Arizona lawmaker held:
State Rep. Isela Blanc was arrested Monday during a protest in support of undocumented immigrants on the National Mall in Washington.
The DACA program protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation proceedings. President Donald Trump had planned to end the program Monday, until the court blocked him.
One of Blanc’s colleagues in the Arizona Legislature, Rep. Tony Navarrete, D-Phoenix, was in D.C. for a conference and witnessed her arrest.
Navarrete said as the sit-in demonstrators were arrested, the crowd around them chanted in support. As officers lifted Blanc into the air, they chanted “Isela we see you, we love you, thank you,” he said.
“It was just a really powerful and emotional moment,” Navarrete said. “This is not a time to fear. This is a time to stand up and push back on the rhetoric of this White House.”
State Rep. Isela Blanc was arrested Monday during a protest for undocumented immigrants on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Blanc, D-Tempe, was in the capital along with so-called “dreamers” to demand Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform. Monday was supposed to be day that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program expired, but the U.S. Supreme Court delayed its ending.
A video of incident posted by the immigrant-advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona on Facebook shows Blanc and other demonstrators being arrested after they staged a sit-in, blocking a street on the mall.
Blanc, who was formerly undocumented, traveled to D.C. along with three “dreamers” and members of the group to demand immigrant youths be spared from deportation.
“I’ve been undocumented, I know the fear and anxiety the Dreamers feel,” Blanc said in a statement before the protest. “I’m also an elected official, so I know what it means to reach the American Dream, which is all they want. I have a moral obligation to fight for them.”