Sebastian Velasquez saw his family for the last time when they were helping him move into his Georgetown University dorm before the start of his first semester. A few months later, he found out that his father, mother and sister were in deportation proceedings. They were eventually deported to Colombia.

It's a simple holiday wish: having your family together. For many immigrant children, having mom or dad at home is all they want. In the first six months of 2011, 46,000 parents of children were torn away from their families and deported. Now, children are writing to Congress to ask for action to stop these deportations. 

Neidi Dominguez, an organizer with the CLEAN Carwash Campaign, sends us this excerpt from her opinion column on Politics 365. 

When President Obama announced in June that he would grant certain young, undocumented immigrants the opportunity to avoid deportation and work legally in the United States, thousands of people felt the cloud of stress and fear, which shadows our lives, begin to lift. That announcement was an important step to advance the rights of aspiring citizens in this country. 

Imagine if you were a child and living in constant fear of losing your parents.

For many children of aspiring citizens, potential loss of one or both parents is a day-to-day reality. Deportations can force children into foster care when their parents are shipped out of the country and leave single mothers struggling to make ends meet.

A new Center for American Progress report highlights how deportations break up families and negatively affect the entire community.

Pablo Alvarado, president of the National Day Laborers’ Organizing Network, says in an op-ed in yesterday's Miami Herald that there is reason to believe attitudes are changing against the "Arizona approach" to immigration policies. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the racial profiling provision of S.B. 1070, Alvarado says President Obama's announcement to halt the deportation of those young immigrants who would be eligible for U.S. residency under the terms of the DREAM Act illustrates this shift in thinking.

Jennifer Angarita in AFL-CIO Field Mobilization sends us this report.

From marches to teach-ins, activists across the country have mobilized around the DREAM Act, a common-sense immigration bill for students who were brought to the United States at a young age and who serve in the military or attend college for at least two years. Many have even risked deportation and detention to raise awareness of their cause. Matias Ramos is a prominent DREAM leader and UCLA graduate who was detained last year by ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) while traveling.

Brenda Loya in AFL-CIO Media Affairs and Jennifer Angarita in AFL-CIO Field Mobilization send us this report.

More than 1,000 working families, Latino civil rights activists, students, faith leaders and union and community allies rallied yesterday in Lafayette Park across from the White House to demonstrate disapproval of the White House’s record on immigration reform. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) was among a dozen protesters who broke off from the crowd and sat down next to the White House’s perimeter security fence.