Associated Press
Dorie Turner
September 18, 2006
ajc . com/metro/content/metro/stories/2006/09/18/2006/09/18/0918immigration.html

Hispanic and black leaders on Monday called for Gov. Sonny Perdue to retract statements about illegal immigrants made last week during the announcement of a statewide crackdown on false documentation.

Gathered underneath the rotunda at the state Capitol, labor advocates and civil rights leaders said the governor and other lawmakers are unfairly targeting immigrants as a ploy to get re-elected.

...The Coordinating Council of Community Leaders, who organized the rally at the Capitol, delivered to the governor's office Monday a letter blasting Perdue's comments.

"We are distraught that ... statements made last week will only increase the climate of suspicion around Latino immigrants and increase racial profiling," says the letter, signed by council members Teodoro Maus and Adelina Nicholls.

Turner does not disclose the fact that Maus is a former consul general of Mexico.

...The Rev. Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the United States needs immigration reform rather than the "demeaning and dehumanizing of our brothers and sisters" from other countries. The SCLC is the Atlanta-based civil rights organization that Martin Luther King Jr. helped found in 1957 to fight segregation.