Where have our values gone?

Momentum and expectations are building around the president’s upcoming announcement to provide temporary relief to millions of those buffeted by the cracked and broken immigration system which burdens our country.  At the same time there is the grim reality that our government is continuing to flout our laws and international obligations in its shameful treatment of women and children fleeing violence in Central America. 

This week, my organization joined with over a hundred and thirty other civil rights and civil liberties, human rights, faith, immigration, labor, criminal justice, legal, children’s rights, and domestic violence advocacy organizations to share our grave concerns with the President. What brought us together? The fact that our government has turned away from our country’s values and instead massively expanded the detention of young children and their mothers who are fleeing extreme violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.  

{mosads}Our government isn’t just detaining these moms and kids though. It’s not enough to imprison them and cause additional havoc to their psyches. No, the administration then does their utmost to rush them through deportation proceedings without a meaningful chance to seek asylum. 

President Obama is seemingly poised to take major executive action to make our immigration system work more efficiently and fairly, but he can’t ignore the harm that is being caused right now through family detention. He needs to stop detaining these vulnerable children and mothers who are fleeing violence in Central America and hoping to join with relatives already living in the United States.   

What does it mean to flee violence? It means that something has pushed these moms and kids so far that they feel the only escape they have is in a strange land hundreds or thousands of miles away. These are people that have often been raped, kidnapped, beaten or shot to near death and as such are refugees who qualify for protection under U.S. law. Shamefully though, the U.S. government continues to rush these children and families through an expedited process, and has deported many back into the hands of their abusers and the very danger from which they fled.  America is better than this. 

Obama needs to heed us. He needs to stop the dramatic expansion of family detention, including the building of an enormous, permanent, new facility in Dilley, TX.  Instead, his Administration should greatly expand the use of alternatives to detention, bonds and other methods that are far less costly for American taxpayers and are highly effective in ensuring court appearances. Beyond that, we need to offer these families fleeing violence a real chance to seek asylum, including access to legal counsel.  

If the president continues to strip away the rights of families who are seeking asylum in the only way they can, who are trying desperately to find refuge from fear and harm, what does that say about our country? What does that say about him? 

Chen is director of Advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.