Tell Alex Azar and Kirstjen Nielsen: Let the children go. Stop sharing sponsor data with ICE

The petition to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reads: "Stop helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement target and detain immigrants who apply to sponsor children in detention. End data sharing between the Office of Refugee Resettlement and ICE." Add your name:

Some believe that the greatness of a nation is determined by how it treats its children. By this measure, the United States is failing. There are still more than 14,000 immigrant children in DHS custody, and instead of placing them with willing sponsors, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is making sure many of them stay behind bars. Over the summer, HHS Secretary Alex Azar and DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen enacted a data-sharing agreement that weaponized ORR.1 ORR now shares the biometric and background check data of any person who applies to sponsor a child with ICE, preventing many family members from stepping forward for fear of being hunted down and detained by Trump's deportation force. Sens. Gillibrand, Hirono, Booker, Merkley, Feinstein and Blumenthal are calling on Azar and Nielsen to end this cruel policy. Add your name now to help turn up the pressure. Tell Alex Azar and Kirstjen Nielsen: Let the children go. Stop sharing sponsor data with ICE. Click here to sign the petition. At the height of the family separation crisis over the summer, Azar enacted an ORR policy that forced potential immigrant sponsors and everyone in their household to go through an extreme vetting process and then shared the data it collected with ICE. As a result, ORR is now an extension of Trump's deportation force. Thousands of refugee children locked up in inhumane detention facilities are serving longer sentences because many people are too afraid to sponsor them. The average stay in detention for unaccompanied minors increased from 40 days in 2016 to 59 days in 2018.2 The total number of children DHS and ORR are detaining at once is at an all-time high.3 The effects of detention on children are devastating. The trauma of being ripped from family members and forced to live in overcrowded camps and prisons can have debilitating lifelong effects on a child's health and well-being. HHS says its focus is the health, safety and best interest of the child. Yet, the nation watched in horror as thousands of children suffered in isolation and inhumane conditions in the tent camps of Tornillo, Texas, without adequate access to legal services. ORR recently announced a minor change to its vetting policy, eliminating the requirement that household members of sponsors be fully vetted before a child is reunited with a parent or loved one.4 That is not enough. As long as ICE remains at the center of ORR’s reunification process, children will be in harm’s way. Add your name now to help us and our friends at the National Immigrant Justice Center shine a bright light on the dangerous collaboration between ORR and ICE, and demand that Azar and Nielsen end it now. Tell Alex Azar and Kirstjen Nielsen: Let the children go. Stop sharing sponsor data with ICE. Click the link below to sign the petition. https://act.credoaction.com/sign/children_orr_ice?t=7&akid=31033%2E3130208%2EVrHzN_ Nicole Regalado, CREDO Action Add your name: References: Victoria Bekiempis, "Refugee agency accused of helping deport relatives of migrant children," The Guardian, Nov. 28, 2018. Colleen Long, "The Trump Administration Reverses Its Policy on Migrant Children's Sponsors," TIME, Dec. 19, 2018. Ibid. Miriam Jordan, "Thousands of Migrant Children Could Be Released After Sponsor Policy Change," The New York Times, Dec. 18, 2018.

Tell DHS: Stop separating families at the border

The petition to Department of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: “Separating families at the border is inhumane and unnecessary. Stop this cruel practice immediately.” Add your name:

Donald Trump and the racists who are implementing his dangerous immigration agenda are doing everything they can to instill fear in immigrant communities. Right now, they are ramping up their attacks on families by ripping children from their parents at the border. This cruel and inhumane policy is a choice, one made by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen with back-up from Trump's notoriously anti-immigrant Attorney General Jeff Sessions.1 Tell Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: Stop separating families at the border. Click here to sign the petition. Ripping children away from their parents in extremely stressful and traumatic circumstances can cause lifelong damage to a person’s health and well-being. But since October of last year, Nielsen's DHS has separated more than 700 children, including at least 100 under the age of four, from their parents.2 The ACLU recently obtained nearly 30,000 pages of records from DHS and Customs and Border Protection that document systemic neglect and abuse of migrant children during President Obama's administration.3 Emboldened by Trump's racism and xenophobia, Nielsen and Sessions have given CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents even more permission to terrorize immigrants. We have to push back now or there will be more and more cases like these where deportation agents have separated: A Honduran mother from her 18-month-old child for more than 3 months after they presented themselves as asylum seekers to CBP.4 Mother and daughter asylum seekers fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For months, ICE held the 7-year-old daughter in a youth shelter more than 2,000 miles away from where it detained her mother.5 A mother and her two children fleeing gang violence in El Salvador. ICE jailed the 11-year-old and 3-year-old children in a facility built to house unaccompanied minors. Immigration enforcement refused to give the mother any information about her children’s whereabouts for more than a month.6 A father and infant son asylum seekers from El Salvador. ICE claimed that the family lacked identifying documents establishing their relationship even though the father showed agents his passport and son’s birth certificate.7 Tell Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen: Stop separating families at the border. Click here to sign the petition. The news of the increased cruelty of family separation is compounded by recent reports that Trump officials have lost track of 1,500 unaccompanied minors who entered the country without adult family members and by CBP's recent murder of Claudia Gonzalez, an immigrant from Guatemala. That's why we're joining with our friends at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, MomsRising, United We Dream, the ACLU and MoveOn for a massive day of action this Friday, June 1, in support of immigrant families. The more voices we have on this campaign, the more powerful our message will be. Click the link below to sign the petition demanding that Nielsen stop separating families at the border: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/no_family_separation?t=8&akid=28727%2E3130208%2EjRqpVz - Heidi Hess, CREDO Action Add your name: References: Aric Jenkins, "Jeff Sessions: Parents and Children Illegally Crossing the Border Will Be Separated," TIME, May 7, 2018. Caitlin Dickerson, "Hundreds of Immigrant Children Have Been Taken From Parents at U.S. Border," The New York Times, April 20, 2018. CBS News, "ACLU report: Records claim border agents neglected, abused migrant kids," May 25, 2018. Jamil Smith, "Trump's Separation of Children and Families Is What You Voted For," Rolling Stone, May 29, 2018. Ibid. Michael E. Miller and Jon Gerberg, "'Where’s Mommy?': A family fled death threats, only to face separation at the border." The Washington Post, March 18, 2018. Kate Morrissey, "Asylum-seeking fathers separated from children by ICE," San Diego Union Tribune, Dec. 4, 2017.