Hello. I periodically draft and send an issues-based newsletter and call to action to friends and family related to whatever most egregious activity is going on in Washington that needs a response. I try to frame these with clear evidence and in a way that will appeal to both conservative and liberal friends and family.
I’ll share here my latest newsletter and if you find it helpful, please feel free to borrow parts of this or steal it completely to share with your friends and family! I’d love for this work to get as much circulation as possible. Below is the 7/7/2019 newsletter:
_______
Subject: If you haven’t already…
Dear friends,
If you haven’t already, please take a minute tomorrow to call the office of your Senators and/or Congressperson to ask them to work to end the inhumane treatment of migrants at the southern border.
The Situation:
- There has been a recent spike specifically in families with children trying to enter the U.S. from Gautemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the past few months, partly due to the threat of gang violence in their home countries. The raw numbers of people trying to enter the country are not as high as at other times in recent decades, but it is a challenge that demands competent leadership.
- By law, both asylum seekers and migrant families have special protections that prohibit immediate deportation – they must receive a legal hearing to determine whether they are allowed to stay in the country, which takes times.
- A sane and humane presidential administration could process these people in multiple effective and humane ways. Allowing most of them to stay with friends and family in the U.S. while wearing GPS bracelets or under other forms of supervision costs around $5 a day per person and has been shown to lose track of very few people.
- The Trump administration does not want migrants to be treated humanely, nor competently. They are attempting to detain them all, and for as long as legally possible, which costs the government around $750 per person per day, assuming capacity is even available. The results have been disastrous:
- After a court ended the Trump administration policy of kidnapping children from their parents, they have instead in recent months kidnapped more than 700 children who were traveling with their grandparents, aunts & uncles, or older siblings. These children, including toddlers, are in many cases held in the same crowded conditions with complete strangers. Traumatized and with no one but older children to look after them.
- They have allowed border detention centers to become dangerously overcrowded, with families and single adults being held for weeks in filth and squalor, without showers, little food, and no basic toiletries. The conditions have only just begun to be documented by government reports, reports by doctors, and by congressional leaders who have visited facilities. In those cramped quarters, outbreaks of infectious disease are becoming widespread. Morale is incredibly low and suicide rates high among border patrol workers.
- If you need any more encouragement to contact your congresspeople, feel free to read any of the following articles with the horrible details about what is happening to children and adults in detention: Link1, Link2, Link3. Meanwhile, Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly is now profiting off of the detention of migrant children.
Steps you can take:
1. As I said at the top, please make a quick call to the office of your Senators and Congressperson. Congress could be forcing the administration to stop this abuse of migrants and monumental waste of money. Both Democratic and Republican congress members could be calling attention to these abuses, which is the fastest way to make sure the end. A single Republican calling for an end to these practices would make a huge difference.
2. You can write a note or email to an NPR show/station or the newspaper you read regularly and let them know you think it’s important that they cover this issue.
3. Consider donating to organizations that are supporting one family at a time to reduce the extent of the trauma being inflicted:
· Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP) provides rapid response legal services in moments of crisis including wrongful deportations, detentions and raids;
· Texas Civil Rights Projects is a network of lawyers representing families in communities across Texas who have been torn apart due to Trump's immigration policies;
· Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) protects unaccompanied children who enter the US immigration system alone. They ensure that no child appears in court without an attorney;
Also, feel free to pass it on to your friends and family.
Thanks and good luck.