"Liberty Weeps" featured a Statue of Liberty weeping over a child huddled in a cage. Members of Immigration Working Group CLE passed out flyers asking people to oppose family separation and child detention policies and to abolish ICE.
Priests, nuns, lay Catholics and Newark Cardinal Joseph Tobin gathered outside an ICE office to protest the detention of migrant children and families. Fifty sat down and blocked traffic, risking arrest outside the ICE office and the federal building.
The installation calls into question many of the injustices perpetrated by our immigration system. The Statue of Liberty weeps because children are held in cages, our neighbors and community members are systematically rounded up and jailed, the immigration system favors the wealthy, our doors are being shut to refugees, legal asylum seekers are being forced to wait in Mexico and there is no longer a helping hand for legal immigrants. In response, the Immigration Working Group CLE calls for opposition to the new “public charge” rules, and end to family separation, permanent legal status for DACA and TPS recipients and the abolishment of ICE.
The labor movement needs to take a stronger stand against agents of Trump's barbarous immigration policies.
By MARTHA MENDOZA and GARANCE BURKE, The Associated Press
The U.S. government has removed most of the children from a remote Border Patrol station in Texas following reports that more than 300 children were detained there, caring for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.
