end family detention AWS
WORLD WATCH
END FAMILY DETENTION
S
ince the summer of 2014, when the surge in migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador began to overwhelm the U.S. Border Patrol and immigration courts, the United States has incarcerated thousands of mothers and children at family detention centers. Administration officials had hoped that detaining families who crossed illegally would deter others from doing so. This has not been the case. The number of unaccompanied children and families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the last three months of 2015 had the sharpest rise since the summer of 2014. Advocates, lawmakers and detainees continue to speak out against family detention, especially for the children. Jane O’Sullivan, a Maryknoll Affiliate and immigration attorney who volunteers to help detained families, wrote in our March/ April 2015 issue about the suffering of families in detention. “Our government’s rationale that family detention is necessary to discourage other would-be refugees can never justify the harm to the detained children that I witnessed firsthand,” O’Sullivan said. Recently, we checked in with O’Sullivan and she said: “Moms with kids are still being detained at three detention centers around the country—a prison in Berks, Pennsylvania; the Residential Detention Center in Dilley, Texas; and a prison in Karnes, Texas. Generally stays 16
M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 6 M A R Y K N O L L
by Susan Gunn are much shorter now, but not always. Thirty families (in Berks) have been detained for more than six months.” Many of these women and children are survivors of violence, poverty and family separation that have gotten worse in recent years. Homicide rates in 2015 confirm El Salvador and Honduras vie for the title of murder capital of the world, driving many families and unaccompanied children to flee for their lives. Mothers and children in detention, victims of violence at home and on their journey to the United States, remain traumatized, isolated and fearful of the future and a confusing legal system. Last year, a federal judge ruled that detaining families for the sole purpose of sending a message to others unlawfully punishes a class of people and “as various mental health experts have testified, it is particularly harmful to minor children.” A report in the June 2014 issue of Lancet Global Health documented increased rates of deliberate self-harm and suicidal behavior, severe depression, poor eating, sleep difficulties, bed-wetting, anxiety, social withdrawal and posttraumatic stress reactions among children in detention. Another U.S. judge ruled that family detention violates a federal standard that requires that undocumented children be held in the least restrictive setting possible and generally favors a policy of releasing them. The government countered
An immigration advocate demonstrates in Los Angeles last July. (CNS/L. Nicholson)
by proposing that the centers be licensed as “child care facilities.” This does not change the fact that no one is allowed to leave. We pray for the end of family detention and for the courage to
welcome every stranger as Christ in our midst. Susan Gunn is communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S hare with your parish the family detention resources created by the Justice for Immigrants Campaign, organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/Family-Detention-Resources.htm •R ead and share a U.N. report on a new global strategy to end detention of asylumseekers and refugees. The first goal is to end the detention of children. http://www.unhcr.org/53aa929f6.pdf •S end a letter to President Obama to ask him to end family detention. http://bit.ly/EndFamilyDetentionNow The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www.maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
17
WORLD WATCH
RESPONDING TO MIGRANTS
J
esus is clear about how we are to respond to newcomers in need when he says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). Today, in dozens of countries around the world, war, threats of violence and entrenched poverty push record numbers of people—close to 60 million, according to the United Nations—to seek safer homes. The global migration crisis is one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the 1940s, according to the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), an independent news agency, formerly connected with the United Nations, that reports on humanitarian stories worldwide. Pope Francis named the “globalization of indifference” as a part of this crisis. In 2013, more than 300 Eritrean and Somali refugees drowned one-half mile from the coast of Italy. In a homily during a Mass for the victims, Francis said, “These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!” In 2014, tens of thousands of Central American migrants, in44
J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 6 M A RY K N O L L
by Susan Gunn
cluding unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. Buses carrying some of these women and children to federal facilities in California and Arizona were blocked by protestors with signs that read “illegals out.” “We must not be taken aback by their numbers,” Pope Francis said of migrants in his speech to the U.S. Congress in September, “but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.” Syria is now the world’s biggest source of refugees. In the past five years, more than 4 million people have fled Syria to escape civil war and ISIS, which in November broadened its terrorist reach in attacks in Beirut and Paris. These attacks prompted some U.S. politicians to call for denying entry to Syrian refugees or limiting it to only Christians. In response, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns reiterated the message it sent to Congress in October 2015 along with more than 400 religious leaders, stating: “Vulnerable individuals from a host of religions, ethnicities and backgrounds have been and should continue to be resettled in the United States.” The United States has resettled about 1,800 Syrian refugees since
