A detention to-do list

by Demetria Martinez on Aug. 31, 2009

In a perverse version of the Rapture, members of immigrant families, working here without documents, are getting "disappeared" by immigration officials through workplace raids, and other means. This has immigrants rights groups, along with some churches, urging families to be prepared.

Below are links to examples of forms -- one in Spanish and one in English -- being distributed by El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos in Albuquerque. I offer them for churches to pass out to members who might find themselves locked away, facing possible deportation and the break-up of their families.

The form, filled out in advance of a potential disaster, provides relatives and/or friends with instructions such as who to call to care for children left behind or to handle finances.

The Detention To-Do List to Pass Out to Parishioners: Preparing for Possible Deportation

I teach bilingual first grade

Submitted by frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco) (not verified) on Aug. 31, 2009.

I teach bilingual first grade on the border with my near thirty students crossing every morning to come to school, being citizens of these United States, born in the USA. The mother of one of my students is now jailed in Pennsylvania thanks to that infamous "toughest sheriff in the USA" separating families like the slaves of the old South (in fact, considering the wages the undocumented receive - and thus their grotesque illegal status under which they are maintained - it is tough to find a qualitative difference from indentured servitude or slavery, once outlawed in these united states).

My young student and his even younger brother in pre-school are suffering not only the difficulties of a very different school system from Phoenix, but also the fierce separation from their mother at such a young age due to our unjust immigration inventions. They deal with it through fantasies of their mother. I have known their grandmother closely at Church in Mexico for some five years and she has told me the true story.

It is an injustice, an oppression, which cries out to God Almighty.

It is a sad but telling

Submitted by kaythegardener (not verified) on Nov. 25, 2009.

It is a sad but telling comment on our country that such forms are needed, not for natural disasters or end of life issues, but for possible violations of civil rights in the 21st century.

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