End immigrant detention & restore asylum

The incoming Trump administration has announced that it intends to confine people in concentration camps within the United States. It is not clear how long people will be incarcerated. The people to be interred include foreigners whose authorization to enter our country or to remain is in question. No one yet knows who else may be imprisoned in this way.

There have been concentration camps in the U.S. before. During World War II, more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans who were lawfully here were relocated into a series of camps. Most of them were U.S. Citizens. Americans of German and Italian ancestry were also held in the camps.

In the mid 1800s, our government forcibly removed Native Americans from the land and held them in camps, later moving them onto reservations.

Concentration camps have also been established in other parts of the world. Nazi Germany infamously held Jews and others who were considered undesirable in concentration camps, work camps, and death camps. Stalin forced people into camps in Russia. China and North Korea still maintain camps.

The injustice and cruelty of detaining people in concentration camps has been acknowledged. It should not be repeated. We are making our opposition to the camps known.

What can be done?

We must help the American public understand what is being done. Peaceful Communities has and will continue to lead peaceful efforts, including participating in and promoting protests outside the public and private prisons where migrants are being held, to bring about the change that is needed. We helped to close the children’s prisons in Tornillo, Texas; Homestead, Florida, and Carrizo Springs, Texas, and we have been advocating for decreasing restrictions on migration and more humane borders all along the US/Mexico border.