People in America are at shock of what is happening at the Mexico-United States border. Images, especially of a 2-year-old girl from Honduras crying while a U.S. border agent pats down her mother has been seen by millions throughout the country and our world. Families being separated, children placed in detention or sold to human traffickers being combated by the slogan #KeepFamiliesTogether. But this is just the latest iteration of the crisis at the border. A crisis that has its foundation established centuries ago, and now, it’s apparatus well maintained into the 21st century. Washington D.C. need not look past a mirror to see how that monster had been created.

Moral Leadership Means Showing Up, And Leonard Lance is Hiding

Children as young as nine-months old are being ripped from their parents at the U.S. border. Senior Trump administration officials are blatantly lying about the Republican policy and who is the blame. The U.S. government has reportedly lost track of many children. Lawyers representing the parents and foreign diplomats are trying to desperately find them on American soil.

GUEST BLOG:  Why She Marched; One Woman’s Patriotic Journey.

 “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare of, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  There it is:  the Preamble.  Our nation’s “mission statement.”  I know it by heart.  Truly with heart and soul.  Sometimes I have to sing the song that goes with it, but I have it committed to memory.  Because I believe in it.  Because it matters.

Immigration:  Strength in Diversity

“Hope I die before I get old.”  Remember that line from the classic rock band  The Who? If you do, you’re probably on Social Security and Medicare right now. You have reached America’s Safe Haven.  Don’t feel too smug though. When those programs were created, no one expected that you would chug along until your 90’s. And as fertility rates go down, there are fewer people working to pay for your retiree benefits (no, you have not paid for those benefits in full). This is a problem.

"New data reveals that more than 90 percent of the state’s municipalities have cases pending in immigration court, the fifth-largest caseload in the country"

“ICE has long arrested people who have no criminal history, as well as people with very low-level, nonviolent offenses, and people who have lived here since they were children, and who now have U.S. citizen children of their own. But the prior administration created a set of priorities to try to focus ICE resources on cases deemed more serious. The current administration has abandoned the idea of enforcement priorities....o ensure that these children could find a safe place to live while here in the United States, the government used to ensure that parents or other family members who came forward to care for them could do so safely, regardless of their immigration status,...Now, ICE is specifically targeting parents and family members of arriving children for deportation, and the administration has announced it will be investigating parents or guardians for possible criminal prosecutions, based upon their efforts to bring their children to safety. This policy affects not only those family members, but also the children, who are likely to find themselves in foster care, group homes, or unsafe situations when parents and family cannot come forward to care for them.”  

-  Farrin Anello, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey

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