ACLU Supporter –

On Thursday, January 23, the Anchorage Daily News reported Governor Michael J. Dunleavy sent an official request to President Donald Trump to help our Attorney General Kevin Clarkson cut through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' bureaucratic red tape to get a visa for his six-year-old stepson, a Colombian citizen, and to ensure that his wife, also a Colombian citizen with green-card permanent residence in the United States, could reenter the U.S. without being detained at the American border.

Both AG Clarkson and the Governor have supported current anti-immigration policy that separates families – in a U.S. Supreme Court brief that encourages the separation of families, as well as by sending Alaska National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexican border. In his letter, however, AG Clarkson seeks help to end the lengthy separation from his family, and in the ADN article the Attorney General expressed fear that he wouldn't be able to reunite with his family and called the situation "crazy."

Currently thousands of families are living in the same state of uncertainty, fearful that they'll never reunite with loved ones again. Detainees are most often housed in for-profit detention centers, and forced to live in brutal, inhumane conditions of confinement. Family separation has become a standard practice.

The ACLU of Alaska agrees with a statement made by AG Clarkson: Elected officials should assist Alaskans in need of assistance from their government. But our public servants should help everyone, not only when it affects the lives of those in positions of power. Our current immigration system is so broken, dysfunctional and cruel that our state's top attorney has had to ask for help to make it work. We applaud Governor Dunleavy for his willingness to elevate these issues to the highest level of government, and we encourage him to do so for all Alaskans. If you or a loved one have an immigration problem you have not been able to resolve, we encourage you to reach out to both leaders for their help and support.

Thanks for sticking with us,

ACLU of Alaska