Peaceful Protest

More Protesters Arrested As Obama’s Deportation Record Nears 2 Million

Eight demonstrators tied themselves to one another wrist-to-wrist in the falling snow Tuesday morning, and lay down across the road in a human chain, blocking access to an immigration detention center in Elizabeth, N.J. Detention officers on their way to work waited in a line of cars stretching down the street.

For nearly a minute, the steady blast of a car horn drowned out the sound of the protesters’ chants. By the time the police arrested the protesters about a half-hour later, snow had begun to pile up on their bodies, hiding the slogans on the T-shirts they had pulled on over their sweaters.

The protest was the latest in a recent series of demonstrations aimed at urging President Barack Obama to stop the deportation of undocumented immigrants. In the past year, supporters of immigration rights have expressed growing frustration with the president, who has overseen the deportation of nearly 2 million immigrants during his time in office, far more than any other president in history. With a deeply divided Congress now nearing its holiday recess, it seems nearly certain that another year will pass with lawmakers failing to make any headway on immigration reform.

In November, immigration-rights activists made headlines by interrupting the president during a speech in San Francisco, demanding that he use his executive powers to stop deportations of immigrants who would gain legal status under reform legislation. A few days later, Obama met with activists who have been staging a hunger strike for nearly a month in a tent on the National Mall. Since September, more than 80 people have been arrested in more than half a dozen protests around the country.

Jorge Torres, one of the protesters who was arrested, denounced Obama as the “deporter-in-chief,” a term that has become popular in immigration-rights circles.