CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Days after President Biden visited the southern border, an immigrants rights group in Chicago is pushing him to do more to help immigrants who’ve been here for years.
Cecilia Garcia said she’s been struggling to raise her five U.S. citizen children since her husband Hugo was deported to Mexico a decade ago.
While encouraged by the Biden Administration’s recent move to expand the Parole in Place program for Venezuelans seeking asylum to people coming from Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba as well, she wants the president to go further.
Garcia joined members of the group Right 2 Family in calling for more protections for the 12 million of undocumented people already living in this country and the estimated two million who’ve been deported.
"In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, the time is always right to do what is right," she said.
"We call to immediately enact such a program, allowing undocumented parents of US citizen children and parents of DREAMers to apply for release so that the nightmare of family separation can end."
Chris Bergin, an immigration attorney, said President Biden should expand the Parole in Place program so that undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for decades can also have a path to citizenship.
"It' a process that currently exists and can easily be expanded by President Biden. It's nothing new. It doesn't have to go through Congress, so there's really no excuse. "
Activist Elvira Arellano continues to seek asylum years after she gained national attention for holing up in a Pilsen church to avoid deportation.
Her son Saul shared the story of a migrant named Erling who came to Chicago to get away from poverty and violence in Venezuela, saying they don’t understand why families who have taken him in still face the threat of being removed.
The group Right 2 Family is asking that millions of people including approximately six million children with at least one undocumented parent be permitted to stay in the U.S. while fighting deportation.
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