one_liners

_Communities United for Status and Protection (CUSP), which is a collaborative of grassroots immigrant community organizations working together to win permanent status for Temporary Protected Status holders and communities, and to build a more inclusive immigrant rights movement that centers the needs and experiences of African, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, Arab/Middle Eastern, and API immigrants recently launched this poignant video. #BeyondTemporary

_Congratulations to Humane Borders, our Arizona colleagues, who today will receive the Alfonso Garcia Robles Humanitarian Award from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), recognizing volunteers and staff "because it has excelled in the realization of work in defense, advocacy, protection or guarantee of the human rights of migrants with vulnerability."

_This is a horrific report about how unaccompanied minors have been grossly mistreated in U.S. Custody; a new administration must put an immediate stop to this.

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must_reads

_Rolling up our sleeves. So we’re looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and working with the incoming Biden-Harris administration to not only reverse Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and anti-border communities policies, but to begin working on a new transformative vision for how we manage our borders. Our vision dispenses with the false paradigm that immigration reform has to be coupled with so-called “border enforcement.” Or that borders need to be secured by using “deterrence only” tactics. Or that what we've been sold as border 'security' makes border communities or the nation any safer. This false paradigm has only led to the hyper-militarization of our communities, the erosion of our rights, and the deaths of thousands of people who were forced to cross in more remote and dangerous borderlands. We can do borders better. Our New Border Vision creates a model of border management that expands community safety for all, protects human rights and life, and creates a welcoming system for border residents, visitors, shoppers, merchants and people seeking international protection. The Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) recently came together to put together our top 10 policy requests for the Biden-Harris administration that we hope to see happen anywhere between Day 1 and Day 100. Check them out. ¡Sí se puede!

_Stop this wall. Even though Trump lost re-election, he is still hell-bent on pulling out his anti-immigrant machete policies and bulldozing away our beloved borderlands for his awful monument to racism (aka, his vanity wall). The San Diego community just learned that Trump plans to replace the 18-foot wall that already slices through Friendship Park_the world-renowned binational park on the U.S.-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana_with a 30-foot tall steel bollard wall. According to the Friends of Friendship Park, the park “sits atop Monument Mesa, overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the westernmost end of the almost 2000-mile border between the United States and Mexico. For generations people from both nations have met at this location, the only place along the length of the border established specifically to promote binational relations of friendship and cooperation...On August 18, 1971 Pat Nixon, then First Lady of the U.S., inaugurated the surrounding area as California’s Border Field State Park. On that occasion she announced the first phase of what would someday be International Friendship Park, and declared, ‘I hope there won’t be a fence too long here.’” The Friends of Friendship Park coalition is calling on elected officials and members of the public to register their displeasure with the Trump Administration decision by contacting San Diego Border Patrol via this email: [email protected], with a copy to [email protected]. Join them in voicing your concerns! On nearly the other end of the border, Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) steering committee member Ricky Garza of the Texas Civil Rights Project and colleague Melissa Cigarroa of the No Border Wall Coalition in Laredo express their dismay and frustration with a Trump administration that is still obsessed with continuing to build his harmful and lethal vanity wall through the Laredo, Texas and surrounding region. Stay tuned for upcoming borderwide actions against the wall.

_Misguided priorities. As if we needed another example of Trump’s misguided priorities_particularly in light of his latest narcissistic attempt for an election coup_check out this story that illustrates how his administration prioritized spending $15 billion on a lethal and wasteful border wall and less than $2 billion for a skimpy 100 million COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, turning down an opportunity to secure a higher number that would better meet the needs of the U.S. population. Another reason to consider divesting the hyper militarization and over-policing of communities and instead investing in health care, education, and infrastructure. #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. The Southern Border Communities Coalition is a program of Alliance San Diego.

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