FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Virginia Leavell
virginia@mexicanossinfronteras.org
(email to be placed on a list for regular updates)

202-674-0900

Virginia Activists to Expose the U.S./Mexico Border

Immigrant justice activists from the state of Virginia will travel to
Mexico and then cross the desert into Arizona without carrying
government-issued identification. The action, organized by the
Virginia-based activist network The People United, is scheduled to
take place on April 19th. The crossing will formally end at
demonstrations in Washington, D.C. organized by the immigrant justice
organization Mexicans Without Borders on May 1'st .

Jeff Winder, organizer with The People United and crossing
participant, says, "We planned the crossing in order to expose the
reality of a border where products move freely through ports of entry
all day while human beings die in the desert. A militarized border
does not make us safe; our safety will come when the vast disparities
of wealth and power represented by trade policies like NAFTA are
eliminated."

Legislation in Prince William County, Virginia, requiring police to
verify documentation for anyone under suspicion for having committed a
crime and limiting county services to citizens, passed unanimously
this fall despite a vocal struggle by the immigrant community and
their allies. Other local governments are now looking to this
resolution as a model for dealing with illegal immigration and over
one hundred anti-immigrant bills surfaced at the state level during
the current Virginia General Assembly. In Prince William County and
across the state, immigrants have been detained for minor traffic
offenses and face deportation and separation from their families. Sue
Frankel-Streit, another The People United organizer and participant of
the border crossing, comments, "With the climate in Virginia becoming
increasingly racist and anti-immigrant, we need a creative, dramatic
action to challenge injustice and spark more resistance among
citizens."

Patrick Lincoln, a Harrisonburg organizer with The People United,
adds, "We want to make it clear that anti-immigrant policies, at the
border and in Virginia, serve to divide us with fear, distract us from
the real problems in our communities, create a vulnerable workforce,
and feed the profits of corporations like Boeing and Halliburton,
rather than limit immigration."

Ricardo Juarez, coordinator of Mexicans Without Borders, says that the
organization has endorsed the action to, "focus attention on the
reasons why people are forced to cross the border in search of jobs
and survival."