Above: Migrants, consisting of mostly women and children, who just disembarked from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bus wait for a Greyhound official to process their tickets to their next destination at a Greyhound bus station in Phoenix, Arizona May 29, 2014. REUTERS/Samantha Sais (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS SOCIETY IMMIGRATION)
On Friday afternoon, the Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will be meeting with President Obama and Vice-President Biden to discuss the situation facing refugee children who have fled Central America and come to the United States. Join us as we call on President Obama to uphold and defend the legal rights of children, ensure that families can be reunited and protected here in the U.S., and to take responsibility for U.S. economic and military policies in Mexico and Central America that helped create this crisis in the first place.
Join The Quixote Center, GHRC, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Sisters of Mercy – Institute Justice Team, School of the Americas Watch and the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns for:
A Rally to Protect Central American Children
Friday, July 25, 3:00 pm
White House (16th and Pennsylvania Ave, NW)
Since June, the United States media has been focused on the influx of children migrants from Central America. The UNHCR has confirmed that the majority of these children qualify for protections afforded refugees because they are fleeing the violence that has swept through Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, fueled by the drug trade.There are powerful political forces exploiting this crisis in order to increase deportations, further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border and increase U.S. funding for repressive police and military forces under the banner of the so-called “War on Drugs.”
Presente.org reports, “The House and Senate are ramming through a bill, deceptively named the ‘HUMANE Act,’ that would speed up the deportations of refugee children back to Central America.” Take action here today to oppose the so-called HUMANE Act.
This is a critical opportunity to call for our government to end its policies that support repression, displacement and exploitation, and to protect the children fleeing the violence that threatens them and their families.