CRLN is proud to share this piece on Tackling the Root Causes of Immigration to the US from Honduras written by our own former Staff member, Maria I. Leon Gomez Sonet! Please find the very important, informative article below!
Opinion-–-Tackling-the-Root-Causes-of-Immigration-to-the-US-from-Honduras
Please CLICK below to read the statement in English or in Spanish from our friends with the Honduras Solidarity Network!
This liturgical guide was put together by Matthew Broeren who was an intern with us during the summer of 2019. Members of CRLN’s Immigrant Welcoming Congregations helped support the effort. The guide is meant to provide a structure for congregations of any faith who wish to hold a special service to call attention to immigrant justice issues. Please feel free to shape it to your group’s needs. Click on the link below
CRLN Devotional Worship Resources
See the infographics below from the Latin America Working Group to learn about the truth of repression, expulsions, and deportation in Latin America as countries work to contain COVID-19:
Protect Colombian Human Rights Defenders During COVID-19
Dear Colleague,
We invite you to join us in sending a letter to Secretary of State Pompeo on the urgent need to protect Colombia’s human rights defenders and to identify and prosecute those who carry out threats, assaults, disappearances and murder against them.
Colombia is the most dangerous country for human rights defenders https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jan/14/300-human-rights-activists-killed-2019-report. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia described as “staggering” the number of rights defenders murdered in 2019 https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/01/1055272. Those targeted include Afro-Colombian and indigenous leaders, environmentalists and land rights activists, local community and social leaders, campesinos and trade unionists, peace communities, women, journalists and human rights advocates.
The Duque Administration and Attorney General’s Office have failed to provide the level of protection needed to safeguard the lives of these defenders, prosecute the intellectual authors of these attacks, dismantle the structures that benefit from this violence, or fulfill their obligations under the peace accords to safeguard these individuals and communities and establish a state presence in conflict regions. As a result, violent actors continue to act with impunity.
The coronavirus pandemic and Colombia’s quarantine have only increased the vulnerability of these valuable civic leaders: 23 social leaders were killed between March 15 and April 24, the initial period of Colombia’s pandemic lockdown. At the same time, recent media investigations revealed that Colombian Army intelligence units compiled detailed dossiers on the personal lives and activities of at least 130 reporters (including U.S. journalists), human rights defenders, politicians, judges, union leaders, and possible military whistleblowers https://www.hchr.org.co/files/comunicados/2020/press-release-intelligence-May-2020.pdf.
To sign onto the letter, or for further information, please contact Cindy Buhl (Rep. McGovern) at cindy.buhl@mail.house.gov or Leslie Zelenko (Rep. Pocan) at leslie.zelenko@mail.house.gov.
Sincerely,
James P. McGovern
Member of Congress
Mark Pocan
Member of Congress
————————————–
Dear Secretary Pompeo,
As the coronavirus pandemic exposes and magnifies existing problems in each of the countries it ravages, we are particularly concerned that it is affecting the safety of Colombia’s brave human rights defenders and social leaders who are putting their lives on the line to build lasting peace.
We write to ask you to urge the Duque Administration to recommit to implementing the historic 2016 peace accords and protecting Colombia’s endangered human rights defenders whose vulnerability has only increased during the COVID-19 quarantine.
Colombia is now the most dangerous country in the world for human rights defenders. Over 400 human rights defenders have been murdered since the signing of the peace accords – a loss of committed and valiant civic leaders that Colombia cannot afford. The Colombian government’s slowness in implementing the peace accords, its failure to bring the civilian state into the conflict zones, and its ongoing inability to prevent and prosecute attacks against defenders have allowed this tragedy to go unchecked. This appears to have intensified as illegal armed groups take advantage of the pandemic while the government fails to respond, further increasing the vulnerability of targeted rights defenders and local leaders.
For example, on March 19, three armed men entered a meeting where farmers were discussing voluntary coca eradication agreements and killed community leader Marco Rivadeneira. He promoted peace and coca substitution efforts in his community, represented his region in the guarantees working group to protect human rights defenders, and was a member of the national human rights network Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos. Afro-Colombian, indigenous, and poor farming communities like the San José de Apartadó peace community continue to suffer and are even more vulnerable from the unchecked presence of illegal armed actors in their territories.
