Dozens of U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants are meeting at a Methodist church in Chicago to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe and write letters they will send to President Barack Obama asking him not to deport their parents.

“President, I beg you not to deport my parents this Christmas,” wrote Jesus Arriaga in one of the first of their letters to be delivered to the White House before Christmas.

Beside him on Thursday night was undocumented mother Guadalupe Lopez, who has lived in the United States for 14 years and who described her drama in another letter saying that immigration authorities want to separate her from her U.S.-born children.