Then Released the Bus Due to People's Pressure!
From update posted by Jim Forsyth 9/26/2003 3:26:31 PM
In the spirit of the Freedom Rides of bus passengers who helped integrate bus stations and other public facilities in the south during the civil rights movement, these convoys are on their way to Washington D.C. from Los Angeles to lobby for citizenship for illegal aliens working in the U.S.
Two buses, carrying 200 immigrants and allies, were detained just outside El Paso, in west Texas. When passengers were ordered off the buses and into the Border Patrol offices, they felt it was racial profiling and exercised their right to remail silent. The passengers, almost entirely people of color, collectively refused to provide the documentation officials were demanded.
The Border Patrol said it didn't know if any passengers were detained. Leone Bicchieri, leader of the convol, sad he 'didn't know' if any of the passengers are illegal aliens.
"This shows exactly why these laws are needed," Bicchieri said. "People who are working, paying taxes, contributing to this economy, should not worry that when they drive to another part of the country they live in, that they will be stopped and harassed, and asked for papers."
"If a group of Boy Scouts' had been traveling down the same route, they wouldn't have been stopped and asked for documentation."
Labor activists immediately appealed for phone call protests. Buses were released following the intervention of El Paso Bishop Armando X. Ochoa and two members of Congress who called on the Border Patrol, which is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, to allow the passengers to proceed.
In Washington DC, they will be lobbying for "citizenship for all immigrants who are in this country, the right to reunite families, and the right to protect workers on the job."
An estimated three million undocumented immigrant workers (or "illegal aliens" as others call them) currently work in the U.S. Several measures have been introduced in Congress to grant some form of legal status to those who have been here for a certain period of time, have held a job, and meet certain other requirements.