July 11, 2018
At the Alliance for Children’s Rights, our hearts and minds, like so many of yours, remain focused on the border crisis. We are profoundly concerned about the separated families and our position is unequivocal: detention of children is wrong, and the removal of children as a means of deterring immigrants seeking asylum is an abuse. We are a vigorous part of the community that is scrutinizing the federal government’s response to legal orders to immediately return the children detained at the border to their parents.
We are assisting the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in conducting interviews with children who are in detention facilities or have been separated from family, to support ongoing efforts to end child detention and reunite families. Our staff members have offered their expertise to help interview children at detention centers in Texas and California. We also are working in support of litigation challenging the separation of children and families, to compel the federal authorities to change their unconscionable practices and to return children to their parents.
To be clear, these children should not be considered foster children. They were not removed from their parents because of abuse, abandonment or neglect; they were wrongfully removed from their parents by the federal government when they or their parents were seeking asylum. In keeping with our core mission of protecting children, the Alliance will be tireless in our efforts to ensure that these children are returned to the family from which they were separated. We will continue to provide updates as the situation develops. Thank you for standing with the Alliance on behalf of vulnerable children and families and their right to a just and equitable future.
