Last Sunday, during a speech made at the dedication of the monument honoring the Reverend Martin Luther King, President Obama declared, in King-like cadences, that the slain civil rights leader "stirred our conscience."
The president, who is desperately trying to win back Latino votes lost since 2008, went on in the speech to say that King reminds us "to show compassion to the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of are just a few generations removed from similar hardships." He has also taken to engaging in high-profile appointments and meetings with Latino media executives, like Univision's president, César Conde, and Latino superstars like Shakira.
While Obama's meetings and his words of compassion for immigrant families are most welcome, the president's deeds - and their effects on immigrant families - provide a stunning and tragic contrast.
As documented in Tuesday's broadcast of PBS Frontline's 'Lost in Detention' documentary, President Obama's policies have led to the record and heart-breaking deportation of more than 1 million immigrants, the separation of thousands of families, and the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands forced to live in subhuman conditions in what some of us are calling "Obama's Immigrant Gulag." Detainees fall victim to rape and sexual abuse, racism, having to eat worm-infested and rotten food, physical and psychological abuse, the denial of basic rights and other humiliating conditions.
At the heart of this immigrant tragedy is a radical racial profiling program known as "Secure Communities," or S-COMM, which turns local and state law enforcement officers into immigration officers who are beginning to ask everyone - citizen and non-citizen - for their papers simply because they look a certain way.
By the tens of thousands, Latinos, one of the groups most profiled under S-COMM, will watch the documentary, which will speak to the concerns about the president's immigration policies and about which an increasing numbers of us are growing angry and impatient.
Polls, like the Latino Decisions-ImpreMedia, conducted in August 2011, tell us definitively that most Latino voters know one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants.
Presente.org and its allies in 10 cities will call on the Obama Administration to do away with the rotten fruits of S-COMM and other immigration policies he promised to either alter or abolish altogether. The absolute failure and damage of these immigration policies have been thoroughly documented by lawyers, immigrant rights groups and, increasingly, journalists like those responsible for tonight's unprecedented documentary.
Trying to cover up and divert the attention of the public, especially the now very fed up Latino voter public, will not work. Trying to blame the failure of S-COMM, a program of the executive branch of government, by handing over responsibility to Congress, the legislative branch, as Cecilia Muñoz, Obama's top advisor on immigration, has done repeatedly, will not work.
Latinos are not stupid. We will not accept the false statements and diversionary tactics of apologists for the abominable immigration policies of the administration.
To (re)gain trust of Latino voters, Obama must make fundamental changes to the immigration laws he can change at will, as he proved on August 18, when he announced slight changes to immigration policy after groups across the country protested his campaign offices, including his campaign headquarters.
Until President Obama makes more fundamental changes to his dangerous immigration policies, we will take back the slogan that Obama the candidate borrowed from Latinos - "Sí Se Puede/Yes We Can" - and use it for our efforts to both stop S-COMM and abolish Obama's Immigrant Gulag.