Luis Gutierrez Quotes

Certainly there are many Congress members who have been arrested in the past on immigration issues and will continue to because we all understand that staying silent is not an option.

Until he announced his immigration policy last week, Obama had the support of most Hispanic voters - but not the enthusiasm they had shown for him in 2008. That may be changing in part because of the decision not to deport young immigrants whose undocumented parents brought them here as children.

I am more than an immigration activist.

When it comes to fighting for citizenship that many people take for granted, there isn't anyone I would not talk to. When it comes to immigration, there isn't any question I will not answer.

Obama gave temporary amnesty to well over 1 million illegal immigrants, and Romney said nothing.

I'm not allowed to leave the country because I am under what you call DACA.

I'm more than willing to go to places and talk to people who believe that I am an illegal alien who deserves to be jailed. I want to look them in the eye and say, 'What makes you think I'm any different from you?' I think for our generation, immigration rights is a civil rights issue.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

President Obama is doing the right thing by offering young immigrants, most often in this country through no action of their own, a chance to live and work openly, free from the fear of deportation.

The DREAM Act was intended to benefit illegal immigrants who were brought here as children, the most sympathetic subset among our large illegal immigrant population.

We need to decouple the movement for comprehensive immigration reform and justice for immigrants from the legislative process and from the Democratic Party process. They are too linked.

The illegal immigrants may have broken the law, but we have been complicit.

We are on the threshold of a significant breakthrough, and the greatest weapon is the mass demonstration.

I did vote to defund the Obama program that defers deporting the so-called DREAMers, because that was the president's decision, and the president shouldn't unilaterally get to decide what laws to enforce or not enforce.

In my experience, young people fighting for the passage of the DREAM Act and to prevent the deportation of those who are eligible are among the most committed and fearless advocates for change in this country.

We need to be talking about things like the DREAM Act. We need to also be talking about e-verify. We also need to be talking about border security.

DACA is a lifeline for individuals who have grown up in the U.S. but who lack immigration papers.

Ending the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program was a serious mistake that will harm the United States and will spark a national political crisis.

On Tuesday 26 July 2011, I was arrested in front of the White House along with a dozen other pro-immigrant advocates and clergy. We sat down on the sidewalk in front of the White House with a banner that read 'One Million Deported Under President Obama' and refused to move when the police ordered us to.

As a left-wing campaigner for 35 years, I've been arrested on picket lines, led anti-imperialist demonstrations and spoken at anti-deportation protests outside police stations. I've made speeches at street rallies, in prisons and universities and at pubs.

I have been arrested several times protesting.

Obama set a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants in 2011, but that fact alone is misleading. Obama has spoken in favor of and has urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act, a bill that would allow young undocumented immigrants to stay in America, their home, and achieve citizenship by going to college or serving in the military.

I talked to Shailene Woodley the next day [after arrest]. She was fine, and she was very happy. She knew that it brought attention to a cause that she cared very much about. She was in high spirits and knew that was a possibility when she was protesting. The people who arrested her, if they were trying to prove a point of not to protest, they only helped the cause.

I often traveled to Nicaragua to speak against repressive policies by the Sandinista government.

After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the 'sense of utter irresponsibility' shown by the demonstrators.