"I wanted to let you all know that when we got to Moriarty my prisoner from inside the facility called and they had just come off lockdown he told me that everybody in the facility could hear us outside and that they were all cheering loudly inside of the prison and kicking their doors and making noise because they wanted the guards know that they could hear us. A prisoner I didn't know ran over to the phone while I was talking to him and asked if he could speak with me he got on the phone and he was yelling loudly thank you thank you thank you thank you so much I just can't thank you enough you don't know what this means for all of us in here! " - Selinda, #FreeThemAll organizer from the 5/15/2020 protest at Torrance County Detention Center
Dear Friends and Supporters,
As I sat down to write this most recent newsletter, the word that came to mind was: resiliance. I have been thinking about starting Santa Fe Dreamers Project 5 years ago with the hope that by helping regular undocumented people living and working in Santa Fe to navigate the immigration system and access benefits and tools for educational attainment and economic development, we could make our community stronger. Now,during this pandemic, so many inequities within our society have been laid bare. Although our nation's undocumented community performs so much of the work that is critical to our lives, they are being completely excluded from any formal government relief. This decision is as short sighted as any American immigration policy as it is inevitably going to create crises down the line in our communities-- hunger issues, housing loss, and shutting down of medical care access, to name a few. It's no secret that immigrant commuities are some of the most resiliant groups in the world but that strength is being unecessarily tested by denying them the basic relief that American citizens are being affored. And our entire community will suffer. If we say we are all in this together, that together must include everyone and we ought not rest until it does.
Santa Fe Dreamers Project is as committed as we have ever been to our services and programs that build resiliance in our whole community and help create opportunites for immigrants and refugees to thrive. Your donations help us keep working to make sure that we are all really in this together in little ways every day. We wish you health and safety and peace and strength as each day unfolds and send enormous gratitude to everyone who is working each day to make our communities safer places to live.
Best,
Allegra Love
Executive Director, Santa Fe Dreamers
As we compose this newsletter, COVID-19 ravages federal immigration detention centers around the country. Freedom For Immigrant's excellent Detention Map is the most up to date resource for understanding that outbreak. As is their May 14th report. Testing has improved slighty in the last few weeks (ICE has now tested 6% of the 30,000 detained individuals) and 50% of people tested are positive. While all three detention centers in NM have outbreak, the most affected detention center is in Otero County, where there are 45 cases at least.
The #FreeThemAll campaign in New Mexico is growing and we are so proud to be helping. On a biweekly basis there will be two different actions on the Thursday and Friday of each week of action. The Thursday actions will involve email blasts/phone zaps/social media and the Friday actions will be direct actions like car rallies, art installations, sit ins, etc. We are working in coalition with Detention Watch Network, Teachers Against Child Detention, Bend the Arc Jewish Action NM, Millions for Prisoners NM, and ABQ-SURJ. The best way to stay on top of this is to follow us on one form of social media. Our next local events will be May 28/29 and will be a national day of action. For more about the national #FreeThemAll campaign check in with the Detention Watch Network.
One less visible but extremely frightening aspect of the current pandemic is the systemic exclusion of undocumented immigrants from any state and federally sponsorsed financial relief. Undocumented workers do not qualify for unemployment and stimulous checks. Some of our clients who have been working in our communities for years suddenly have no income and are not able to pay the bills. At Santa Fe Dreamers we are trying to find commmunity based solutions
Our team has been working in coalition with Santa Fe Mutual Aid to promote #ShareMyCheck Santa Fe. This is an opportunity for people who have received government assistance to share some or all of their money with folks who are being excluded. Santa Fe Dreamers was able to distribute checks to seven grateful and deserving families this week.
Thanks to the City of Santa Fe, we were able to distribute nearly 10K worth of grocery and gas cards to some of the most vulnerable families that participate in our programs.
We are teaming up with the folks at Santa Fe Community College and World Central Kitchen to do a weekly meal distrubution to families that need food in our community. We have distributed 1200 meals in the last two weeks! What Learn more about SFCC and WCK's program here.
We would like to thank Hispanics in Philanthropy, the Lannan Foundation, Avalon Trust, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the City of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Community Foundation, and all the individual donors who have made providing this material support possible
Deep news dive here. For those folks who are feeling some quarantine boredom, there are links to several well researched, long news pieces in this compendium that will really catch you up with what is going on with US immigration policy.
The US border is now effectively and indefinitely closed to people seeking protection under US asylum law. The US continues to cite the reaons for this closure as necessary due to the threat of COVID-19 even as they ignore the threat in detention centers and in public spaces and commercial center across the nation. The Trump administration is using this crisis as an opportunity to finally close the border after nearly four years
In one of the more chilling pieces of news from immigration detention, ICE is reportedly presenting families in detention with what is known as the "binary choice" The detention of children is highly scrutinized and parents are now being told they can either sign a waiver to keep their kids with them detained in highly dangerous pandemic conditions or agree to their release alone. This cruel binary completely ignores other options like releasing the family together.
In more bad news for migrant children, the US is reportedly deporting record numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children without any chance of due process or protection. Again, the government is citing the threat of the virus and a public health crisis as justification for this action, even as they actively downplay its threat to encourage state economies to reopen.
Our friends at the Transgender Law Center and the Rapid Defense Network, along with pro-bono law firm Ballard Spahr, recently filed a class action law suit suing for the release of ALL trans detainees from ICE detention. SFDP's advocates proudly came through with a huge on-the-ground assist. Read NBC's coverage of that law suit here.
Finally, as the Supreme Court's decision about the Trump Administration's cancellation of DACA looms, the staff of Santa Fe Dreamers Project and our partners are determined to keep helping DACA recipients renew their work permits even in the middle of a stay at home order. To that end, we have held twice weekly phone-in legal clinics and in person social distant legal clinics in our RV, Dreams on Wheels on Saturdays in ABQ and Santa Fe. We are so proud that we have been able to file 60 applications in the last 4 weeks. Check out our pictures from our latest mobile event below!
