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Dear Friend,
It’s rare for me to become shocked by the news anymore these days. It saddens me that I have become so immune to the antics of the White House, but my jaw did drop the other day when I learned that even as my fellow North Carolinians prepared for Hurricane Dorian (only a year after Hurricane Florence devastated communities in eastern North Carolina that are still struggling to recover), news broke that the Trump Administration was transferring funds away from FEMA in order to fund his hateful immigration policies on the southern border. [1]
And that’s not even the whole of it! *Tell the U.S. Congress NOT to back the backwards priorities of the Trump Administration and instead fund what families really need.
The Department of Homeland Security, which is overseen by the Trump Administration, is playing a shell game with allocated funds for disaster relief and military construction in order to keep immigrant children in detention centers and build Trump’s useless wall. Included in this was $400 million in funding for ten construction projects in Puerto Rico, which is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. [2] And $1.8 billion in cuts to military construction projects, which include a medical facility at Camp Lejeune (one of the bases still recovering from last year’s hurricane season), an elementary school at Ft. Bragg, and a new fire station for a Marine Corps base in South Carolina. [3]
It can’t be repeated enough—the Trump Administration took funds away from emergency assistance at the start of hurricane season and military bases that house our troops and their families, in order to jail immigrant children and their parents.
Let me be perfectly clear: Our nation’s budgets are supposed to reflect our values and priorities, and we don’t want another dime of our tax dollars going towards a detention center that jails immigrant children or the construction of a harmful wall!
***SIGN OUR LETTER NOW calling on the U.S. Congress to prioritize what our families really need—nutrition, healthcare, education, and disaster assistance programs—in budget negotiations and reject funding for family separation and Trump’s hateful immigration policies.
The question of funding is an important one since Congress needs to decide on a budget by the end of this month. A budget says everything about our priorities as a nation and President Trump's priorities are clear: He wants to use our hard earned tax dollars to fund detention centers that jail children and separate them from their families rather than programs that we really need that provide emergency aid in times of disaster, supporting our troops and their families, nutrition assistance, healthcare, education funding, and money to fix our roads and infrastructure.
It is not too late for Congress to re-assert its authority over the funding of these policies!
Congress must fight the atrocities President Trump is committing at the Southern border and throughout this country by holding ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), accountable for human rights abuses like separating thousands of children and parents at the border without even bothering to document which children belonged to which parents. [4] At this time, significantly cutting funding for these agencies is the best route to holding the Trump Administration accountable for these human rights abuses and preventing further abuses.
Under the Trump Administration, detention of individuals and families has exploded by more than 50%, from 34,000 average daily population (ADP) under the Obama administration to its current level of 53,000 ADP. [5] Many of these families have relatives who are ready to house them. Congress has enabled this mass incarceration of immigrants by increasing funding for ICE by over a billion dollars (!!) since the start of the Trump administration. Yet, the Trump administration is trying to exceed even this huge increase in funding by raiding funds designated for FEMA and military construction projects.
Congress must reign in ICE and CBP now and they have the power of the purse to do so.
Children deserve to be with their families outside of cages and they must have their rights protected. Family separation and family incarceration compounds the existing trauma and stress that children and families have already experienced in their home country or on their journey to the U.S.
There are alternatives to family detention that are not only more compassionate for children and families, but also more fiscally responsible. For example, asylum seeking families may be released from detention through a family case management program, which has a nearly 100 percent success rate in ensuring the families attend their hearings. The family case management program costs only $36/day, while family detention costs on average $1,280/day for a family of four. [6]
It’s time for our federal budget to truly reflect our morals as a nation. Don’t forget to sign our letter to your members of Congress. After you add your signature, forward this email to five friends and post our action link to Facebook and Twitter. The more people we get to speak out, the louder our voices will be! Congress will be making major funding decisions over the next few weeks before the October 1st deadline.
Thank you for continuing to speak out for all of our families!
-Beth, Tina, Elyssa, Xochitl, Linda, Donna, Felicia, Ruby, Sheila, Kelle, Jessica, Kristin, and the whole MomsRising/Mamás Con Poder team
P.S. After you sign our letter, call your U.S. Senators and tell them to stand up against hate by refusing to fund President Trump’s harmful immigration policies. 1-888-897-0174
[6] Women’s Refuge Commission. “Family Case Management Program.”
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