Youngstown vigil joins worldwide resistance to immigrant detention

By SEAN BARRON

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Many people will be afraid to come out of their homes this weekend because of a stormy prediction, but damage won’t be to property, an immigration-rights expert warns.

“It’s prudent that people lay low and protect their families until this storm of hate passes,” said Veronica I. Dahlberg, executive director of Ashtabula-based HOLA Ohio, a nonprofit, grass-roots organization that offers services to and protects the rights of immigrants and asylum families.

She was referring to news that U.S. authorities have planned a series of nationwide raids in which at least 2,000 immigrant families eligible for deportation could be arrested Sunday.

Dahlberg also was among those who spoke during Friday’s Lights for Liberty gathering and candlelight vigil at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown on the North Side and across the street in Wick Park.

Main sponsors were Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past, HOLA Ohio and Jacob A. Labendz, director of Youngstown State University’s Judaic and Holocaust Studies program.

More than 200 attended the emotional gathering, which was among an estimated 544 such events worldwide to demonstrate the growing resistance to immigrant detention and separating children from their families, as well as to protest what many see as human concentration camps.

Dahlberg noted that Ohio, a highly agricultural state, has the third-highest rate of immigration arrests in the U.S. Many of those that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have rounded up worked in large fields with no benefits or vacation days, yet paid income taxes, only to be replaced with immigrants on temporary visas who don’t pay taxes, which is hurting the state’s economy, she said.

Certain people are benefiting financially from the misery many children are subjected to in the detention facilities, said Pastor Gayle Cantinella of St. John’s Episcopal Church. She added, “We have traded our decency, the treatment of our most vulnerable people, for money.”

No undocumented children deserve to be separated from their families or to live in inhumane cages, the result largely of systemic racism, said Kira Walker of Sojourn to the Past.

“They are not our enemies!” she said.

Unjust immigration policies also speak to who we are as a nation and call into question what kind of country we want to be, added Kristin Olmi, the League of Women Voters of Greater Youngstown’s president, who urged attendees to contact their congressional leaders by calling 202-224-3121.

Also, the facilities that provide inadequate medical care, food and sanitation “violate the very notion of common human decency,” said Bonnie Deutsch Burdman of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

“We have the most lawless government I’ve seen in a long time,” added Jim Converse, regional economic-development coordinator of Common Wealth Inc., who noted that many Central American immigrants sought a new life in the U.S. because their agricultural and other ways of life became unsustainable.

Many of the other speakers urged attendees to write and call their elected officials, donate to organizations that assist immigrant families and realize that our treatment of immigrant families could have an impact on future generations. After the program, most gathered in Wick Park for a prayer service and moment of silence.

“We are all sisters and brothers,” said Terry Vicars of Catholic Charities Regional Agency. “When the dignity of any one of us is assaulted, the dignity of all of us is assaulted.”