Children in Cages: Things We Can Do Today

Image: Rabbi Suzanne Singer and I working as poll observers in Macon, GA on election day in November, 2016.

Rabbi Suzanne Singer is a colleague with much social action experience who is currently in Homestead, Florida as a witness/protestor at the child detention facilities there. I asked her for suggestions as to what I, a person with disabilities that preclude travel to the camps, might do to help with the horrible injustice taking place on our borders.

Here are some of the ideas she sent to me. You will have to do your own research about specifics, what you support and what you don’t. There is no financial barrier to doing any of these things; the cost will be your time. For tzedakah (donation) suggestions, see Children in Cages: More Ways to Help.

Call your members of Congress (find them here) at 202-224-3121 with specific requests:

• cancel raids
• improve detention conditions
• no funding for ICE/CBP (“Defund Hate”)
• release of detained children and families
• demand inspections of detention centers
• demand hearings on immigrant detention
• Support Merkley’s Shut Down Child Prison Camps Act (S.397)
• Support Harris’s Families NOT Facilities Act (S. 388)
• vote NO on extra funding for deportation

Call local representatives (find them here) with these specific asks:

• initiate plans to help immigrant communities affected by raids
• form rapid response teams around immigration raids
• ask that local law enforcement not collaborate with ICE
• ask when they will visit local detention centers

Learn, study, educate yourself and others:

• Informed Immigrant
• Immigration 101
• ACLU’s Know Your Rights
• CLINIC Know Your Rights
• CASA Know Your Rights
• NILC Know Your Rights
• AFSC Know Your Rights
• Deportation Defense Guide for the Faith Community (PICO)
• Immigration Advocates Network National Immigration Legal Services Directory
• Write Letters to the Editor and/or Op-Eds (find your local newspaper)
• NIJC Ambassador Toolkit
• Immigration Rights Teach-In Handout
• Alianza Americas Policy Platform
• Migration Policy Institute’s Research Publications
• Share the AFSC’s graphics and content on social media.
• Watch and share content from RAICES about a child’s experience in detention.

When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Eternal am your God.

Leviticus 19:33-34