Christian, Jewish and Muslim clerics said Thursday that they will press the day-old Obama administration to shake up immigration policy at a demonstration to ritually “cleanse” the national Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters following his inauguration.
“This team of faith leaders will show our faces … in solidarity to say: ‘Now is the time. End the nightmare that they’ve been living for eight miserable years,” said the Rev. Simón Bautista, Hispanic missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, during a news conference at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C.
The religious leaders cited high expectations in President-elect Barack Obama’s administration — and significant electoral support from immigrants — as they voiced pleas for an end to recent stepped-up immigration enforcement. They called for broad immigration reform and demanded an end to workplace raids as well as deportations of undocumented workers.
The Rev. G. Whit Hutchison of Wesley United Methodist Church in Washington took that call further. He held up a pen and urged Obama to use one on Jan. 20 — Inauguration Day — to sign an executive order to end the raids and deportations at once.
“It would be emancipation from the shadows, the despair,” Hutchison said. “Why not call it the Immigration Emancipation Act? Why not do it on your way to the inaugural parade?”
The day after the inauguration, the religious leaders will join a march and demonstration by immigrant rights groups who plan to press the new administration on immigration reform.
Eight representatives of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement have already lobbied Obama’s transition team on immigration policy. They met last month with Dr. Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, a Stanford law professor who is co-chair of Obama’s immigration policy working group. Cuéllar’s name has been widely circulated as a potential Obama appointee to run the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
