Immigration reform, advocates for the issue called on the President and Congress to stop the deportation of Illegal immigrants until a bill is passed.

Representatives of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement are disappointed with the Obama administration over the number of deportations from the U.S. since he took office.

There have been 387,790 deportations of illegal immigrants under Obama averaging out to 1,000 per day, this number is significantly larger to President Bush's average of 650 deportations per day during his second term.

“Many of us celebrated the historic election of Barack Obama, and believed that this election would bring justice to immigrants and their families,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. “We believed when he promised to fix our broken immigration system. He said he would do this in his first year in office, yet in his first year the Obama Administration has deported 387,000 people.”

The administration is in danger of losing the Latino vote, said Nitza Segui Albino with the National Alliance of Latin Americans and Caribbean Communities. “The Democrats think they have us... they don’t, if you do the right thing you have us, if you don’t do the right thing you don’t have us,” she said.

Pramila Jatapal is the executive director of One America. “We are out of time and out of patience and we are ready to push forward all of the power we have collected in the states across our country to make sure that we really are going to get this change we were promised,” she said.