Editor’s note: Statement received on Monday, June 25, 2018.
To the people of the United States,
To the president of this nation,
To the general public.
We, refugee parents with separated families, with imprisoned sons, daughters and husbands, denounce the cruelty and violence of the new order of President Trump that seeks to continue imprisoning and traumatizing our families and our children.
We come to this country bound by our need to survive. We refuse to be condemned to death by the violence in our own countries. A violence that originates in the intervention of the United States in Central America. Much less do we submit to the dehumanization that we are currently facing here in the United States.
This new order is a strategy of the president to silence and intimidate immigrants who know and demand their rights.
This order from the president does not help us. Although the order states that children will not be separated from their parents, it continues to criminalize and tortured families and children through incarceration.
Trump’s executive order is a bittersweet victory because it does not provide a solution for children who have already been separated from their parents.
Our families and our community will continue to languish in detention indefinitely. Our children will continue to experience the same trauma when they see their parents incarcerated. The only difference is that some of the children will be with one of their parents. But these children will continue to be incarcerated. They will be subject to the same confinement. They will continue suffering the same imprisonment, physical and psychological exhaustion, and cruel and unfair treatment.
We must be clear: this new order does not benefit migrants at all. On the contrary, it is an attack on all immigrants. The government and its administration are violating human rights by separating families. That is a physical and emotional abuse that they are giving to these children just for being migrants without caring about human dignity.
If the president really wants to respect migrant families, he has to put an end to the abuse of both children and parents. He has to stop imprisoning children with their parents so as not to be subjected to the great trauma they are suffering.
We want you to give us the opportunity to show this government that we come to this country to work and to ask for freedom and security. We do not come to subject our children to psychological trauma. In this country there should not be children or parents subjected to imprisonment.
We insist any incarceration or deportation is family separation. These policies of criminalization and incarceration only benefit the corporations that run the detention centers.
This is a call to all people of different countries, to immigrants themselves and to the people who support us: now is the time to raise our voices and not remain silent in the face of this injustice and discrimination.
At the end of the tunnel there is a clear victory that we can see: liberty, dignity and humanity for all people who migrate.
In solidarity,
Elizabeth
Jesus
Elena
Virginia
Evelyn
Refugee parents with separated families
(Our names are protected to avoid government reprisals against our families)
