Actress Eva Longoria is finally talking about deportations. I know we’ve all been waiting to hear her opinion and now we have it.
“Hi everyone, I wanted to get on here and finally compose myself to do a message because of everything that’s happening with the mass deportations. Every time I try to record a message, I just start crying, and then I don’t want it to be about me and my emotions about it, but it’s just so inhumane, hard to watch. It’s hard, it’s hard to witness from afar. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in Los Angeles right now. I can’t believe it’s happening in Austin, Texas. I can’t believe it’s happening all over the country.
The comments and people’s reactions to it are really so surprising to me because it is un-American. We all can agree nobody wants criminals in our country. Nobody wants rapists, nobody wants drug dealers, nobody wants bad actors in our country. That’s not what’s happening. These roundups are happening at birthday parties, in elementary graduations, Home Depot. Those are not criminals.
I just hope that everybody has more compassion for this issue and realizes we have industries dependent on immigrant labor. These are people who feed us and take care of us and take care of our families and our children and our communities and we can’t deny them as humans. We just can’t. And those of you that keep yelling, “Well, you should have come here legally, do it, get in the back of the line,” there is no line. There’s no line. This mythical line that everybody’s talking about. There’s people that have been waiting for citizenship for 25 years, that have been in line.
I just ask for you guys to educate yourself. If you’re out there yelling “Good, they deserve this,” they don’t. These are hardworking people from my community, and I think we need to have more compassion for them. They want to just come here, work, and provide for their families.
For those of you guys protesting out there, be safe, be respectful. We have to remember that the reason why people are protesting, the reason we’re protesting, is because parents and mothers are being separated from young children. There are minors in detention centers for weeks at a time with adults. I mean, you can see the problem with that. The lack of due process for law-abiding, tax-paying immigrants that have been part of our community for a very long time.
I am going to continue to support and post and speak out. I have posted where to donate. Where I’ve donated is Endelon—the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, MALDEF—the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. There’s also IMDEF, which is the Immigrant Defense Fund. The other one is, I wrote them down, oh the National Immigrant Justice Center. All of these are legal services for immigrants. I’ve supported them for years. I’ve been working with MALDEF for 20 years now, and so these are the services that our communities are going to need. They need lawyers. They need help with the due process that they’re not getting right now.
So I want to say thank you to all of our allies who are standing by us and speaking out. I’ve seen white people post, black people post; everybody’s just being affected by this. Thank you. Thank you for seeing us. Thank you for speaking out for us and with us. Again, God bless you guys. If you’re out in the street, be safe, be careful, and I send everybody my love.”