Marco Rivadeneira was one of 23 social leaders killed between March 15 and April 24, during the first weeks of Colombia’s pandemic lockdown. According to the Colombian NGO, Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz – INDEPAZ, in the first three months of 2020, 71 social leaders and defenders were killed in Colombia.
To stop this tragedy, we ask you to urge the Duque Administration to:
We urge you, Mr. Secretary, to ensure that all agencies of the United States speak with one clear voice to condemn these ever-escalating murders and to press the Duque Administration to take the necessary steps to identify and prosecute the intellectual authors of these crimes and dismantle the criminal structures that protect them.
Finally, we urge you to continue to provide valuable U.S. assistance to Colombia to implement the peace accords, provide humanitarian assistance for Venezuelan refugees and refugee receiving communities, and address the health and food security crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. should also take advantage of opportunities provided by the peace accords to carry out sustainable and lasting eradication of illegal crops by working with communities to replace coca with legal livelihoods and dismantling trafficking networks.
Thank you for your attention to these important concerns in this difficult time.
How long, O Lord, must I call for help?
But you do not listen!
“Violence is everywhere!” I cry,
but you do not come to save.
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
Habakkuk 1: 2-4
9 minutes. After 2 minutes without oxygen, the average adult human will lose consciousness, and after 3 to 4 minutes without blood flow, the brain begins to die. After 5 minutes without oxygen, the human brain enters the stage at which damage is likely unrepairable and death is imminent. For 9 long minutes George Floyd lay on the asphalt in Minneapolis with officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on his neck. 9 minutes, some 6 of which George repeated over, and over, and over again, “I can’t breathe”. 9 minutes in which a dozen or so on lookers likewise repeatedly yelled at the police, “Let him up! He cannot breathe!” 9 minutes, during at least 2 of which it was obvious Mr. Floyd was unresponsive, but officer Chauvin’s knee remained on George’s neck regardless. 9 minutes that encapsulated 400 years of oppression. 9 minutes that launched a rebellion, an uprising, that says enough is enough.
CRLN mourns the murder of George Floyd and shares the righteous indignation of the millions who have had enough of the killing of people of color at the hands of law enforcement. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, protest signs remind us that “Racism is a pandemic, too.” CRLN stands in solidarity with the thousands who have decided to take to the streets to peacefully demonstrate their anger and demand justice over the last eleven days and counting. This is an uprising against racial oppression that will not be silenced with simple platitudes or even the necessary and essential convictions of the four police officers responsible for Floyds death – that is only a start. This is a movement that seeks to uproot the entire structure of systemic racism in this nation and beyond, and CRLN commits to playing our part in its dismantling.
Here in Chicago, we are painfully aware of the long, deep history of racial oppression and racialized police brutality. It’s here in Chicago, which represented the “promised land” for so many African-Americans fleeing oppression in the Jim Crow South, that these refugees were met with housing segregation, job discrimination, urban ghettos and the bloody 1919 race riots. This is the city that in 1966 handed MLK Jr. his first defeat with a hail of bricks and bottles in Marquette Park, that in ‘68 saw Mayor Daley order his police force to “shoot to kill” those “rioting” after MLK’s death, and whose police murdered Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in ‘69. Even after the Civil Rights era’s so called “urban renewal,” white flight, redlining, inferior and underfunded public housing perpetuated that same old segregation. A police force with the likes of Commander Jon Burge, torturing hundreds of innocent Black suspects, enforced and preserved the system. Even the conviction of extreme examples like Burge, after decades of struggle, could not prevent the police murders of Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, and Pedro Rios Jr. This historic and continuing pandemic of violence against people of color, along with our concerns over the criminalization of our immigrant youth, are the reasons why CRLN has worked in coalition with groups to eliminate Chicago’s gang database and other policies that criminalize communities of color.
The scenes of state violence against peaceful protesters we have all witnessed across the nation in the past two weeks are also all too familiar to us. In our 30 years of solidarity work with the people of Latin America, we have seen the same forces of state repression used against those seeking justice, often, once again, to maintain a system of institutionalized racism, whether it be against African descended communities in Colombia, indigenous communities in Guatemala, or Garifuna communities in Honduras. For decades U.S. imperialism has promoted, trained, and funded the militaries and later the police forces that have been responsible for the widespread violations of human rights against these communities across Latin America. Violence was justified in the name of fighting “Communism”, later in the name of fighting the War on Drugs and against terrorism, regardless of the fact that the amount of drugs coming across our southern border never decreased and no terrorists were ever found crossing that border. Whatever the reasons given, U.S. trained and funded “security” forces only provided security for some—the elite groups who could share the wealth gained from U.S. economic policies that exploited Latin American labor and resources, the politicians who voted for U.S. positions in international forums or agreed to help keep people from migrating to the U.S. by force—never for communities of color.
