A shout out to all the organizations and individuals that have been working to reunite families.
National Bail Out, which has been working on the #FreeBlackMamas campaign to bail black mothers out of pretrial detention and reunite them with their families. Their work addressesthe issue of lower-income people accused of non-violent offenses (guilt not yet proven) languishing in jail for lengthy periods waiting for their trial, while wealthier people accused of more serious crimes can get out of jail while awaiting trial, because of their ability to post bail.
ColorOfChange, part of the National Bail Out coalition. ColorOfChange has also been a leader in the #NoTechForICE protests against family separation at the border.
Black Alliance for Just Immigration, also part of the National Bail Out coalition, whose intersectional work engaging African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for justice flies in the face of the divide-and-conquer narrative of outsiders who spread the false idea that immigrant issues and black issues are separate from each other and compete for attention. These old tactics to prevent communities of color in the Americas from allying with each other date back to the 16th century, when European colonists adopted policies to separate Natives and Africans and use them to fight each other. (See Chapter 3 of "Black Indians" by William Loren Katz.)
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ACLU, which has a suit representing parents who sought asylum at official ports of entry and were separated from their children.
ReplyDelete- Ms. L, a Congolese mother who applied for asylum at a port of entry, had her seven-year-old daughter taken away from her for four months.
- Ms. Mirian G, a Honduran mother, whose 18 month old son was taken from her for 2 months even though she showed her Honduran ID card and his birth certificate to immigration officials.
Muslim Advocates, Lotfi Legal LLC, the Immigrant Advocacy & Litigation Center PLLC, and Public Counsel, which filed a July 29 2018 suit on behalf of U.S. citizens forced to become single parents or separate from their children because their spouses or children are stranded overseas by the 7-country ban.
ReplyDelete- Sudi, a U.S citizen who had to give birth to her son without her Somali husband present because he could not get a visa. "My son turned one, and on his first birthday, his father is still not here," she said.
- Travel ban waivers are wrongfully denied, class action lawsuit alleges
RAICES, which pays the bond fees to get parents released from immigration detention, and the travel costs of reuniting them with their children
ReplyDeleteCharlotte and Dave Willner, who started a viral fund raising campaign for RAICES
NWIRP, which filed suit in 2017 on behalf of clients that included two mothers unable to reunite with their children:
ReplyDelete- Ms. Juweiya Ali, a U.S. citizen fighting to bring her then 6 year old son from Somalia to the U.S., where she was raised
- Ms. Reema Dahman, a lawful U.S. permanent resident petitioning to bring her son from Syria to the U.S. The parent and child had not seen each other since 2012.