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.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is holding a field briefing in Birmingham, Ala., on the impact of state anti-immigrant laws, like Arizona’s infamous S.B. 1070 and Alabama’s H.B. 56. The commission describes itself “as an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding federal agency, [whose] mission is to inform the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws.” It came as quite a shock to see groups that are not only vehemently anti-immigrant but have been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the witness list, including Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). 

In a strongly worded 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today rejected most of Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law known as S.B. 1070. But the justices upheld a key portion that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), say is:

The law’s most dangerous provision, which gave the green light to discrimination and racial profiling. 

Despite promising a veto, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) on Friday signed into law revisions to the state’s notorious anti-immigrant measure HB 56. The new version (HB 658) maintains the worst of the original law’s provisions.

Members of the 99% Power coalition disrupted Verizon's annual shareholder meeting in Huntsville, Ala., six separate times today. In each instance, a group of protesters interrupted the proceedings using “Mic Check” tactics, followed by chants such as “Shame on you!” “Verigreedy!” and “People over profit!”  After each occurrence, the chanting group was led out by security people, with many in the audience applauding them. There were no arrests.

Union and civil rights activists said they were “encouraged” today when German automaker Daimler—one of Alabama’s major employers with its Tuscaloosa County Mercedes-Benz plant—acknowledged it had engaged other businesses and state and federal lawmakers in discussions about Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, H.B. 56.

On April 4, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s tragic assassination, labor and civil rights group representatives will be in Berlin, Germany, at the Daimler shareholder meeting, calling on the automaker to back the repeal of Alabama’s recently enacted H.B. 56. The harsh anti-immigrant law legitimizes racial and ethnic profiling and has drawn criticism nationally and globally.

Just over a year ago, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans seize control of both branches of the legislatures in 11 states. Then, while talking up the notion of job creation, they set about cutting their state and local public workforces with a ferocity unseen in decades.  The most recent numbers, according to the Roosevelt Institute, are stark.

The 11 states are Alabama, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Together, they eliminated 87,900 state and local public jobs—more than 40 percent of the total cut.

This past week, I had the privilege of joining with thousands of people from Alabama and around the country who walked from Selma to Montgomery to commemorate the historic march 47 years ago that forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act and that changed our country forever. Hundreds of leaders from the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), the immigrant rights coalition convened by the Center for Community Change (CCC), came to Alabama from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas and Colorado.  We joined with thousands of members and leaders from civil rights organizations, immigrant rights organizations and AFL-CIO unions and other unions in a powerful, diverse show of strength and unity that transformed the hearts and minds of everyone who was a part of it. I believe that this week’s events will go down in history as a turning point in our efforts to build a broad-based coalition to advance progressive change. 

Rev. Al Sharpton’s statement fired up a crowd of thousands standing in front of the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building in downtown Montgomery early Friday afternoon: "These laws in Alabama aren't immigration laws. They're Jim Crow laws."