Stand up, speak out

The Fayetteville Friends (Quaker) Meeting is compelled to speak out in opposition to the inhumanity of current U.S. immigration policies and practices.

At our southern border, the primary port of entry, the U.S. government separates children from their families and imprisons them in critically dangerous conditions. Enduring extrajudicial detention, children and adults alike are deprived of adequate food, water, shelter, sleep, cleanliness and medical attention. These practices violate prohibiting court orders with impunity. All the while, corporations reap billions of dollars from the abuse.

The United States is one of the nations most responsible for the economic, environmental and social issues that force immigration: American corporations exploit land and labor in Central America; our administration responds to climate change with profiteering, militarization, and denial of human rights, and continues to roll back the regulations that would mitigate the crisis that lays bare oncefertile, life-supporting farmlands; further, the U.S. supports totalitarian regimes responsible for life-threatening social and economic conditions.

Upholding the Quaker principles of equality and community, we decry the escalating violence and brutality that immigrants must endure upon setting foot on our shores. Our administration militarizes our borders against individuals seeking asylum from the very conditions it has engendered.

We expect our legislators to respond to the moral imperative to stand up and speak out now for human rights, and to undertake the development of well-considered policies that correct the issues that force our brothers and sisters to flee their homelands.

LaDEANA MULLINIX

Farmington LaDeana Mullinix is clerk of the Fayetteville Friends Meeting.