Immigration advocates in Chicago are planning a May 1 rally to push the Biden administration to legalize undocumented immigrants across the country.
The rally is expected to start at Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph St., with participants then marching to Federal Plaza in the Loop, organizers said Thursday at a news conference at the plaza.
Elvira Arellano, a longtime immigration activist, said it’s been about 15 years since she sought sanctuary from deportation at a Chicago church. But even now, she said, many immigrants still live “in the shadows.”
“The government wants our taxes, but it doesn’t want to give us a legal status to stay here with our families,” Arellano said in Spanish. “We are workers who throughout the pandemic haven’t stopped working.”
President Joe Biden has called for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. In Illinois, there’s an estimated 437,000 immigrants living without legal status, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Tanya Lozano, of Healthy Hood Chicago, also spoke at the news conference.
The rally and march, she said, are being planned as the coronavirus pandemic continues and as many are mourning the death of Adam Toledo, the 13-year-old boy fatally shot by Chicago police in Little Village.
Given all that, Lozano said, “we are in the fight for our lives.”
Kobi Guillory, of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, said he planned to join the groups in solidarity because he sees a link between the hurdles immigrants face and those fatally shot by police, such as George Floyd.
“The same system that terrorizes the families of immigrants is the same system that terrorizes the families of Black and Brown people in this city and in cities across the country,” Guillory said.
Elvia Malagón’s reporting on social justice and income inequality is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.
