ALEX GARCIA / SFVS

Children with immigrant parents marched in downtown Los Angeles, Mexico City and Washington D.C. to ask President Obama for an end to deportation and to take action on an immigration reform.

At 17,Maria Tellez is conscious of the responsibility she would have to assume if her parents Graciela and Gorgono, both undocumented immigrants from Mexico, were deported.

"We already have a plan. I'm going to get a job and I'll take care of my brother and sisters," the Panorama City resident said. "I tell my mom 'I hope this never happens to us,' because that means me leaving my [own] plans.

"I just graduated from high school and I'm planning to be a teacher," she added. "I would have to put my future aside and I don't think I can do it."

Tellez, who currently attends Pierce College, said she dreads this possibility everyday.

"I'm afraid that I'm not going to see them again," she said.

Tellez said Graciela, a house cleaner, has lived in the United States since she was 15 and has never been back to Mexico "where she hardly knows anybody." Gorgono, a day laborer, came to the United States in the late 1980s.

She recalled one day Gorgono didn't come home until midnight after going to work in San Diego, and the family feared the worst. That's why Tellez is very passionate about the need for immigration reform.

Earlier this year, Tellez was part of a delegation that went to Washington, D.C. for a massive demonstration seeking action from the Obama Administration and Congress. She did the same thing again this week, when Tellez joined other youngsters in the "National March of the Children."

Those demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Mexico City and the federal building in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday were part of a collective action the same week that the SB 1070 measure is supposed to take effect in Arizona. That new law would require local police to ask the immigration status from people they stop, and who they suspect are in the country illegally.

The Washington, D.C. protest was led by 10-year-old Saul Arellano, whose mother, Elvira Arellano, gained prominence after seeking sanctuary along with him in a Chicago church to avoid deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ALEX GARCIA / SFVS

Maria Tellez, 17, whose parents are undocumented immigrants, was one of the participants in this week’s protest in downtown Los Angeles, where children marched to ask for an end to deportations.

Elvira was eventually deported after visiting Los Angeles in August of 2007. Since then, Arellano has been living in Mexico with his mother.

This summer, the young Arellano, a U.S. citizen, returned to lead the push for immigration reform. Arellano and hundreds of other kids marched on the White House to demand a meeting with the president and deliver a letter to him requesting a stop to the deportations of their fathers and mothers, an immigration reform and to stop the Arizona measure SB 1070.

Tellez and dozens of other kids took to the streets here in Los Angeles to ask the same things.

"We need the children's clamor to be heard so that President Obama stops deportations," said Gloria Saucedo of Panorama City-based Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional, one of the groups organizing the Los Angeles protest.

"A lot of our kids live in fear thinking that their parents won't return from work," added Alicia Flores, another member of Hermandad.

Luis Valdovinos, a nine-year-old from Panorama City, was one of the kids involved in the Los Angeles protest.

"I'm here so that kids won't be separated from their parents," said the boy, whose parents are in the country legally but who has other family members who are undocumented.