The initial goal, said attorney Christian Contreras, is to collect 100,000 signatures that would be presented in a complaint before the United Nations Human Rights Council, "for the countless violations of the civil and human rights of immigrants and the constitutional rights of citizens, who have been unjustly arrested and beaten by ICE agents.

"Unfortunately, the Trump administration has embarked on an agenda of ethnic cleansing where they are targeting Latinos," said attorney Luis Carrillo. "They are looking for brown faces all over the country, citizens and immigrants. Everyone is being rounded up by this regime."

Carrillo said that, recently, the United States Supreme Court "sided with this outlawed presidency."

A racially segregated society

Apartheid in South Africa refers to the racial segregation that ended with leader Nelson Mandela. Afrikaners are a pale-skinned ethnic group, primarily of Dutch, Flemish, German, and French Huguenot descent who speak Afrikaans as their first language.

Carrillo indicated that they want an independent investigation by UN special rapporteurs on human rights in the United States.

The UN is commemorating its 80th anniversary of its founding, and on the eve of this anniversary, in the United States, “people are being rounded up in the streets.They don't care if you're citizens or not. They're only looking for people with dark skin. They're looking for our people. This is an outrage, and we have to put an end to these human rights abuses in this country,” the lawyer added.

Despicable Leadership

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, 87, who worked for Nelson Mandela's release from prison (February 11, 1990) and helped propel him to the presidency of South Africa, said she has no experience making requests to the UN. Such as the national campaign against human rights violations in the United States.

However, she emphasized that, first and foremost, the majority of the constituents in her 43rd district are Latino, and that “is very special.”

“The Latino population is growing, and we are discovering that young people who are getting educated are in all areas of our society, providing services. They work, earn money, and contribute to the growth of the country's economy."

He added: "What this president is doing is hateful. He is determined to divide this country, turning Latinos, in particular, into enemies of everyone: whites, blacks, everyone. And this is the most despicable kind of leadership that most rulers have ever experienced.”

She never imagined it

Activist Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) with the legendary Cesar Chavez, considered that no one ever thought it would happen in a democracy in the United States of America.

“We are supposed to be the beacon on the hill so that everyone sees that representation can work and that people can elect their own leaders, and that we can have justice for all, that is not happening for our communities of color,” declared the 95-year-old leader.

She added that when the Supreme Court “fails us” and says that “it’s okay for them to go out and abuse, to approach people because they live in low-income neighborhoods or speak Spanish. This does not apply to Asian people. It also applies to some Black people, like Haitians. This is completely wrong, and those of us who suffer abuse think, “Is this really happening in my country?” “Is something really happening here that none of us would ever see?” Huerta recalled that he lived through Operation Wetback [by former Democratic President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954] “but I never saw abuse like what we see today, when they kidnap people off the street, take them away in unmarked cars, and those who kidnap them are masked so no one knows who they are.” “This has to stop. We can’t allow it to continue. People have already been murdered. We want to respond with nonviolence,” he stressed. “If our own Supreme Court doesn’t defend us,where will we go now? The only place we can go to present a petition is the United Nations, which issued the decrees stating that all nations must treat their people with dignity and respect.”

One of the last times Dolores Huerta went to the UN was to denounce the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan military governments, supported by the United States government, while Rigoberta Menchu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, was leading the fight for human rights.

Vicente Menchu, Rigoberta’s father, was burned alive in 1980 during a fire at the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala, where he had taken refuge with a group of peasants. Other members of her family, such as her mother and a brother, were also killed by the Guatemalan army.

Dolores Huerta said she never imagined that from her own country she would have to go to the United Nations, “the country that founded the idea of democracy, to ask for help and stop the abuses against our people of color.”

“We could not allow our country to become a dictatorship like they had in Guatemala or the one they had in Nazi Germany,” he stated. “We all have to stand up, fight for our people, and say, ‘Enough! Enough! Enough!’”

“It’s disgusting.”

Noting that the United States is a nation of immigrants and built by immigrants, who “are the backbone of this country,” attorney Christian Contreras, lead petitioner for the UN special rapporteurs’ intervention, emphasized that what we are seeing with the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids “is despicable and disgusting.”

“It’s waging war against its own people,” Contreras stated. “Like how [the country and federal ICE agents] are engaging in these unconstitutional, vile, and inhumane enforcement actions,” he declared.

He stated that America’s founders would not recognize what is happening today, from the “kidnappings” of people to the illegal detention of immigrants and citizens, or from the forceful tactics of shackling pregnant women, the arrest of a family with two children inside a vehicle, or the use of chemical agents to make arrests.

One such arrest was that of Cary Lopez Alvarado, who was violently detained and arrested by four masked ICE agents.

Nine months pregnant, the young mother was physically assaulted without justification on June 8. Her baby, Kailani, was born prematurely five days after her arrest.

She still remembers her experience with horror:

“They mistreated me, they pushed me and they hit me,” she told La Opinion.“Four officers ignored my pregnancy. I felt humiliated. I was treated like a criminal… I hope my case will be made known internationally by the United Nations to raise awareness about the inhumane treatment of pregnant people.”