Border Residents Reject Indefinite Detention of Immigrant Children and Families in New Trump Order
June 20th, 2018
For Immediate Release
Contact Gabriela Castaneda (915) 494-4213
gcastaneda@bnhr.org
BNHR PRESS STATEMENT
Border Residents Reject Indefinite Detention of Immigrant Children & Families in New Trump Order
BNHR and Border Residents Call for Solutions that Ensure Families are Kept Together and Free
Today, President Trump issued an Executive Order that neither grasps nor solves the grotesque problems he has created for immigrant families and our country.
President Trump’s new order keeps children in detention indefinitely. This is wrong. This goes against our fundamental values as Americans.
This order keeps children in cages, and there is no cage our government can make so gilded as to ever overcome the basic inhumanity of jailing children and their families. This is a moment of humanitarian crisis, but one rooted in and inseparable from the policy choices of this administration—policies they remain wedded to even in this new Executive Order.
Our communities here in the Border Network for Human Rights are deeply unsatisfied with this response from President Trump. This Executive Order is not a solution. We cannot accept caging children in a situation where they and their parents will continue having their humanity degraded, will continue being abused by our government, and will continue being criminalized for only seeking safety in our society. President Trump’s order does not fix this. Only the release of these and future immigrant families from detention will right this particular wrong.
We should also remind ourselves that Trump’s inhumane treatment of immigrant children now is only one part of a continuous assault on immigrants, border communities, and people of color.
Jailing families for seeking safety is of a piece with illegally turning back asylum seekers at ports-of-entry. Indefinitely detaining children draws on the same vile impulse that builds walls between neighbors. Traumatizing and torturing kids is inseparable from the continued degradation and criminalization of all migrants. Using these children as bargaining chips is the exact same game he played with the Dreamers. All of this is wrong. All of this still demands our outrage and our activism. All of this is unaddressed by today’s Executive Order.
There is no accepting the grotesque actions of this administration simply because the sharpest corners are sanded down. We insist on the humanity and freedom of all persons, demand that our government keep families both together and free, and take to the streets on behalf of an America of opportunity and welcoming. On June 30th we will march again as a community; we invite everyone to join us.
