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Immigration battle gains strength
Some carried bilingual signs or U.S. flags. Others carried small children. More than a thousand, primarily Hispanic, protesters congregated Thursday outside the state Capitol in objection to House Bill 1804.
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HB 1804 Protest
Nov 1The League of Latin American Citizens protested the bill...
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More than 1,000 people came to the state Capitol to express their opposition to the new immigration law that went into effect Thursday.
By JIM BECKEL, THE OKLAHOMAN
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It went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
It is one of the toughest immigration enforcement measures in the nation. It prevents illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses or public services. It requires law enforcement to detain and coordinate the deportation of illegal immigrants arrested for felonies or DUIs.
It also criminalizes harboring, concealing or transporting illegal immigrants.
Jose Sifuentes is an American citizen who has worked for the same company for 20 years.
He attended the rally with his wife — who is in the process of becoming an American citizen — and extended family members and friends.
"Mr. Terrill is making criminals out of all of us,” Sifuentes said of Rep. Randy Terrill, author of HB 1804. "American citizens are married to people without papers, or their parents do not have papers. He has made them criminals because we are not going to turn in our family and help to have them deported.”
About a dozen Hispanic community leaders and Catholic clergy addressed the crowd, also admonishing the bill and those who voted for it.
"Today is a sunny day, but it is the darkest day in Oklahoma history. Today, we will break up more families. Today, children will be harmed. Today, the Oklahoma economy will suffer,” said Franco Cevallos, the publisher of a local Spanish-language publication. "This is a racially motivated bill by an unscrupulous politician who has pushed it for his own self-interest.”
"I think a lot of the horror stories are highly unlikely and unprobable. At this point, I would think they would stop the inflammatory rhetoric,” said Terrill, R-Moore. "This fear and anxiety has been whipped up by the leaders of the Latino and Hispanic community.”
Around the perimeters of the crowd, there was a small but vocal group with some rhetoric of its own.
Three self-proclaimed Minutemen drove around the edge of the parking lot, shouting for the crowd to go home. As the Oklahoma Highway Patrol intervened, the truck sped away. Another man attempted to walk into the crowd, yelling for "all illegals to go back to Mexico,” but troopers quickly removed him. He set up across the street with his sign.
Then, TV crews caught a shouting match between a Hispanic Realtor and a white U.S. armed services veteran.
Among the loud but few counterprotesters was Jack McBrayer, 43.
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