Protesters Again Urge Closure of INS Facility

As police and Border Patrol agents looked on, opponents of a U.S. immigration detention center in the Pico-Union District of Los Angeles returned there Thursday to urge that the facility be closed, calling it a “concentration camp.”

But unlike last week, when a May Day protest got out of hand and led to the arrests of 15 protesters at the controversial detention center, the news conference staged by representatives of several immigrant-advocate groups and a Communist youth group in front of the building on South Alvarado Street went off without incident.

Spokesmen for La Resistencia said the Alvarado Street center--operated on behalf of the Immigration and Naturalization Service by a Long Beach housing contractor--was an affront to the large immigrant neighborhoods surrounding it and should be closed. Protests around the country are planned for June 10 to demand the shutdown of facilities like the one on Alvarado, which can hold up to 253 detainees.