Earlier on Thursday morning during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, DACA recipients and their allies disrupted the parade in a direct action that called for permanent protection for all young undocumented immigrants in the United States. All the participants were arrested.
A two-minute video posted by Movimiento Cosecha on Facebook showed the direct action and the subsequent arrests:
Additional live videos of activists were also posted:
As a media release from Movimiento Cosecha about the direct action stated:
On September 5th, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was repealed by President Donald Trump in one of the cruelest attacks on the immigrant community. Starting on March, 5th 2018, 800,000 undocumented youth will begin to lose protection from deportation and their right to work. After years of commitment and sacrifice to gain their education, support and start their families, and become key contributors to their communities politicians are standing by while they will broken apart from their families, livelihood, and community.
“The White House and establishment politicians are responsible for this decision. They are negotiating away the power and dignity of our immigrant community. The community is being pitted against each other—children against parents,” said Catalina Santiago, one of the undocumented youth arrested at the parade, according to the release. “Their aim is to make undocumented youth bargaining chips for driving our parents and our community deeper into the shadows”
“Undocumented youth are refusing to put our destiny in the hands of establishment politicians. We are choosing to fight for the dignity of our entire immigrant community, and that begins with us. We are your classmates, your coworkers, and your neighbors” said Hector-Jairo Martinez, another undocumented youth arrested this morning, the release reported. “We are not just the future of this country, but we are also the present workers that it depends on. We are millions of young undocumented students and workers who are the backbones of our schools, industries, and communities. We are calling on our community members to stand up and fight for our right to work and live in this country.”
