Help Stop Cruel Family Separation!

PDA was founded in 2004 to help elect progressives and to make a real difference organizing for progress. We’re horrified at the ongoing oppression of immigrants and asylum seekers. Click here to tell your Representative and Senators to vote to defund and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to quickly pass the bipartisan Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

Tell Congress To Protect Families

The DREAM Act will grant protections and legal status to certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Reason.com reported ICE “was created in the panicked days after 9/11 to enhance national security. But its primary purpose has become hunting down and ejecting people whose main ‘crime’ often is that they can’t obtain a piece of paper from the government authorizing them to live and work in the United States.”

We must act quickly. Children as young as 12 months are separated from their parents at the border. So-called personal abuse and gang violence are no longer considered viable reasons for requesting asylum, even if those abuses are abetted by government policies and indifference. Click here to tell your Representative and Senators to vote to defund and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to quickly pass the bipartisan Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

Once children are separated from their parents, they are no longer part of a family unit, but are categorized as “unaccompanied minors.” Tent cities are being erected as overflow holding areas for children in the Texas heat. Members of Congress are being denied entry to these detention centers.

Former Department of Homeland Security Director and current Chief of Staff John Kelly calls the separation policy a “tough deterrent,” and says in an NPR interview, “The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.”

The reality is that adults may be detained for a short period of time, but remain separated from their children for months. Overwhelmed and underfunded, DHS and associated agencies have lost track of hundreds of migrant children in foster care … “or whatever.”

Attorney General Sessions has instituted this inhumane policy of “zero tolerance” and his underlings claim they are just following orders. Contrary to the Trump administration’s claims, there is no law mandating separation of families, and it is not illegal to approach the border and request asylum. Click here to tell your Representative and Senators to vote to defund and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to quickly pass the bipartisan Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

We demand a legislative remedy to end the reprehensible practice of separating children from their parents at the border, warehousing refugees in substandard detention centers, and refusing to consider claims of asylum that stem from fear of violence or retribution.

Click here to tell your Representative and Senators to vote to defund and abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to quickly pass the bipartisan Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

In solidarity,

Mike Hersh, for Donna, Mike F, Judy, Dan, Janis, Deb, Dr. Bill, Bryan, and Kim—your PDA National Team

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