Tuesday, January 05, 2016

Why Are We Deporting Refugee Children?

ICE has spent the holidays raiding and deporting Latin American families who have sought asylum in the United States.  Little babies are being taken into custody at gunpoint and sent back to regimes that will kill them.

What is a refugee?

According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the 1951 Refugee Conventions defines a refugee as someone who:

"owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."

These children are refugees.  Their parents are refugees.  This is well-accepted international law and we owe them asylum under the law, not deportation.  If we follow Christ, we also owe them the love that Christ bade us to give to our neighbors, not deportation.

Tell the President to stop deporting desperate refugee mothers and children to their deaths.

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