Immigrants, too, have rights, Protests yield progress

Edited excerpted by Carolyn Bennett

Isabel Garcia of the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition and legal defender of Pima County, Arizona, spoke today with Democracy Now.

We are living a crisis, she said. It is a human rights crisis along this [Arizona/Mexico] border. People who are generally healthy as they approach the border eventually lose their lives within hours or days in one of the most horrific deaths imaginable.

More than two hundred people die on the U.S.(Arizona)/Mexico border every single year. Tucson-based Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Coalition) has reported, “The number of human remains recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border since October 1, 2009 has reached 153.” It is a deadly situation ─ the saddest deaths you can imagine. Among the 153 dead was a pregnant woman: her baby was number 153.

The Obama administration, the courts and everybody are political beings [but] they know what’s going on. They know that there’s massive political pressure, economic pressure ─ including massive historic mobilizations that have occurred in the state of Arizona. And national and international people have come in. There has been an impact on everybody involved.

Real major social change results after there has been mass mobilization in the streets and massive engagement by the population, guiding politicians, guiding other entities within our system to do the right thing. Protests have had a definite impact on everything that we are seeing going on today [Isabel G. Garcia, Pima County (Tucson, Arizona) Legal Defender].

Coalición de Derechos Humanos (‘The Human Rights Coalition’) is a grassroots organization that promotes respect for human/civil rights and fights the militarization of the Southern Border region, discrimination, and human rights abuses by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials affecting U.S. and non-U.S. citizens. The  goals of Coalición de Derechos Humanos are to:

Strengthen the capacity of the border and urban communities to exercise their rights and participate in public policy decisions.
Increase public awareness of the magnitude of human rights abuses, deaths and assaults at the border resulting from U.S. policy.
Seek changes in government policies that result in human suffering because of the militarization of the U.S. border region.

Sources and links
“On Eve of Major Protests, Federal Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law,” July 29, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/on_eve_of_major_protests_federal
National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, http://www.nnirr.org/about/index.php
No More Deaths, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/
Legal Defender’s Office, http://www.pima.gov/legaldef/
Coalición de Derechos Humanos, http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net
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