Stop family separation & GOP immigration bills

On Wednesday June 20, after intense public pressure, Trump finally issued an executive order (supposedly) putting a halt to his policy of separating parents from their children at the southern border. Setting aside the fact that he continuously denied his ability to end the barbaric process that he initiated, this executive order does not end the zero-tolerance policy or address reuniting the 2300 children already separated from their families. All it does is reiterate that families can remain together if detained by Homeland Security–a settlement established and reaffirmed by the Clinton-era 1997 Flores court case.

This is NOT the end of the story. There are still children in cages and internment camps, parents with no way to reunite with the children ripped from them, and people seeking asylum who were blocked from entering the country to ask for asylum, or whose cases were never entered into the system, among other major issues. Trump and the complicit GOP are not going to stop demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants, and they will do all they can to bury this real-life horror story.

Our Senators and East Bay Members of Congress (MoCs) have always opposed the administration’s immoral policy of separating immigrant families and jailing babies and children. They must remain vocal leaders as the administration tries to sweep this issue out of public view. This is a fast-changing story and we will update the following action list as often as we can; please check back frequently.

Find contact info for our Senators and Representatives at the end of this article and here.

Legislation:

The administration has no process to reunite children with their parents, even after they are deported. There are no Republican bills that fix the problems caused by the administration’s zero tolerance policy.

• Before Friday June 22, ask your House member to oppose the Goodlatte and Ryan immigration bills: these bills restrict family reunification visas and severely narrow asylum criteria, effectively criminalizing many asylum seekers like the ones held in detention centers due to the zero tolerance policy. They do nothing to fix the immorality of separating families and jailing children. (More info on the Goodlatte and Ryan bills here.) [ed. note: the Goodlatte bill was defeated moments after we published this article]
• Ask our Senators to introduce, support, insist on legislation that will at a minimum return the children to their families. Since some of these children were taken from families seeking asylum who were wrongly arrested before their cases could even be heard, any legislation should also take this into account and allow for family reunification in the United States.
• Ask our Senators to use every tool at their disposal, including Congress’ power of the purse. Ask them to block any appropriations bills that fund the forced separation of families, and to use all the authorization and appropriations powers in the Constitution to stop this immoral and inhumane separation of families and jailing children.
• We’re proud that our California Senators introduced legislation to stop family separation and prevent future increases to immigration detention. Please thank our MoCs for their leadership.

Witness and report: 

So far, we have the statements of the administration (and their Biblical interpretations) about the incarceration of children separated from their parents; and we already know they’re lying through their teeth about this policy. And the agencies running the ‘detention centers’ will only provide their own video and photos of the inside of the facilities where the children are imprisoned.

• We want our MoCs to make the journey to see first-hand, to demand access, to investigate and report. HHS has issued a directive prohibiting visits with less than two weeks’ notice (except scheduled tours with RSVPs), and banned legislators from talking to the children in detention; we want them to fight back against this outrageous and transparent cover-up attempt. We want them to insist on being admitted into the facilities, on being permitted to talk to the children, and on making full reports of what they see and hear.
• We also want our MoCs to call for oversight and to demand documents from all relevant agencies about all aspects of all decisions that have been made concerning these children. This should include what experts were consulted as to the children’s physical and emotional welfare as a result of removing them from their parents and housing them in their current conditions. The administration should be required to prove to the satisfaction of appropriate, disinterested medical authorities that these children, housed in tents in the brutal Texas summer, are physically safe. It’s already clear, however, that they aren’t emotionally safe; experts such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have stated forceful opposition to the policy of family separation, which they say “can cause irreparable harm.”

What to say [this is a suggested script, you can adapt to include more of the the above information]:

My name is ___, my zip code is ___, and I’m a member of Indivisible East Bay. I want ____ to visit and inspect the detention facilities, and to call for oversight and demand documents from all relevant agencies about all aspects of all decisions that have been made concerning migrant families. I also want ____ to block any appropriations bills that fund the forced separation of families, and to use the authorization and appropriations powers in the Constitution to stop these immoral anti-immigrant practices.

Contact info for East Bay Members of Congress:

• Sen. Dianne Feinstein (email); (415) 393-0707 • DC: (202) 224-3841; 1 Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco CA 94104
• Sen. Kamala Harris (email); (415) 981-9369 • DC: (202) 224-3553; 333 Bush Street, Suite 3225, San Francisco CA 94104
• Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11) (email): (510) 620-1000 DC: (202) 225-2095; 440 Civic Center Plaza, 2nd Floor, Richmond, CA 94804
• Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13) (email): (510) 763-0370 DC: (202) 225-2661; 1301 Clay Street #1000N, Oakland CA 94612
• Rep. Eric Swalwell (CA-15) (email): (510) 370-3322 DC: (202) 225-5065; 3615 Castro Valley Blvd., Castro Valley CA 94546