A Syrian refugee woman cries as she carries her baby through the mud to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia in September. (CNS/Y. Behrakis, Reuters)
the start of the war in 2011, and President Obama has committed to accepting 10,000 more in 2016. “Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing death by war and by hunger, and who are on a path toward a hope for life, the Gospel calls us to be neighbors to the smallest and most abandoned, to give them
concrete hope,” Pope Francis said when he called on Europe’s churches to take in refugees. We are all called to respond not only as Christians but also as members of the human family. Susan Gunn is the communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S hare with your parish resources on a wide range of topics related to immigration, prepared by the Justice for Immigrants Campaign http://www.justiceforimmigrants. org/parish-kit.shtml • L earn ways to help by reading “10 Ways to Welcome the Children at Our Border” published by CLINIC https://cliniclegal.org/resources/10-ways-welcome-childrenour-border-0 The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www.maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
45
WORLD WATCH
MODERN SLAVERY AT SEA
M
aryknoll missioners In Cambodia and Myanmar are seeing the return of fishermen who have been rescued from slave-like working conditions on Thai fishing boats in the seas off Indonesia. Recruited by false promises of a living wage, these vulnerable people incur crippling debts and suffer terrible abuse by their employers, some for years. An estimated 45 million people worldwide are victims of trafficking, which uses force or other forms of coercion, abduction or deception for the purposes of exploitation, such as for sex or labor. Two-thirds of the world’s human trafficking occurs in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the Global Slavery Index for 2016. Trafficking occurs at all stages of the seafood supply chain, from catching fish to processing and shipping it for export. Coupled with global demand for cheap seafood, lawless conditions at sea enable this modern slavery to flourish. Thailand is the world’s thirdlargest seafood exporter. A report by The Associated Press last year found that some seafood caught and processed by trapped and enslaved workers on Thai boats— mostly migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia—was shipped to the United States for sale at supermarkets and pet food stores. 54
S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 M A RY K N O L L
by Susan Gunn
The AP report includes details of what workers endure at sea: 18– to 20–hour workdays, seven days a week; hazardous and life-threatening conditions; inadequate food and blatant disregard for their basic medical needs and injuries. Employers routinely beat and torture workers to force compliance. Some workers are held at sea for years on large fishing vessels because of a lack of regulation. On land, women and even children working in the seafood processing and canning facilities are subjected to long hours, unsafe conditions, physical abuse and neglect of injuries. As a result of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporting, more than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been rescued, more than a dozen alleged traffickers arrested and millions of dollars’ worth of seafood and vessels seized. “One of the greatest concerns now is to help these traumatized people reintegrate into society,” says Father Kevin Conroy, a Maryknoll priest associate from the Diocese of Cleveland, on mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. “Many of them are returning to their families in debt and with medical, psychological and social needs. They also need help getting paid the wages promised them and taking legal action against the brokers and corrupt
Human trafficking victims from Myanmar are held in a detention cell near ThailandMalaysia border. (CNS/D. Sagolj, Reuters)
border officials who work in tandem to smuggle their victims and profit from this trade.” As the largest importer in the world, the United States is in a unique position to demand information on what’s involved in the production of goods we use every day. Faith-based and civil society
groups are working with Congress to pass legislation that will shine a light on business supply chains to ensure that companies do not use trafficked and forced labor. Susan Gunn is communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S end a letter to your members of Congress, to ask for their support of the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act (H.R. 3226 and S.1968). The bill requires public companies with over $100 million in global gross receipts to publicly disclose any measures to prevent human trafficking, slavery and child labor within their supply chains as part of their annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Disclosures would be posted on the SEC and company websites for public access. It is a good first step toward improving reporting and transparency, enforcing existing laws against labor abuses and allowing consumers to make more informed decisions. http://bit.ly/EndModernSlaveryNow. •R ead and share “Seafood from Slaves,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report by The Associated Press on labor abuses in the seafood industry in Thailand, online at www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/. • L earn how to be an ethical consumer, at http://www.seafoodwatch.org/ The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www. maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
55
END FAMILY DETENTION
S
