Courtney Bourgoin, courtney.bourgoin@sierraclub.org, 202-495-3022
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Currently, thousands of children are being separated from their families in the United States as they seek asylum from the violence in their countries. The U.N. Human Rights Office has deemed this practice against international law, but so far the Trump administration is ignoring them. At the same time, Attorney General Sessions is mimicking Trump’s tactics in using immigrant families as a bargaining chip in a desperate effort to fund a border wall, while House Republicans prepare two deeply-flawed pieces of immigration legislation -- neither of which fix the family separation crisis.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:
"It is impossible to justify an immigration system that tears families apart and sees children ripped from their mother’s arms by agents of our own government. People arriving in our country seeking a better life deserve to be treated with dignity and fairness, but this administration is using these families as political bargaining chips to push a racist agenda.
“This inhumane treatment of many immigrants and disregard for entire communities in the borderlands and elsewhere that has been happening for decades has been made exponentially worse by this administration, and practices like this by the Trump Administration are not acceptable. The false solutions pedaled by House Republican leadership are also unacceptable, and we reject every attempt by this administration and House Republicans to pit borderlands communities against immigrant families.
“The members and the supporters of the Sierra Club fight for the quality of the natural and the human environment, so any situation in which families are being torn apart and children are being locked away for political reasons is one we must join in the struggle to change. That’s why we are demanding our government get to work on real solutions that treat every human being with respect by ending family separation, rejecting the militarization of the borderlands, and creating a pathway to citizenship for the thousands and thousands of young people who call our country home.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 3 million members and supporters. In addition to helping people from all backgrounds explore nature and our outdoor heritage, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.