F.A.I.R's beggining
My family immigrated to the United States from Israel when I was 11 months old and I speak Hebrew fluently. Recent news and events have allowed me to realize how vastly my experience as an immigrant in this country differs from that of other immigrants and refugees in this country. Though I immigrated as a legal resident, no immigrant- legal or illegal- should be stripped of human rights in a country that is meant to provide refuge.
My grandparents were some of the few, lucky Jews to have survived the horrors of the Holocaust. Like most other countries, the United States did not welcome Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. In 1939, 83 percent of Americans were opposed to the admission of refugees. In May 1939, the State Department went so far as to turn away Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis when the German ocean liner sought to dock in Florida after the refugees were denied entry to Cuba. Following their deportation back to Europe, 254 of them perished in the Holocaust. The aversion of others to help and shelter Jews allowed a mass genocide to happen.
The indifference and criminal negligence of the United States and other countries during the Holocaust should serve as a warning and call to action today. When refugees fleeing persecution are being treated inhumanely at our borders, we cannot be indifferent again. This is what inspired me to get involved in the issue of immigration and asylum and write the article American attitude toward refugees recalls treatment of Jews during Holocaust that was published in the Baltimore Sun.
This country has been a beacon of light for so many demographics for so many generations- ultimately, everyone in this country was once an immigrant with the exception of the idigenous people. A country that now strips families apart and forces children into cage-like facilities with no beds, sanitation, or proper nutrition, is not one of liberty or acceptance.
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- Abigail Leibowitz, Founder
The Border Crisis
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Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have an abysmal track record of protecting the most vulnerable in its care: in the first six months of this fiscal year, eight immigrants have died in ICE custody, and six children have recently died in border facilities, where CBP holds asylum seekers in dangerously overcrowded and unsafe conditions.
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Immigration law mandates that children should not be in Border Patrol custody for more than 72 hours before being sent to HHS — which is responsible for finding and getting a sponsor to house the children. However, attorneys, doctors, and human rights observers have consistently reported that children are being held by Border Patrol for days or longer before being picked up by HHS. And in the meantime, they’re being kept in facilities that weren’t built to hold adults, let alone children, for that period of time.
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Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School’s immigrant rights clinic, was one of six attorneys to visit a detention center in Clint, Texas in June. He said “I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen, smelled, had to bear witness to such degrading and inhumane conditions.”
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Attorneys met with 60 children in July between the ages of five months and 17 years to interview them about the conditions in the Clint facility, which is holding 350 children. Some had bodily fluids including breast milk, urine and mucus stained on their clothes and many were wearing the same clothes they had crossed the border in, days or weeks earlier.
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The UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said: “I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions.”
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday, March 11, allowed the Trump administration to maintain a program Trump calls the “Migrant Protection Protocol” that has forced about 60,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their requests are heard. An appeals court had blocked the program, saying it was at odds with both federal law and international treaties and was causing “extreme and irreversible harm.