One_liners

_SBCC joined 23 national organizations in supporting the introduction of the Reunite Every Unaccompanied Newborn Infant, Toddler and Other Children Expeditiously (REUNITE) Act, which requires the government to immediately reunite migrant children with their parents in U.S. communities (and not in jails indefinitely) and restores the highly effective Family Case Management Program.

_SBCC steering committee member Jorge Rodriguez of the ACLU of New Mexico presented a talk this week titled “We Live as Second-Class Citizens” at a community lunch with the League of Women Voters of Los Alamos, New Mexico.

_SBCC steering committee member Pedro Rios of American Friends Service Committee called on the flurry of politicians visiting the border to not just use the trip as the backdrop for a quick campaign stop photo op but to instead examine the real concerns and needs of border communities.

Must_reads

_The real monster under children’s beds. That would be Trump. There is just no better way to describe the trauma that has been inflicted on immigrant children by a Trump administration that doesn’t seem to get the monstrous consequences and cruelty of separating children from their parents. America’s Voice provides more damning details of this trauma. Grab some kind of stress reliever before reading these outrageous testimonies. Adding to the indignation: to date, only a relatively small number of these children have been reunited with their parents. Why?

_Feeding the monster deportation force. While the media was distracted with Trump’s chumminess with Putin and his cronies, the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee rubber-stamped a monster spending bill for Fiscal Year 2019 that would expand funding and support for Trump’s senselessly cruel and misguided policies towards immigrants and the border region. In response, we joined our national partners to denounce this gorging of your taxpayer money to feed Trump’s already overfed monster deportation force. We call on members of the House Appropriations Committee to amend the legislation next week to instead defund Trump’s deportation force and halt the escalation of unnecessary and wasteful border enforcement. The bill includes an unacceptable $5 billion for 200 new miles of Trump’s harmful wall (which is more than double what the Senate Appropriations Committee advanced in June), hundreds of new unaccountable border enforcement agents, and much more bad stuff. Our elected officials need to listen to the more than 60 percent of Americans who oppose this senseless and deadly wall.

__An ogre of a wall. In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, the international border is a squiggly line formed by the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo; which makes it impractical to build Trump’s vanity wall. To make it real, check out this color map that shows Trump’s plans for more border wall in Hidalgo County, Texas, and illustrates the sheer stupidity of how it may strip U.S. private citizens of access to their own lands (and possibly cede land back to Mexico???). And to see how a border wall will erase low-income communities in Tijuana, Mexico, see this story. Seriously, America, how does this make you feel safer?

_Creating boogie monsters. Yep, all these Trumpian harsh anti-immigrant policies concocted to supposedly make us ‘safer’ are not only new versions of boogie monsters, they have put border communities and migrants at even greater risk. We need to fight back -- and work towards meaningful oversight and accountability of border enforcement resources, take responsibility for creating the root causes that have forced people to migrate, and invest instead in what would really make America great, like better schools, improved national infrastructure, and adequate health care. Please join the fight and take two minutes to call your congressional members and tell them there is no need to fund more walls, more border agents, or more detention beds. #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.

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