Memphis families rally against zero-tolerance immigration policies
Two weeks ago, Anna Shelton was a 23-year-old University of Memphis student with a self-proclaimed lack of political involvement.
She thought of most issues, including immigration, as something that affected other people.
The faces of children who had been separated from their parents at the U.S. border woke her up, she said.
She went online and learned about the national Families Belong Together march, and noticed Memphis didn’t have a local event registered. So she signed the city up.
In front of a crowd of nearly 500 people at Gaisman Park on Saturday, Shelton said she felt guilty that it took what she sees as extreme immigration tactics to motivate her to be involved. She knew she could no longer dismiss what was happening as someone else’s problem.
“As a white person, I know this is all too easy,” she said of the temptation to turn away.
Shelton partnered with Latino Memphis to host the rally Saturday, one of hundreds held across the country in protest of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
Under the trees and with a backdrop of children climbing and swinging on a playground, Memphians called for families who had been separated at the border to be reunited and to limit indefinite detentions of those families.
They carried homemade signs with sayings like “Abolish ICE,” referring to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, “This is about children, not our politics,” and, “You can’t claim family values if you don’t value families.”
Marisol Padilla, a former teacher who taught English as a second language, said she learned when she was a child that she was undocumented.
“All I knew was I was just like everyone else at my school,” Padilla said.
Her students, she said, were often too afraid of their parents being deported to focus on their school work.
“They could sense the possibility of losing their parents,” she said.
Mauricio Calvo, executive director of Latino Memphis, said fear is likely what kept many Latino families away from the rally Saturday. Despite the hundreds in attendance, in a neighborhood with a large Latino population, the crowd was mostly white.
“I think that tells part of the story,” Calvo said. “People are afraid.”
On the flip side, Calvo said, it was nice to see people who likely aren’t directly affected by immigration issues come out in support of those who are.
“We can be sympathetic about common human issues,” he said.
Calvo’s wife, Yancy Villa-Calvo, told the crowd how she came to the U.S. legally on a scholarship to Christian Brothers University. She just received full citizenship in April. It took her 25 years and thousands of dollars.
She said she wanted to dispel the idea that there’s a “back of the line” that everyone should find in the current immigration system if they want or need to flee their country.
The event included voter registration, which Villa-Calvo said is the next important step.
“We can protest, we can cheer, we can march, but unless we vote, we’re not SUNDAY, JULY 1, 2018 going to be able to see the changes that we want to see,” she said.
Rushda Hartley, an immigrant from South Africa who came to the U.S. about a year and a half ago when her husband got a job at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, brought her 3-year-old daughter Naila Salie to the rally. “She’s my little activist,” Hartley said. Watching the images of children kept separately from their parents, even those seeking legal asylum in the U.S., “I kept thinking of my own kids,” Hartley said. “It literally brought me to tears.”
Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer. pignolet@commercialappeal.com.