The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) strongly condemns last week’s arrest and detaining of twenty-five men in North Carolina’s Triangle area by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The men, apparently all Latino, own businesses or were otherwise gainfully employed. Several were married with small children and none were violent criminals.
These men are now in a federal detention center in Atlanta, Georgia, where they await bond and deportation hearings. They leave behind terrified and bewildered wives and children, brothers, sisters, extended family and friends.
Executive Order 13768, titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” was signed by President Donald Trump on January 25, 2017. Immigration experts see it as responsible for the sudden increased intensity and scope of detentions around America.
While we acknowledge the immigration sweep may indeed be legal, we join area sheriffs, police chiefs and mayors in citing the roundup as an outrageous and unnecessary abuse of federal power and an affront to human dignity itself.
Any government that carries out such dreadful and mean-spirited actions must be changed by the people. The time to begin that change is now. Translate your outrage over this into direct action.
Contribute to a record voting turnout this year, beginning with the early voting that has just started. Vote out the people that allowed this to happen!