In recent years, that violence has come home to roost as domestic police forces have been militarized, purchasing the equipment and adopting the tactics the U.S. military pioneered abroad. Because of the pandemic of racism, the police have targeted black and brown people disproportionately. The outcome is unsurprisingly similar. But just like the uprisings this past year in Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, the repressive forces of the state cannot silence the righteous calls for justice. CRLN stands in solidarity with those demanding justice here and across the Americas.
Unfortunately, we are also witnessing in our community another intended consequence of this racist state violence, the breeding of a divide and conquer strategy in which members of our own communities turn on one another and enact and reproduce the violence the state inflicts upon them against those who should be their natural allies. The pandemic of racism can be internalized. In Latinx communities in Chicago, Pilsen and especially La Villita over the past week, we have witnessed Latinx gangs claiming to “defend” their barrios by enacting violence against black youth in the neighborhood. This is obviously deeply disturbing and unacceptable, and CRLN supports the call put out by a coalition of Latinx organizations calling for black and brown unity and a halt to such violence https://bit.ly/LatinxAgainstAntiBlackAttacks
Let 9 minutes be the start of a dismantling of white supremacy once and for all. We must end the pandemic of racism, wherever it exists. Evidence that we are on the right path is certainly there with city after city–New York, Los Angeles, though sadly so far not Chicago–committing to significant “defunding” of their police forces and redirecting of those resources into areas that have faced regular funding cuts like community mental health, youth services and affordable housing. Cities like Minneapolis are taking things a step further and looking at rethinking policing altogether. CRLN supports Black Lives Matter’s position statement #Defund the Police, and we ask our members to sign on to their petition which can be found at https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice We also support the Black Lives Matter Chicago demands that you can find at https://www.blacklivesmatterchicago.com/10-demands-of-blmchi Let 9 minutes of suffering and death lead to a resurrection of our understanding of justice and conflict resolution that results in peace and life instead of more death and suffering. CRLN will play our part in that resurrection.
CRLN supports the goals of this march, yet we also understand the continuing need to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Wear masks; distance yourself from others. If you do not attend the rally for health reasons, there are still ways you can support this campaign:
1) Read this article by University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman about the history of police reform attempts in Chicago and why CPAC is necessary.
2) Check to see if your alderperson is on record to support CPAC, using this link. If they are, call and send an email to thank them. If they are not, call and send an email to ask them to publicly support the ordinance. The link above also has phone numbers and emails for alderpersons. If you don’t know who your alderperson is, it also will tell you how to find out.
3) Read about the campaign, using this link, to free incarcerated survivors of police torture. Sign a petition to Governor Pritzker to urge him to release all remaining torture victims from prison.
Please email your Representative (find your Representative here) and ask them to sign onto a “Dear Colleague” letter initiated by Representatives Jim McGovern and Mark Pocan. You can go to their website and click on the “Contact” tab and then on “Email me” in the dropdown list.
The letter calls on Secretary of State Pompeo to urge Colombian President Duque to protect Colombia’s human rights defenders; to identify and prosecute those who threaten and murder them; dismantle the paramilitary successor networks behind much of the killing; hold accountable Colombian military intelligence officers who conducted mass surveillance of journalists, human rights defenders, political leaders, judges and military whistleblowers with U.S.-supplied equipment; and fully implement the Peace Accords.
CRLN signed onto a letter to the State Department calling for systemic reform of Colombia’s military intelligence unit in response to the mass surveillance scandal referenced above. Click here for a copy of the letter.
Colombia is the most dangerous country for human rights defenders. At least 107 were killed in 2019. During the first month of Colombia’s coronavirus lockdown alone, 23 social leaders were killed. During this “stay at home” period, perpetrators knew exactly where to find social leaders, increasing the danger that they would be assassinated.
You can direct your Representative to contact Cindy Buhl (Rep. McGovern) at cindy.buhl@mail.house.gov or Leslie Zelenko (Rep. Pocan) at leslie.zelenko@mail.house.gov for further information or to sign onto the letter. Ask your Representative to let you know if they sign on.
