By Bon Johnson
Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala.— Police arrested 13 protesters in Alabama’s capital Tuesday as they demonstrated against the state’s strict new law regarding illegal immigrants.
About 100 people, most of them Hispanic and college-aged, chanted slogans as they marched through light rain around the state Capitol and to the adjacent Statehouse where the legislature works.
“Undocumented, unafraid,” ‘’No papers, no fear, immigrants are marching here” and “Ain’t no power like the power of the people,” were among the slogans the protestors chanted as they marched. Later, some of these were hauled off to jail in a yellow bus normally used by the city parks and recreation department.
The protesters sat down on Union Street between the Statehouse and the Capitol when police approached and warned them in English and Spanish that they would be arrested if they didn’t move. None did, and police arrested 11 demonstrators, tying their hand with yellow straps and loading them into the bus.
Federal courts have blocked parts of the Republican-backed law from taking effect, but both supporters and critics still call it the nation’s toughest state law against illegal immigration. The Obama administration opposes the law, which is calls an overreach by the state.
One of those arrested was 19-year-old Catalina Rios, a student at Henry Ford Community College in Detroit. She identified herself an illegal immigrant from Mexico. Rios, who looks like a typical American teenager, said she knew there was a possibility she might be deported as she sat in the street waiting to be arrested.
“I know that I live in fear every single day of that, so this is no different,” Rios said. “I’m doing this for all the immigrant students who struggle every day.”
Mike Winter, a Montgomery attorney who volunteered to represent those arrested, said he understood the protesters were mostly being charged with disturbing the peace, but they could also be held fby immigration officials.
After walking all the way around the Capitol one time, about 20 protesters entered the Statehouse and went up to the seventh-floor office of state Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, a key proponent of the law.
Beason later said he was not in his office Tuesday afternoon and did not immediately get the message, though he was told there were people at the Statehouse to see him.
Beason defended the law when asked about the protest.
“My intention is to enforce what’s already in place in federal law,” Beason said. “I make no apologies. I’m trying to do what I feel is best for the people of Alabama.”
A leader of the protest, Mohammad Abdollahi, who said he was an immigrant without papers from Iran who lives in Bessemer, explained that the purpose of the demonstration was for the protesters’ voice “to be heard.”
