Dear Casa
San Jose Amigos,
Welcome
back to our weekly message! Here’s
what’s new:
Your help is much needed:
Please join the party and our community! Come to
the Cinco de Mayo street festival, with music, food, children's activities,
etc. on Saturday, May 6, noon to 9 pm, to be held in the parking lot of Las Palmas
IGA supermarket, 1616 Broadway, Beechview. It's a fundraiser for Casa San Jose!
Also, we still need:
Some strong people to
set up chairs and tables at 10:30 am, and
some more to take them down at 9:30 pm. Please contact Monica at monica@casasanjose.org
if you can do this.
Decorative and treat-filled baskets for raffling
off, with proceeds to go to Casa
San Jose. Themes: kids, summer,
gardening, dogs, cooking, anything people will like, with objects valuing about
$50 - $100. A group could do this
together. Bring to Casa San Jose (933 Brookline Blvd. inside St. Mark’s
Lutheran Church) by Friday afternoon before 4 pm, May 5. It will help if you let us know if you’re
donating one – email srvalerie@casasanjose.org.
Calling all attorneys!
Our Rapid Response Team is looking for volunteer attorneys (who are not
immigration attorneys) to be “on call” to accompany the team one day a
month. What happens is (usually early in
the morning) that someone is arrested by ICE and quickly driven off to an
unknown holding location. The Team then needs to go to the ICE office and
determine the status of the detainee, but only
a lawyer is permitted to ask questions.
These are the questions that need to be asked: Do you have this
person? Where is he or she? Is there a
bond for this person? Once you ask and
get the answer to those questions, your job is done. This is a VERY important
job. If you can do this, please contact
Monica at monica@casasanjose.org.
Political action:
Monica continues to
plan a visit to Harry Readshaw’s office to try to talk him out of
supporting anti-immigrant bills in the PA House. Are you in his district? (Find out here – scroll down to enter your
zipcode.) If so and you can help, please contact her at monica@casasanjose.org.
If you’d like to see another such visit, here’s a video showing her and other supporters talking with Tony DeLuca recently.
He said he now opposes SB10 (which de-funds sanctuary cities,) and will
work with Monica to come up with something that would actually help immigrants.
Put up a
“Welcome Immigrants” sign outside your home or in a window.
Counteract ICE’s VOICE Hotline - 1-855-48-VOICE: (This
could be fun to do.)
The President’s administration has launched the VOICE
hotline, which is meant to gather stories about crimes committed by immigrants.
It is a thinly veiled attempt to paint immigrants and refugees as criminal and
dangerous. It does not provide any resources or assistance for victims. Creative
people have been coming up with ways to counteract this plan, which have been quite successful. Call the number above and:
- Report your "alien"
encounters (think X-Files, UFO’s)
- Report stories of how immigrants
and refugees are improving your community.
- Report stories of attacks
against immigrant and refugee communities
Contact Governor Wolf
and ask him to shut down Berks County Detention Center (BCRC.) This is one of four detention centers for immigrant
families, where children as young as two-weeks-old have been incarcerated. Many
of the families currently at BCRC have been unjustly held for more than a year. The Shut Down Berks Campaign is a grassroots coalition
fighting to shut down this facility and end family detention. The campaign is
led by several local organizations, including the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC),
and Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania Legislative Action
Network (UUPLAN) with the support of national groups: Detention Watch Network, #Not1More, and We Belong Together. Governor Wolf Has the Power to Immediately
Shut Down Berks – please use this form from PICC to get more
information and contact the Governor.
“Our Story” episode 7: “Jose”
Last Tuesday morning, April 25, Monica Ruiz, Community
Organizer for Casa San Jose received a phone call from a friend. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
took three men into custody as they arrived at their workplace. Monica’s friend wanted to alert her in case
she knew them. One man, Jose, (not his
real name) an undocumented man from Guatemala had been a client of Casa San
Jose and Monica knew that he was a single parent with 2 school age children.
Monica quickly assembled our
emergency response team to assist them. Monica and a volunteer attorney from the
Steelworkers Union went to the ICE office on the Southside. Jeimy Sanchez, Youth Coordinator at Casa San
Jose, went to Brashear High School to attend to Jose’s children, while waiting
to see if Jose would be released. Sister
Valerie, Tracy Medrano, Julian Asenjo and other volunteers at Casa San Jose
quickly made phone calls to find a place for the kids in the event that Jose
might be held by ICE. The presence of
Monica and an attorney standing by Jose led ICE to release him (to await an
October court date with an ankle bracelet) because he is the sole provider for
his children. Jeimy provided a familiar
face for
the high school kids and helped them know what was happening (quite scary for
them). Julian, through prior contact with these same children, helped complete
the picture of CSJ’s ability to support this family through the stresses of the
ongoing uncertainty of their status. When Jose did arrive at Brashear High
School to pick up the kids, they broke out in tears!
Two of our special takeaways from
this incident are:
1. Parents (of all children, actually) need to
designate backup emergency contacts for their children who are allowed to pick
up the children when parent unavailable.
2. Having a lawyer present along with a Community
organizer or other ally at an ICE event makes it much more likely a client can
be helped to avoid immediate detention, i.e. released on bond, etc.
Casa San Jose staff and volunteers
are continuing to work on helping families plan for alternate care for children
in situations where a parent may be removed.
We also want to
thank St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Brookline for their
extraordinary generosity and kindness in giving us a home and offering support
in many ways.
Suggested if you’d like to read or see more:
·
Harvest of Empire – award-winning documentary that
shows how the history of US intervention in Latin America answers the question,
why do people risk their lives to come here? Available on Netflix and Amazon.
Thank you for joining
us!