Please contact shunter-smith@crln.org to let her know that you have sent your message so that we can track our network’s progress on getting signatures for this letter.
We are excited to be part of an advocacy campaign organized by our friends at NISGUA (Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala) to stop the Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) the U.S. has made with the Presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. These agreements enable the U.S. to deport asylum seekers arriving from any country to these Central American countries to seek asylum there instead. None of these countries provide for the safety of their own citizens adequately; they cannot protect asylum seekers, either. Under this program, the U.S. is knowingly sending asylum seekers into the same kinds of dangers they sought to escape, which violates international asylum law.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, these agreements also have served to spread the virus to Central America. Asylum seekers reaching the U.S.- Mexico border are detained until they can be flown out to one of these three countries. Estimates now, based on the small number of tests that have been performed in ICE or CPB detention centers, are that at least 70% of those in detention have the coronavirus. Guatemala reports that 20% of its coronavirus cases are people who were deported from the U.S.
The first step in the campaign is to learn more about the ACAs. NISGUA has a wealth of information on its webpage.
The following articles are also helpful:
The second step is to sign onto a petition that can be sent to members of Congress after enough signatures are collected. It currently has 600 signatures, but we can do much better! Please sign it yourself and then forward to friends to ask them to sign on.
The third step is to email your member of Congress. Here is a sample email you can use:
Email template for congressional representatives
Subject: Constituent concerned about inhumane and illegal U.S. asylum agreements with Central America
Dear [Representative],
I am deeply concerned about the Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) that the Trump administration has signed with governments in Central America. As your constituent, I am calling on you to take action.
Under these agreements, the U.S. designated El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala as “safe third countries” to which to send asylum-seekers, rather than allowing them to pursue an asylum claim here, as is their right under international law.
These policies are immoral and, according to a U.S. lawsuit filed in November 2019 regarding the first agreement with Guatemala by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, illegal. None of these countries provide a full and fair asylum application procedure. More importantly, they themselves are so unsafe that their own citizens flee en masse to the United States.
Meanwhile, in the face of a deadly global pandemic, the Trump administration has continued to deport migrants and asylum-seekers to Mexico and Central America, including people who have already tested positive for covid-19, another demonstration of the Administration’s disregard for human life in the region.
Since November, more than 900 people, the majority women and children from Honduras and El Salvador who sought asylum in the U.S., have been sent to Guatemala to seek protection there instead. News outlets report that only twenty thus far have requested protection in Guatemala, where they may be vulnerable to many of the same sources of violence as in their home countries. The rest have made the life-threatening decision to return to the dangers from which they originally fled. For example, a February 2020 Human Rights Watch investigation found that, since 2013, at least 138 Salvadorans were murdered in acts of gang, police, or hate crime violence after being deported. A similar reality exists for Honduran migrants.
It’s clear that these Asylum Cooperative Agreements are a gross violation of the internationally-recognized right to asylum and of the core principle of non-refoulement, so much so that U.S. asylum officers have filed an amicus brief denouncing their illegality.
I call on you to:
1. Take action to defund the “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” by pushing for the inclusion of the following language in the upcoming appropriations process for both DHS and State and Foreign Operations: “None of these funds may be used for the implementation of the Asylum Cooperative Agreements between the U.S., Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.”
2. Demand more information regarding the signing and implementation of these agreements.
3. Take a public stand and declare opposition to these agreements as a threat to safety, human dignity, and international law.
Now, more than ever amid the deadly global threat posed by COVID-19, the Trump Administration’s assaults on immigrants and asylum seekers must be stopped. I call on you to take action to immediately halt all deportations as well as other inhumane policies, such as the “Remain in Mexico” program.
Your action is urgent. If your office has already issued statements or taken other action regarding the Asylum Cooperative Agreements, please let me know.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
CRLN signed the letter below to call on our Representatives to co-sponsor a bill that would lift some of the financial burdens on developing countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have sent it out to all Illinois Representatives. Please support this effort by copying the letter into an email to your Representative and adding a personal note, such as “I, too, support this bill and ask you to co-sponsor it. Please let me know if you will sign on in support of this lifesaving bill.”
Some changes since the letter was sent: there are now 23 co-sponsors. Also, the provisions in this bill did not make it into the HEROES Act, the “forthcoming coronavirus legislation” referred to in the letter. It is all the more important that this bill pass on its own, since there were NO international provisions in the HEROES Act.
