Immigration advocates take protest to street and voting booth

As soon as pro-immigration demonstrators were cleared from the Broad Street ramp of the Vine Street Expressway on Tuesday morning - including four hauled off in handcuffs - other advocates assembled five blocks away at City Hall to get out the vote against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

"From his promise to create a deportation force, to calling immigrants rapists and killers, Trump has shown he stands squarely against us," said Lizet Ocampo, Latino vote director of the People for the American Way, a national progressive advocacy group that headlined the City Hall speak-out.

The political activists denounced what they called "Donald Trump's Year of Hate" to about a dozen listeners. But both they and the street protesters also railed against last week's Supreme Court ruling blocking two executive actions by President Obama that would have given temporary protection from deportation to more than four million of the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants.

The Deferred Action for the Parents of Americans (DAPA) would have shielded undocumented parents of U.S. citizens. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) would have protected children who were under 16 when brought to the U.S. illegally.

With DAPA and DACA quashed by the high court, immigrant advocates are appealing to Obama to issue a moratorium on deportations.

Among the 50 people who carried signs and banners for the street protest Tuesday, four were arrested: an activist minister; an undocumented mother of American citizens; a teenager born in Philadelphia to a woman living here illegally; and a member of the immigrant support group Juntos.

The demonstrators closed down the exit ramp for more than an hour, from 11 a.m. to shortly after noon.

When asked why he risked arrest, the Rev. Adan Mairena of the West Kensington Ministry of Norris Square answered: "Because there are 4.4 million people suffering a lot more than I am."

The protesters gathered at 10 a.m. in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 16th and Callowhill Streets, and marched around the building. The four who were arrested used plastic tubing to link arms across 15th Street.

Uniformed Philadelphia police responded, as well as plainclothes members of the civil affairs unit. Homeland Security agents cut the tubing, as police funneled backed-up traffic over a curb at the end of the Vine Street exit ramp.

One exasperated motorist and her passengers said the demonstration was making them late for work.

"We understand" their protest, said one, who gave only her first name, Theresa. "But we are trying to get to work in the United States. We are going to get deported from our houses if we don't get to work."

The protesters are unrealistic in their demands, Temple University law professor Jan Ting said in an interview. Ting is on the board of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that favors restrictions on immigration.

"It comes down to the question of whether you believe in the legitimacy of restricting immigration or not," he said. "For our first century, the U.S. did not have immigration laws and anybody in the world who wanted to come here could come here.

"The choice for Americans is: Do we want to go back to that and have unlimited immigration, or, alternatively, do we want to say, 'No, we can't take everyone?' If you come here in violation, if the law means anything, we have to remove you from the U.S."

John H. Morley Jr. of South Philadelphia, an independent contractor specializing in fire protection services, said that he is concerned about the impact of immigration on the building trades, and that those who protested Tuesday were wrong to gripe about the Supreme Court.

"Fundamentally, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed U.S. law," he said.

Outside City Hall, the activists, joined by City Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, were sanguine.

"We need to activate ourselves," she said. "We need to register and we need to vote. . . . There is no pathway to the White House without coming through our house in Pennsylvania."

Labor leader Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farmworkers Union, is a board member of People for the American Way. "We have a very potent, nonviolent weapon to stop Donald Trump," she said at the protest.

"That weapon . . . is our vote. . . . In Pennsylvania, there are between 300,000 and 400,000 Latino voters. Latino voters have made the difference in the last presidential elections, and guess what? Latino voters are going to make the decision in the next presidential election."

mmatza@phillynews.com

215-854-2541

@MichaelMatza1