Austin City Council Members Stand With Immigrants

AUSTIN, TX — City council members, along with Mayor Steve Adler, recently demonstrated their support for the city's immigrant community while expressing opposition the Trump administration's aggressive targeting of migrants marked by separation of families as future deterrent to cross the border.

Adler last week was joined by council members Delia Garza, Greg Casar, Pio Renteria and Leslie Pool in voicing support for the migrant class. Their show of force in front of City Hall comes in the wake of Donald Trump's so-called "zero tolerance" stance on migration that directed immigration officials to detain children, including infants, separately from their asylum-seeking parents. The move is meant to yield a deterrent for others who might be thinking of migrating to the U.S. without proper documentation.

“I proposed this resolution to send a strong message to the immigrant community that Austin has leaders who will stand up and fight for them, that the immoral and un-American Trump policies do not reflect who Austin is or the values of our community," Garza, who led the effort, said. "I am heartbroken when I think of the mothers and fathers who risk everything to leave corrupt and dangerous countries so their children can have better lives, only to come to our country to have their children ripped away from them. I am proud to stand with my colleagues and our immigrant community today, to continue to bring attention to this moral crisis. This government-sanctioned child abuse must end now. We must do everything that we can to support immigrant families in Austin and across the country.”

Adler called the Trump policies "immoral" and "un-American." Adler recently traveled to Tornillo, Texas, to get a first-hand look at the facilities where immigrant children continue to be held after being separated from their parents by immigration officials.

“Last week, we joined mayors from around the country in Tornillo, Texas, to call for the immediate reunification of thousands of children who have been separated from their families," Adler said. "We represented the collective voices in our cities who saw the images of children in cages and heard their cries. We are demanding Washington fix this crisis that it has created. It is immoral, unjust and un-American – and it is far from over.”

Renteria echoed the sentiments: “Tearing small, crying children out of their parents’ arms is disgraceful. As is forcing these frightened children to live in cages or in tent cities like the one I visited with my colleagues in Tornillo, Texas. Trump’s useless executive order that fails to reunite these children with their families is an affront to the values our country claims to embrace. We will continue to speak up and take action until this policy, meant to terrorize our communities, is brought to an end.”

For her part, Pool addressed the trauma such separations yield: “As a parent myself, I can’t imagine what the families are going through. Just the thought of children, including babies, taken from their parents is agonizing. I don’t have enough words to characterize the federal government’s actions – but here’s a start: inhumane, deplorable, despicable and destructive. The president and his cabinet are equally to blame for this

travesty. Their actions are wrong ethically and wrong on the law.”

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