For Chula Vista native Pedro Rios, ending human rights violations against immigrants in California should not be up for debate.
A son of immigrant parents, Rios is chair of the advisory board for the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium and director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program.
The consortium is a gathering of several organizations from religious groups to community and labor groups, and Rios serves on the board as a representative of American Friends Service Committee, a non-profit Quaker organization that supports immigrant communities, lobbies for immigrant rights and helps document and inform the public of immigrant abuses in the U.S.
“When we’re working with issues related to justice around border communities we have dialogue sessions with CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) in an effort to try to change internal administration policies as well,” said Rios.
Since the White House took executive action in November that could allow temporary legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., the debate over immigration and immigration reform has become a hot button.
While Rios supports the controversial order put forth by President Obama, creating peace along the border and stopping unfair treatment of immigrants in the U.S. is his ultimate goal.
Border Patrol agents have killed 27 people since 2010, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, with about 1,200 complaints filed against the agency for excessive force between 2007 and 2012.
Border Patrol agents themselves often come under violent physical attack and many of the use-of-force cases have been found to be within CBP policy by investigators. But Rios said Border Patrol firearm and use of force policies amount to a militarized border which he and his colleagues believe is a direct cause of violence.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 30 years and border militarization has real deadly impact, environmental impact, social-cultural impact,” said Rios.
While violence surrounding Border Patrol agents has gained mass media attention, Rios said it is not his only concern as many documented and undocumented immigrants still work for slave wages and see a higher percentage of physical and sexual abuses than citizens and immigrants with legal right to work in the country.
As debates over immigration reform heat up the national political arena, Rios, a husband and father of two, said much of the media hype is counter-productive to his cause. So he keeps his focus on working to create and maintain peace in his home state, California.
When California passed Proposition 187 in 1994 which aimed to restrict undocumented immigrants from using healthcare, education and other public services, Rios said California became the beacon for anti-immigrant legislation as similar legislation was passed throughout the country in subsequent elections.
“But now we can say the opposite is true, where California is the beacon for positive federal legislation,” he said, “and with the general acceptance of immigrants and refugee communities statewide.”
But there is still much work to be done, he said, as creating an environment for peaceful immigration is far from being complete here in the Golden State.
