President Barack Obama announces his executive action tonight, likely granting temporary protection from deportation for some undocumented immigrants. Latinos have been at the forefront of calls for immigration reform. But undocumented Asian immigrants also have a lot riding on the president's announcement.
That much was clear Tuesday night in San Francisco, where about 20 Asian immigrants and their family members streamed into a legal clinic. Asian Law Caucus immigration attorney Anoop Prasad describes who's here.
"People facing deportation, people in detention, applying for citizenship," Prasad says. "Basically the whole range of issues impacting Asian-American immigrants."
Prasad says his clients have taken the brunt of stepped-up deportation by the Obama administration in recent years.
"A lot of time these families are getting torn apart, where half the family is here in the U.S. and half the family is outside the U.S. and barred from returning," Prasad says. "The sort of heartbreak that we see has been staggering."