We at CRLN are trying to evaluate the results of our efforts. Please email shunter-smith@crln.org to let us know you have sent the letter, and also let us know if you receive a reply. That will help in our advocacy efforts going forward.
Here is the letter and list of current signers:
[put this into your email’s subject line] Co-Sponsor the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act (H.R.6581)
Dear Representative _______:
As COVID-19 triggers public health and economic crises in countries around the world, we, the undersigned organizations, urge you to co-sponsor the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act (H.R.6581), introduced by Representatives Jesus “Chuy” García, Jan Schakowsky, Mark Takano, and 13 other original co-sponsors. We believe Congress must enact H.R.6581 as part of forthcoming coronavirus legislation to ensure that developing countries will be supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions with the resources they need to confront this unprecedented global crisis.
H.R.6581:
1. Debt Relief: Instructs U.S. representatives to the international financial institutions to support a suspension of debt payments to those institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic;
2. Protection of Public Health Spending: Instructs U.S. representatives to the international financial institutions to oppose programs that undermine countries’ ability to respond to COVID-19, such as those that encourage cuts to public health spending;
3. Needed Resources: Instructs the U.S. representative to the IMF to support issuing 3 trillion in “Special Drawing Rights.”
The United Nations World Food Program estimates that, as a result of the pandemic, 265 million people could face starvation by the end of the year. A report published by the United Nations University has found that half a billion people could be pushed into poverty. Bold, concerted international action is urgently needed.
One key measure that economists, development experts and humanitarian organizations from around the world are calling for is a major issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). A special international reserve asset created by the IMF, SDRs are distributed to central banks of countries in proportion to their IMF quotas. Countries can exchange SDRs for freely usable currencies when they are in weak financial positions. They are similar to the Federal Reserve’s swap arrangements, which have primarily benefited wealthy nations, whereas SDRs are distributed to all IMF member countries. Congress should support this costless and effective currency lifeline for the rest of the world.
The IMF last issued SDRs in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis and thereby helped ease the impact of the crisis on developing economies. Because SDRs are issued to each country roughly in proportion to the size of its economy, economists project that an issuance of three trillion SDRs will ensure that significant help can reach Latin America, sub-saharan Africa and other regions that face major economic and public health emergencies.
An issuance of SDRs for COVID-19 recovery has been endorsed by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, the Secretary General of the UN, most G20 countries, the New York Times and the Financial Times. Former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz asserts that in order to help developing economies, “Full use must be made of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights.”
Another important measure to help developing countries during the pandemic is a moratorium on debt service payments to the IMF, World Bank and other international financial institutions. In 2020 and 2021 alone, low and middle income countries face between $666 billion and $1.06 billion in debt service repayments. Across 46 countries, debt payments for this year are currently projected to be 400% of their health budgets.
H.R. 6581 supports both a major issuance of SDRs and a moratorium on debt to international financial institutions, two vital measures that provide developing countries with critical financial support as they battle the pandemic.
We ask that you contact alex.campbell@mail.house.gov in Rep. García’s office to cosponsor H.R.6581 and urge House Leadership to adopt this lifesaving and urgently needed proposal in the next coronavirus spending package.
Thank you for your consideration,
Action Corps
AFL-CIO
Alianza Americas (Illinois)
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain
Amnesty International USA
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (USA)
Avaaz
Bread for the World
Center for Economic and Policy Research
Center for International Policy
Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
Church World Service
CODEPINK
Concerned Citizens for Change (New York)
Concerned Families of Westchester (New York)
Congregation of Our Lady of the Good Shepherd, U.S. Provinces
Demand Progress
Faiths for Safe Water
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition
Helping Hand for Survivors
Indivisible South Bay LA (California)
Just Foreign Policy
Justice Is Global
Knowdrones.com
Leadership Conference of Women Religious
League of Women Voters of the United States
MADRE
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
New Jersey Peace Action
Oxfam America
Pax Christi USA
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action New York State
Presbyterian Church (USA)
Project Blueprint
Public Citizen
Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture (New York)
RootsAction.org
Sisters of St. Dominic of Blauvel, New York
The Hunger Project
The United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society
Union for Reform Judaism
Washington Global Health Alliance
WESPAC Foundation (New York)
Win Without War
Women Against War
Women’s Refugee Care
WNY Peace Center (New York)
Yemeni Alliance Committee
Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation
