New America Media, News Report, Posted: Dec 12, 2012

 
Dozens of children gathered on Capitol Hill to deliver thousands of letters in a campaign called A Wish for the Holidays. The letters, written by children from 27 states, expressed one shared wish to Congress: stop deportations and keep families and communities together.

An estimated 5.5 million children in the United States have one or more parents who are undocumented immigrants, according to a report released in 2011 by the Applied Research Center. In the first six months of 2011 alone, more than 46,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported, a dramatic increase over previous periods. 

The letter-writing drive was launched last year by We Belong Together, a collaboration of women’s and immigrant rights groups.