From the #ShutDownBerks Coalition (https://www.facebook.com/ShutDownBerksCoalition/):
2018 has shown new depths of depravity and lack of respect to human dignity by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), and the Border Patrol (CPB). It seems like every day those who run our nation’s deportation machine find new ways to torture and abuse immigrant families.
The Shut Down Berks Coalition stands with immigrant rights groups across the country calling for the end of family separation, yet another cruel tactic being implemented in the hopes of “deterring” those who come seeking refuge in our nation. This is inhumane, this is illegal and this is absolutely un-American. But we have seen this before.
This goal of abusing families, abusing their legal rights, the physical abuse, the mental abuse, in the hopes of determent was implemented with the same impunity when ICE began to detain immigrant families illegally in Pennsylvania and Texas. The long term effects of the trauma associated with family detention are well known and unnecessary – even DHS’s own task force on family detention has acknowledged that – yet this practice continues on today. Family detention and family separation are directly linked, as ICE has historically used threats of physically removing children from parents to break work and hunger strikes in family detention centers.
The truth is that immigrant families have for far too long experienced the heartbreak of family separation through deportations. Day after day mass deportations separate immigrant families across this country, as it’s done for decades, with families being torn apart not knowing when loved ones will see each other again. Separating children from their parents at the border is another horrific example of this brand of traumatic injustice. Many of these children are then being placed in the foster care system, which frequently involves its own set of abuses, racism, and other systemic problems.
We in the Shut Down Berks Coalition want to be clear. We will always fight against family separation, family detention and deportations – all of which are tools of an unjust, immoral and broken immigration system. We will never accept that any of these cruel tactics be normalized. This is not how it’s been before. This is not normal.
That is why we join those calling for the abolishment of ICE. Congress can and should defund this agency, whose only purpose is to abuse and separate families.
Because of what’s happening on our national stage, now, more than ever, is the right time for Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf to take action on shutting down the Berks County Detention Center – the illegal family prison that has been operating for years right in our backyard. The Governor has the opportunity to stand up to the Trump administration’s non-stop attacks on the immigrant community by ending family detention in Pennsylvania with an Emergency Removal Order. The immigrant community, both state and nationwide can’t wait any longer. We need Governor Wolf to act now.
No family separation, no family detention, not one more deportation
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