Help Immigrants in Detention Centers.
Immigrant detention centers are unsafe for any human being. In the past few years several allegations have surfaced of abuse and sexual assault against detention center guards and we know that people in detention are denied access to basic healthcare services. Already adults are held in these facilities for months on end; it is unimaginable that children would find themselves growing up in these prison-like facilities.
If we want to keep families together, we should stop prosecuting their parents for making the same decision we would all make: fleeing to the U.S. border to keep our children safe from violence at home and to give them a better future.
Petitions
These petitions are to protest the conditions in which these children are kept. We protest the irreversible trauma that has already been perpetrated on these children and their parents for the crime of seeking a better life.
Childen don’t belong in cages-change.org
Abolish ICE-change.org
STOP the use of HDQ Neutral in ICE Detentions-change.org
Demand ICE to halt all operations
Free them All-actionnetwork.org
End militarization at the border
Justice for Sexually Abused Immigrant Children
Stop Poisoning Immigrants
Donate
Donations are linked below
Donate to Separated Families
Timeline
When was the current U.S. immigration system established?
There was never a single, coherent act by the U.S. Congress to create an immigration system.
Historically, the United States has had an unfortunate history of enacting restrictive exclusionary laws, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the National Origins Act of 1924, and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. The system as we know it today is the result of several major legislative reforms:
• The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was a sweeping act that ended the national origins quota system—which disproportionately favored European immigrants—and created the foundation of the current system, under which immigration is based around family reunification and the needs of employers.
• The Refugee Act of 1980 adopted the United Nation’s definition of “refugees” and expanded the annual admission of refugees.
• In 1986, a Democratic Congress approved, and President Reagan signed into law, a major immigration reform bill, which created a path to citizenship for people who entered the United States without permission before 1982. The law also made it illegal for employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers.
• In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed into law legislation that created the Temporary Protected Status program, which allowed people fleeing violence and natural disasters to legally work and live in the United States until their home country had sufficiently recovered.
• The DREAM Act, designed to offer undocumented youth a path to legal status, was first introduced in Congress in 2001 and has support from members of both political parties. Although it been approved by committees in both the House and Senate, it has yet to become law.
• In 2012, President Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed a specific group of young immigrants without status, who were brought to the United States as children, to apply for work authorization permits and protection from immediate deportation. The Trump administration ended the program in 2017, although the federal courts have kept the program in place.
Since then, immigration reform has eluded presidents of both parties. Several measures have been introduced, and even passed one chamber with bipartisan support, but they stalled out short of final passage.