Interfaith Welcome Coalition of San Antonio:  IWC Committee Coordinators, please forward to your volunteers

The Advocacy Committee of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition is continuing our campaign to inform our US Senators and Congress members that we are concerned about the policy changes we are witnessing in San Antonio. we are asking each of you who are concerned about these changes to do the following:

1. Please write a personalized handwritten letter to US Senator Ted Cruz, 9901 IH-10W, Ste 950, San Antonio, Tx 78230.   If each of the 600 IWC volunteers and 3000 others on our mailing list hand writes a letter and drops it in the mailbox on Wednesday, Dec 18, we expect that Senator Cruz will take notice when he receives hundreds of letters in his office in San Antonio on December 19 or 20.  We call this a letter-style “thunderclap”.

2. In addition, we ask you to join a large group of us to demonstrate on Wurzbach at the corner of Wurzbach and IH-10 from 12 noon to 1:30 pm on Wednesday, Dec 18, 2019, in Solidarity for Migrant Justice and Compassion.  Please bring any signs you may have for the demonstration.  After the demonstration we will visit Senator Cruz’ office to talk to his staff.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION TO USE IN YOUR LETTER WRITING:
Our asylum system that has worked for centuries has been dismantled, and these new policies ignore the rights of people to ask for asylum within our borders.  

• Obstacles at the border limit the number of asylum seekers that are processed each day and return them to Mexico to wait for their court hearings.  Of those returned to Mexico to wait, only 35% reappear for their tent court hearings, and only 1% have legal representation at their hearings; asylum seekers are being deported to Guatemala to get a visa there first before they can ask for asylum in the US, and
 
• Obstacles in detention centers by keeping them for longer periods of time instead of being released to their families.  Trump’s purposes for long-term detention were to deter further migration; and
 
• Obstacles in the immigration courts.  Asylum seekers aren’t getting a fair day in court and are waiting an average of almost 2 years for a decision.  Immigration judges are overseen by the Department of Justice, the same agency that is currently trying to prosecute immigrants for crossing the border without authorization. Trump’s DOJ has increasingly intervened in these immigration courts, raising concerns that immigrants are being deprived of a fair day in court. DHS has also constructed temporary courts in tents to hear cases from migrants affected by Remain in Mexico. Immigrants and their attorneys video conference with judges and DHS attorneys appearing virtually, streamed from brick-and-mortar immigration courts hundreds of miles away.
 
• Defund the construction of the wall the US government is taking privately owned property by imminent domain to build a wall which divides families and communities.
 
• Finally, we cannot forget the targeted attack specifically on the people of color in El Paso August 3, 2019. We therefore urge passage of gun control laws that require background checks, disarm domestic abusers and remove guns from individuals who pose a threat to others, also known as the Red Flag legislation.