On a routine visit to Central Connecticut State University on Wednesday, President Obama was again confronted by a passionate immigration reform activist calling for an end to deportations. John Molina, a 46-year-old Colombian immigrant, interrupted a speech Obama was giving about his recent minimum wage increase. Much like 24-year-old Ju Hong—who called out the president in November during a speech in San Francisco—Molina stood on a chair and yelled, “Mr. Obama, stop the deportations!”
Originally, Molina went to the event to join a demonstration outside of the university, and hadn’t planned on going in. But once he arrived he decided it was his only chance to tell the president how he really felt. Unlike with Hong, however, the president did not respond, nor did he intervene when Molina was asked to leave.
“I feel good, but frustrated. I couldn’t tell him everything, and I wanted to say more,” he told Colorlines over the phone in Spanish, calling from his job doing maintenance at a Connecticut golf club. “He’s deporting too many people, and he’s the only one with the power to stop it. I don’t want him to deport any more families.”
Molina came to the U.S. 20-years-ago, fleeing Pablo Escobar-era Colombia, and seeking economic opportunities. The number of deportations during Obama’s term in office, reportedly more than under any other U.S. president, is set to hit two million by April.