Groups plan Ash Wednesday immigration rally

Several pro-immigrant groups and their supporters will rally at the federal building Downtown at noon Wednesday – Ash Wednesday, a day of Christian repentance – to call for compassion toward undocumented Central American immigrants living in Greater Cincinnati.

Rally organizers say they oppose the most recent removal priority by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of women and children who emigrated since the start of 2014 from several violent Central American nations.

"We are purposefully meeting there on Ash Wednesday to call for repentance on several levels, as individuals and as a country as a whole," said Allison Reynolds-Berry, executive director of the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, Over-the-Rhine.

The Justice and Peace Center, which has an immigration specialist on staff, is sponsoring the rally along with the Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Mount Auburn and Nuns on the Bus Cincinnati.

"Given ICE's presence in East Price Hill last week, the community is in a state of fear," Reynolds-Berry said. "A number of people who are targeted are still paralyzed by fear from going outside, going to the grocery story, going to work, going to school. They are even afraid to come to this rally because somebody might be there taking their pictures."

ICE would not confirm the nature of their presence in East Price Hill, which immigrant advocates say is ongoing. Its agents may be looking for specific people who have outstanding deportation orders or have missed their appointments or prescribed phone checks.

Marchers are asked to meet at 11:45 a.m. Wednesday at the southeast corner of Fifth and Main streets, in a small plaza across the street from the John Weld Peck Federal Building, 550 Main. Marchers will circle the block several times for one hour. A small group has requested to be allowed into the building to meet with officials of the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS), the federal agency that oversees lawful immigration into the country.

The planning organizers are Christian-based. Ash Wednesday opens the season of Lent, a time of fasting a preparation for Easter. Several of the planning organizations are Catholic-based, and they say the church's social justice teaching requires them to "treat the migrant as they would Jesus and to stand always on the side of the most vulnerable," Reynolds-Berry said.

Opponents, whose views are frequently articulated by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, say people who immigrated without legal permission from Central America threaten America's economy and safety. Many support Trump's call to make Mexico pay for a wall along the nation's southern border through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.