How New Yorkers Can Help Immigrant Kids Now

"Earlier this week, I took time off from work to take my daughter to her annual check-up. I’m a lawyer for immigrant youth, so time with my daughter was a break from answering questions from friends, colleagues, clients and reporters about the Trump administration’s policy of tearing immigrant children away from their parents. My daughter left the pediatrician’s office feeling lucky to get an Avengers sticker. I left the office feeling lucky that I still had my daughter.

It’s no longer a secret that since early May, the federal government has separated more than 2,300 immigrant children from their parents after crossing the Southern U.S. border. No law required the government to separate families. Terrorizing children and parents of color was one part of President Trump’s strategic plan to end immigration and energize his supporters.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Trump’s executive order ending family separation is anything but a sham. The true goal is to pave the way for the next line of attack: increasing family detention. In the coming weeks, the government will place parents and children in for-profit prisons; although children will be with their parents, they will still be behind bars.
Thursday, Mayor de Blasio joined a group of U.S. mayors at one of the Texas detention facilities to protest this inhumane treatment, because most of the parents and children who are separated remain in facilities near the US/Mexico border..."

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