Farm Labor Group to Issue ID Cards to Thwart Police ‘Detentions and Deportations’

baldemar
(lapresnatoledo.com)

The Toledo, Ohio-based Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is trying to protect illegals in America and will issue its own “ID cards” to ward off what they see as “unmerited detentions and deportations.”

Lapresnatoledo.com reports:

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is signing up more than migrant farmworkers these days. The labor union is now signing up associate members and issuing ID cards with the intent of pressuring Toledo Police and the Lucas Co. Sheriff’s Office to recognize the IDs to prevent “unmerited detentions and deportations.”         

Baldemar Velásquez, FLOC founder and president, addressed a group of about 40 people at the union’s Broadway headquarters on Saturday evening, June 28, 2014. He stated the intent is to take a proactive, grass-roots approach to the controversial issue of immigration.

Velásquez spoke of a recent case where a Toledo Latino was arrested on charges that were dropped in mid-June. Yet he is still being held in detention at the Lucas Co. Jail for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to start the deportation process. Lucas County officials and Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) have been contacted to sort out the situation. Both agencies had a representative at the meeting…

Community organizer Ramón Pérez, who is assisting the effort, told the group the FLOC associate memberships also will serve to form a grass-roots group “to raise our voice in the city of Toledo.” An estimated 80 to 90 people already have purchased such $30 memberships, while about a dozen more did so following the meeting. The goal is to have 300 to 400 Latinos signed up in the next few weeks.

Velásquez explained that the memberships make the participants part of a “bona fide labor union.” His plan is to seek support from other labor unions in the area to press for recognition of the FLOC picture ID as an accepted form of identification by law enforcement agencies in Toledo. Recent changes in state laws in Michigan and Ohio have now prevented many undocumented immigrants from being able to obtain driver’s licenses.

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Thanks for sharing!