Dear Friend,

Voting in record-breaking numbers, Americans have chosen Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our new President and Vice President. Together, we now face the hard work of ending policies that harm children and—as importantly—building a new system centered on the needs and rights of children.

Today, in collaboration with fourteen other children's and human rights organizations, the Young Center announced ten priorities for undoing the immense harm inflicted on immigrant children over the last four years. We look forward to working with the Biden-Harris administration to implement these priorities. But we will also begin our work to build an entirely new system for immigrant children. Through our latest initiative, “Reimagining Children’s Immigration Proceedings: A Roadmap for an Entirely New System Centered around Children,” we are advocating for a fundamentally different process for welcoming children at the border, one that prioritizes children’s best interests, needs, and rights.

The last four years have seen a relentless attack on immigrant children through family separation, accelerated deportations, expanded ICE raids, decimating the asylum and refugee protection systems, attacks on the rights of DACA-recipients and TPS-holders, and efforts to prevent immigrant families from accessing housing and other basic necessities. Today, DHS continues to return children to their abusers, traffickers, and persecutors under the cover of COVID. In addition to effectively ending asylum at the border, the administration has trapped tens of thousands, including families and children, in Mexico while they wait for a court date in the United States, under the Remain in Mexico policy. In short, there is a lot for us to undo. 

As we move forward, America needs to undertake both endeavors—undoing the harm of the current administration and building a reimagined system that recognizes and treats immigrant children as children. We hope you’ll join us in this fight.

Thank you,

Maria Woltjen
Executive Director