ince the summer of 2014, when the surge in migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador began to overwhelm the U.S. Border Patrol and immigration courts, the United States has incarcerated thousands of mothers and children at family detention centers. Administration officials had hoped that detaining families who crossed illegally would deter others from doing so. This has not been the case. The number of unaccompanied children and families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the last three months of 2015 had the sharpest rise since the summer of 2014. Advocates, lawmakers and detainees continue to speak out against family detention, especially for the children. Jane O’Sullivan, a Maryknoll Affiliate and immigration attorney who volunteers to help detained families, wrote in our March/ April 2015 issue about the suffering of families in detention. “Our government’s rationale that family detention is necessary to discourage other would-be refugees can never justify the harm to the detained children that I witnessed firsthand,” O’Sullivan said. Recently, we checked in with O’Sullivan and she said: “Moms with kids are still being detained at three detention centers around the country—a prison in Berks, Pennsylvania; the Residential Detention Center in Dilley, Texas; and a prison in Karnes, Texas. Generally stays 16
M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 6 M A R Y K N O L L
by Susan Gunn are much shorter now, but not always. Thirty families (in Berks) have been detained for more than six months.” Many of these women and children are survivors of violence, poverty and family separation that have gotten worse in recent years. Homicide rates in 2015 confirm El Salvador and Honduras vie for the title of murder capital of the world, driving many families and unaccompanied children to flee for their lives. Mothers and children in detention, victims of violence at home and on their journey to the United States, remain traumatized, isolated and fearful of the future and a confusing legal system. Last year, a federal judge ruled that detaining families for the sole purpose of sending a message to others unlawfully punishes a class of people and “as various mental health experts have testified, it is particularly harmful to minor children.” A report in the June 2014 issue of Lancet Global Health documented increased rates of deliberate self-harm and suicidal behavior, severe depression, poor eating, sleep difficulties, bed-wetting, anxiety, social withdrawal and posttraumatic stress reactions among children in detention. Another U.S. judge ruled that family detention violates a federal standard that requires that undocumented children be held in the least restrictive setting possible and generally favors a policy of releasing them. The government countered
An immigration advocate demonstrates in Los Angeles last July. (CNS/L. Nicholson)
by proposing that the centers be licensed as “child care facilities.” This does not change the fact that no one is allowed to leave. We pray for the end of family detention and for the courage to
welcome every stranger as Christ in our midst. Susan Gunn is communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S hare with your parish the family detention resources created by the Justice for Immigrants Campaign, organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/Family-Detention-Resources.htm •R ead and share a U.N. report on a new global strategy to end detention of asylumseekers and refugees. The first goal is to end the detention of children. http://www.unhcr.org/53aa929f6.pdf •S end a letter to President Obama to ask him to end family detention. http://bit.ly/EndFamilyDetentionNow The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www.maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
17
WORLD WATCH
RESPONDING TO MIGRANTS
J
esus is clear about how we are to respond to newcomers in need when he says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). Today, in dozens of countries around the world, war, threats of violence and entrenched poverty push record numbers of people—close to 60 million, according to the United Nations—to seek safer homes. The global migration crisis is one of the worst humanitarian disasters since the 1940s, according to the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), an independent news agency, formerly connected with the United Nations, that reports on humanitarian stories worldwide. Pope Francis named the “globalization of indifference” as a part of this crisis. In 2013, more than 300 Eritrean and Somali refugees drowned one-half mile from the coast of Italy. In a homily during a Mass for the victims, Francis said, “These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!” In 2014, tens of thousands of Central American migrants, in44
J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 6 M A RY K N O L L
by Susan Gunn
cluding unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. Buses carrying some of these women and children to federal facilities in California and Arizona were blocked by protestors with signs that read “illegals out.” “We must not be taken aback by their numbers,” Pope Francis said of migrants in his speech to the U.S. Congress in September, “but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation.” Syria is now the world’s biggest source of refugees. In the past five years, more than 4 million people have fled Syria to escape civil war and ISIS, which in November broadened its terrorist reach in attacks in Beirut and Paris. These attacks prompted some U.S. politicians to call for denying entry to Syrian refugees or limiting it to only Christians. In response, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns reiterated the message it sent to Congress in October 2015 along with more than 400 religious leaders, stating: “Vulnerable individuals from a host of religions, ethnicities and backgrounds have been and should continue to be resettled in the United States.” The United States has resettled about 1,800 Syrian refugees since
