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N.C. Faith Leaders Call on Rep. Mark Walker to Stop Immoral Deportations, Honor Immigrant Moms

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 11, 2018

MEDIA CONTACT

Michelle Nealy, mnealy@faithinpubliclife.org, (202)735-7123

Kahran Myers, kmyers@faithinpubliclife.org, (727)742-5193

N.C. Faith Leaders Call on Rep. Mark Walker to Stop Immoral Deportations, Honor Immigrant Moms

GREENSBORO, NC — On Friday, May 11th, faith and community leaders delivered a giant Mother’s Day card to Rep. Mark Walker, calling on him and other lawmakers to uphold immigration policies that protect and unite immigrant families.

Faith leaders want lawmakers to stop the shameful detention and deportation of pregnant moms; to defund immigration enforcement efforts that separate moms from their children in the interior U.S. and at the border, and to provide Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders a path to citizenship; and to reject further limits to family-based sponsorship.

The faith leaders then delivered a moral declaration signed by over 35 North Carolinians calling on Members of Congress to honor all moms this Mother’s Day by upholding immigration policies that protect and unite immigrant families. To see the list of signers, click here. To view the livestream video, click here.

Rev. Julie Peeples, Congregational Church:

“For our elected officials to justify terrorizing children by tearing them away from their parents is immoral. For our government to be an accomplice in the for-profit prison system where mothers and fathers are being detained in subhuman conditions, is immoral. Rep. Walker, I call upon you and your colleagues to stop separating the families God has joined together.”

Jose Bernal, Faith Action International House:

“We have been doing this work for 20 years, and many of the people we serve have limited status and are being hurt by our broken immigration system. Many of these people rely on family visas to come to this country to unite and remain with their families. Sadly, under current immigration policies we’ve seen dozens of our clients and friends detained and deported over the past year. So long as our families are together there is hope. There is meaning. There is purpose. I recently graduated from college. I’m the first in my family to do so. Immediately, I gave my mother a hug because I know all the sacrifice, hard work and dedication my parents had to help me walk across that stage.”

Rev. Mark Sandlin, Presbyterian Church of the Covenant

“If you are Christian, your tradition is tied up in an immigrant identity, or it should be. We need to embrace the call of Deuteronomy which is a call to welcome the other. Jesus took that concept a step further to say we shouldn’t see them as other but we should see them as yet another image of God — another opportunity, another invitation to not only share God’s love, but as an invitation to share God’s love and experience it more fully. We must once again value our immigrant heritage and change our immigration policies to reflect that. We must not continue to take steps backward on immigration as the current administration has done. It is morally reprehensible and it is spiritually inexcusable. As we enter into Mother’s Day weekend, we must learn to celebrate all mothers.”

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Faith in Public Life is a national network of nearly 50,000 clergy and faith leaders united in the prophetic pursuit of justice and the common good.

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