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Free the Children Coalition is comprised of community members and the following groups: the People’s Defense Initiative, Derechos Humanos, Justice Alliance, Southside Worker’s Center, The Poor People’s Campaign, ACLU, Chukson Water Protectors, PALF, Frontera Wesley Foundation of Tucson, and YWCA STAT, Colibri Center for Human Rights, Jewish Voices for Peace, community leaders and activists. Although these groups have worked in coalition together for many years, it was the cried of the children that compelled us to join together to fight to Free the Children.
The inhumane practice of separating families at the border that this administration is obsessed with exacerbating is without a doubt a clear violation of human rights. The United Nations Office of Human Rights recently stated in a resolution that “The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child” Furthermore, this same statement of the United Nations also reminds us that the United States is “the only country in the world that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Children and that the use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles”
The practice of separating children from the arms of the parents is something that should be completely rejected by all. Undocumented parents and children are mainly migrating from Central American countries and crossing the U.S / Mexico border not only to reunify with family in search of a better life and living conditions, but they are also fleeing conditions of extreme poverty and violence. Conditions which our own government has had a hand in creating through foreign economic and military policies. Central American and Mexican migrants have legitimate claims to seek asylum and should be allowed, as stipulated by law, to fight their case in front of an immigration judge, instead of being streamlined to fill for-profit detention centers and then deported. Our immigration policy of prevention through deterrence whether it is the construction of a border wall, forcing migrants to cross through deadly desert terrain, or forcibly separating young children from their parents is not effective and has created the humanitarian crisis we witness today where hundreds of migrant lives are lost every year.
What we are witnessing is the normalization of children and babies violently and traumatically separated from their parents and housed in so-called shelters, which sometimes resemble prisons rather than humane shelters meant to protect unaccompanied immigrant children. According to a recent report released by the ACLU, which I am sure they will expand on in a minute, there is systemic abuse and neglect happening at this shelters for children and we are here today to denounce these inhumane conditions of detention and to demand that all levels of our government start improving the standard of living and housing conditions and that they require these shelters to have full transparency. Immigrant families are being exploited by private industries in a growing market that seeks to profit from the incarceration of human beings this is wrong, inmoral, inhumane and unacceptable.
As a community we denounce these policies and demand:
An END to the criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers
An END to family separation
An END to conditions which violate human rights standards
And END to private markets that profit off of the criminalization of immigrants
The adoption of JUST and HUMANE policies which are focused on family reunification and which improve the living and housing conditions for children without family
Prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations
State, County, and City policies which demand high standards of living and housing conditions and require full transparency from private shelters/detention centers
We are raising money for shirts, bumper stickers, a generator in the immediate need.
We are a days old Coalition that will be meeting this week to strategize our biggest needs for the safety and care of these children.
In solidarity!
Free the Children Coalition
Facebook.com/freethechildrencoaltion
The inhumane practice of separating families at the border that this administration is obsessed with exacerbating is without a doubt a clear violation of human rights. The United Nations Office of Human Rights recently stated in a resolution that “The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child” Furthermore, this same statement of the United Nations also reminds us that the United States is “the only country in the world that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Children and that the use of immigration detention and family separation as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles”
The practice of separating children from the arms of the parents is something that should be completely rejected by all. Undocumented parents and children are mainly migrating from Central American countries and crossing the U.S / Mexico border not only to reunify with family in search of a better life and living conditions, but they are also fleeing conditions of extreme poverty and violence. Conditions which our own government has had a hand in creating through foreign economic and military policies. Central American and Mexican migrants have legitimate claims to seek asylum and should be allowed, as stipulated by law, to fight their case in front of an immigration judge, instead of being streamlined to fill for-profit detention centers and then deported. Our immigration policy of prevention through deterrence whether it is the construction of a border wall, forcing migrants to cross through deadly desert terrain, or forcibly separating young children from their parents is not effective and has created the humanitarian crisis we witness today where hundreds of migrant lives are lost every year.
What we are witnessing is the normalization of children and babies violently and traumatically separated from their parents and housed in so-called shelters, which sometimes resemble prisons rather than humane shelters meant to protect unaccompanied immigrant children. According to a recent report released by the ACLU, which I am sure they will expand on in a minute, there is systemic abuse and neglect happening at this shelters for children and we are here today to denounce these inhumane conditions of detention and to demand that all levels of our government start improving the standard of living and housing conditions and that they require these shelters to have full transparency. Immigrant families are being exploited by private industries in a growing market that seeks to profit from the incarceration of human beings this is wrong, inmoral, inhumane and unacceptable.
As a community we denounce these policies and demand:
An END to the criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers
An END to family separation
An END to conditions which violate human rights standards
And END to private markets that profit off of the criminalization of immigrants
The adoption of JUST and HUMANE policies which are focused on family reunification and which improve the living and housing conditions for children without family
Prosecution of those responsible for human rights violations
State, County, and City policies which demand high standards of living and housing conditions and require full transparency from private shelters/detention centers
We are raising money for shirts, bumper stickers, a generator in the immediate need.
We are a days old Coalition that will be meeting this week to strategize our biggest needs for the safety and care of these children.
In solidarity!
Free the Children Coalition
Facebook.com/freethechildrencoaltion
