Houston immigrant families to participate in nationwide demonstration on Monday
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- FIEL Houston, a local advocacy organization, announced Friday that other groups representing immigrants from around the world will participate in a nationwide awareness campaign.
'A Day Without Immigrants,' the nationwide event sparked from a TikTok post by a student in College Station.
Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL Houston, said the goal of the campaign is to show how immigrant families have a significant impact in the communities they call home.
"We've been in talks with folks from the South Asian community. There's a group of Korean immigrants that will be here on Monday to support us," Espinosa said. "We've also reached out to the NAACP to different organizations to the Haitian community, because at the end of the day, whenever we talk about immigration, we always associate it to Latinos, but specifically here in Houston, it's so much more than that. We hope to be reflective of that on Monday."
The Houston area is known for having one of the largest growing populations of immigrants and refugees, including 1.6 million immigrants and more than 500,000 residents who are undocumented, according to FIEL Houston.
"They're our neighbors, they are our friends, and they are people that are contributing every single day," Espinosa said. "We always give the examples when we go out to schools. We talk to kids that one out of 10 Houstonians is undocumented."
The goal is to push President Joe Biden's administration to start creating Comprehensive Immigration Reform that can be passed. This will hopefully help build a path to citizenship and legal status as the Biden campaign promised during the presidential election.
"I've been here with a lot of fear of getting deported every single day," Juan Ramon, a local business owner said.
The rally is expected to start at noon on Monday, Feb. 14 at Guadalupe Plaza Park.
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