To: President Donald Trump
TAKE ACTION NOW TO PROTECT CENTRAL AMERICAN AND MEXICAN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
We appeal to you to use your executive authority to grant recently arrived and still arriving Central American and Mexican Children and Families refugee status, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or deferred action status.
Why is this important?
As people of conscience, we commend you for the anticipated Administrative Action you are taking to address our broken immigration system and the temporary relief it will provide to thousands of immigrant families. It is a long overdue first step toward recognizing the humanity and inalienable human rights of our immigrant sisters and brothers.
At the same time, we are compelled by our conscience to insist that you include the thousands of still arriving Central American and Mexican children and their families fleeing violence and seeking reunification with their loved ones. We appeal to you to use your executive authority to grant them refugee status, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or deferred action status per the recommendation of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) [1] and Pope Francis who declared these children must be “welcomed and protected.” [2]
At this moment, thousands of mothers, fathers and children, many of whom are fleeing extreme violence, death threats, rape, and persecution in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are being held in US detention centers. The President must take action to release them and grant them immediate protection.
We remain one executive order away from protecting children. Our hearts go out to the more than 60,000 children who have come to this country seeking protection, but who now face immediate deportation back to unspeakable violence in home countries, and away from family members already here in the US. How many child refugees must die after being deported, before the President takes action? We will not allow these child refugees to be sent back or taken away from families already here. If our government will not protect children, we, people of conscience, will.
[1] Testimony of United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) Senior Protection Officer, Leslie Velez, before the United States Congressional House Judiciary Committee , June 25, 2014
[2] Statement by Pope Francis, July 15 2014: “This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected." And that these measures “must be accompanied by policies that inform people about the dangers of such a journey and, above all, that promote development in their countries of origin.”