A Syrian refugee woman cries as she carries her baby through the mud to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia in September. (CNS/Y. Behrakis, Reuters)
the start of the war in 2011, and President Obama has committed to accepting 10,000 more in 2016. “Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees who are fleeing death by war and by hunger, and who are on a path toward a hope for life, the Gospel calls us to be neighbors to the smallest and most abandoned, to give them
concrete hope,” Pope Francis said when he called on Europe’s churches to take in refugees. We are all called to respond not only as Christians but also as members of the human family. Susan Gunn is the communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S hare with your parish resources on a wide range of topics related to immigration, prepared by the Justice for Immigrants Campaign http://www.justiceforimmigrants. org/parish-kit.shtml • L earn ways to help by reading “10 Ways to Welcome the Children at Our Border” published by CLINIC https://cliniclegal.org/resources/10-ways-welcome-childrenour-border-0 The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www.maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
45
WORLD WATCH
MODERN SLAVERY AT SEA
M
aryknoll missioners In Cambodia and Myanmar are seeing the return of fishermen who have been rescued from slave-like working conditions on Thai fishing boats in the seas off Indonesia. Recruited by false promises of a living wage, these vulnerable people incur crippling debts and suffer terrible abuse by their employers, some for years. An estimated 45 million people worldwide are victims of trafficking, which uses force or other forms of coercion, abduction or deception for the purposes of exploitation, such as for sex or labor. Two-thirds of the world’s human trafficking occurs in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the Global Slavery Index for 2016. Trafficking occurs at all stages of the seafood supply chain, from catching fish to processing and shipping it for export. Coupled with global demand for cheap seafood, lawless conditions at sea enable this modern slavery to flourish. Thailand is the world’s thirdlargest seafood exporter. A report by The Associated Press last year found that some seafood caught and processed by trapped and enslaved workers on Thai boats— mostly migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia—was shipped to the United States for sale at supermarkets and pet food stores. 54
S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 M A RY K N O L L
by Susan Gunn
The AP report includes details of what workers endure at sea: 18– to 20–hour workdays, seven days a week; hazardous and life-threatening conditions; inadequate food and blatant disregard for their basic medical needs and injuries. Employers routinely beat and torture workers to force compliance. Some workers are held at sea for years on large fishing vessels because of a lack of regulation. On land, women and even children working in the seafood processing and canning facilities are subjected to long hours, unsafe conditions, physical abuse and neglect of injuries. As a result of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporting, more than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been rescued, more than a dozen alleged traffickers arrested and millions of dollars’ worth of seafood and vessels seized. “One of the greatest concerns now is to help these traumatized people reintegrate into society,” says Father Kevin Conroy, a Maryknoll priest associate from the Diocese of Cleveland, on mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. “Many of them are returning to their families in debt and with medical, psychological and social needs. They also need help getting paid the wages promised them and taking legal action against the brokers and corrupt
Human trafficking victims from Myanmar are held in a detention cell near ThailandMalaysia border. (CNS/D. Sagolj, Reuters)
border officials who work in tandem to smuggle their victims and profit from this trade.” As the largest importer in the world, the United States is in a unique position to demand information on what’s involved in the production of goods we use every day. Faith-based and civil society
groups are working with Congress to pass legislation that will shine a light on business supply chains to ensure that companies do not use trafficked and forced labor. Susan Gunn is communications manager of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns.
Faith in action: •S end a letter to your members of Congress, to ask for their support of the Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act (H.R. 3226 and S.1968). The bill requires public companies with over $100 million in global gross receipts to publicly disclose any measures to prevent human trafficking, slavery and child labor within their supply chains as part of their annual reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Disclosures would be posted on the SEC and company websites for public access. It is a good first step toward improving reporting and transparency, enforcing existing laws against labor abuses and allowing consumers to make more informed decisions. http://bit.ly/EndModernSlaveryNow. •R ead and share “Seafood from Slaves,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report by The Associated Press on labor abuses in the seafood industry in Thailand, online at www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/. • L earn how to be an ethical consumer, at http://www.seafoodwatch.org/ The Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, based in Washington, D.C., is a resource for Maryknoll on matters of peace, social justice and integrity of creation, and brings Maryknoll’s mission experience into U.S. policy discussions. Phone (202) 832-1780, visit www. maryknollogc.org or email [email protected]. W W W. M A R Y K N O L L M A G A Z I N E . O R G
55
