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One_liners
_More than 350 organizations signed a letter to congressional leadership urging cuts to funding Trump’s anti-immigrant deportation force.
_Thank you Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) for standing against the harmful and wasteful border wall and for the real needs of border communities.
_Tune in to “Bang for the Border Security Buck: What Do We Get for $33 billion?,” a hearing at the Border and Maritime Subcommittee of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, March 15, at 2 pm EST, to hear how recklessly CBP plans to spend your tax dollars.
Must_reads
_Harmful navel-gazing. Next week, Trump will visit San Diego, California, to gaze at his “big, beautiful” border wall prototypes. This will be his first visit to the southern border region as president of the United States. Even though Border Patrol apprehensions are at a historic low, Trump continues to call for building a 30-ft border wall between the United States and Mexico. In the omnibus spending package for Fiscal Year 2018, he is asking Congress to allocate $21.5 billion to help fund his policies of hate and has made it clear that he eventually wants another $25 billion just to build his border wall. He must be stopped.
_Myopic at best. "We're concerned about his myopic obsession with the wall, and we're concerned about what happens in the shadow of that wall, which is the further militarization of our region," remarked Andrea Guerrero, SBCC co-chair, when interviewed about Trump’s plans to visit the border wall prototypes. "We need to be more than a talking point in his fantastical world view. We should be considered a real stakeholder that provides input into decisions made about the border." Please sign and widely share our petition against Trump’s border wall.
_Kidnapping a nation’s soul. This heart-wrenching video of Border Patrol ripping a mother away from her daughters triggered viral disgust and anger. Pedro Rios, SBCC steering committee member and director of the US/Mexico Border Program at the American Friends Service Committee noted the violence used by Border Patrol when apprehending her.
_Labels, such as “criminal,” help the government target and punish immigrants. Comunidades en Acción y de Fé (CAFé) held a protest on March 8 against Operation Streamline-like proceedings in Las Cruces, NM, where federal courts charge and sentence people with so-called “illegal entry” or “illegal re-entry” and jail them anywhere from six months to 20 years for simply trying to make a living for themselves and their families. This story interviews Johana Bencomo, SBCC steering committee member and director of community organizing at CAFé.
_Indivisible Justice. If you’re in Las Cruces, NM, on Thursday, March 15, be sure to attend the J. Paul Taylor symposium at New Mexico State University, an annual event that focuses this year on "Indivisible Justice Beyond Walls & Borders” and counts on the participation of SBCC steering committee member Cynthia Pompa of the ACLU Regional Center of Border Rights.
__We reserve the right to call BS. Congressional members have proven themselves incapable of doing anything but pass tax breaks for the wealthy. Despite overwhelming support from the American public for a DACA fix, elected officials engaged in wranglings that pitted Dreamers against their loved ones and border communities. All that really needed to happen was for Congress to pass the Dream Act. Instead, political opportunists took advantage of the vulnerability of young immigrants_who are American in all but paperwork_to pile on their version of caca on a bill and obstruct justice and fairness. Please pick up that phone and tell your congressional representatives to stop this nonsense, pass a simple legislative fix, like the Dream Act, and defund Trump’s deportation machine. #DefundHate #RevitalizeNotMilitarize
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border_lines is published every Friday for your reading pleasure. If you’d like to submit an item for inclusion, please email Vicki B. Gaubeca at [email protected], by Wednesday COB.