Help a Child at the Border by Wearing Your Values
If you are shocked by families being ripped apart at the U.S. border and horrified by children placed in detention, here is something meaningful and effective you can do to help.
The Outrage, an apparel line dedicated to social justice and equality, has just launched a new collection, “Families Belong Together,” to raise money for RAICES Family Reunification and Bond Fund. The Outrage is donating 100% of proceeds from this collection with the goal of raising $100k to reunify families.
Since the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy shift in April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been separating parents from their children at the border — nearly 2000 in the past 6 weeks alone, by the Department of Homeland Security’s count. These parents, along with other immigrants placed in detention, cannot be released from ICE custody to reunite with their children until they pay the full amount of their immigration bond. Bonds are set at a minimum of $1500 but are usually in the range of $5000 to $10,000, even for asylum seekers and immigrants with no criminal history. These bonds are prohibitively expensive for most immigrants, and bail bond companies are taking advantage, often imposing very strict requirements like ankle monitors, which families must rent.
The Outrage is partnering with RAICES by donating 100% of all proceeds from its “Families Belong Together” collection to help pay for immigration bonds imposed on separated families and bring them back together.
RAICES is a women-led immigration and sanctuary organization with a 30-year history in South Texas. As the only immigration organization that serves detained kids, families, and adults, RAICES provides a diverse array of critical services — pro-bono and low-bono legal services, trauma-informed counseling, refugee resettlement programs, and a temporary shelter that served over 7000 in 2016 alone (which, unlike a detention center, preserves residents’ basic human rights and freedom of movement). They also run a Checkpoint Justice Program in partnership with Driscoll Children’s Hospital of Corpus Christi, Texas, to help children safely cross the immigration checkpoints for urgent medical care.
To understand how critical these services are, it’s also necessary to understand how risky the journey that parents — usually mothers — make to save their own lives and those of their children through immigration. Approximately 60–80% of women who make the journey are sexually assaulted along with way, and the countries they are fleeing from lead the world in femicide and youth gangs. The recent Sessions announcement that gang violence and domestic violence will no longer be considered ground for asylum is especially devastating for Central and South American women, who face high rates of sex trafficking, violence, and homicide.
“At the shelter, we see a lot of moms with boys about 10 years old, because that’s the age when gangs start recruiting, and it’s often join or die,” said Jenny Hixon, Director of Outreach, Education, and Development of RAICES in San Antonio, Texas.
The Family Reunification and Bond Fund directly supports RAICES’ ambitious project to reach all the families that are being separated at the border under new policy. The organization has already committed to serving all separated parents at the Pearsall and Prairieland detention centers in Texas. Each day, RAICES works with the Texas Civil Rights Project to gather the list of names of people in South Texas federal courts being prosecuted for illegal entry and taken from their kids. They then track those parents down, figure out where their kids are, and provide pro bono legal assistance and bond fund relief to reunite them.
It’s staggering tidal wave — thousands of separated children, each undergoing trauma that will last a lifetime, desperate to see their parents again.
“Immigration is fundamentally about family,” said Hixon. “Every person we see in detention is actually surrounded by an invisible crowd of people who love them, who they’ve taken risks to be with, who they’ve taken risks to keep safe. I once asked one of the moms at our shelter why she had come. She had a truly horrific journey and had been raped during the journey and detained with her 4-year-old. She said that if she stayed in her home country, she knew for certain they would die. But if she tried to come here, they only might die, and so she had no choice but to try for her son. No one takes this journey if it’s possible to stay home safely.”
In addition to donating 100% of the proceeds, The Outrage is also mailing postcards to representatives on behalf of their customers. Customers can simply type in a message, and The Outrage will write it on a postcard and mail it on their behalf. Shop the “Families Belong Together” line at The Outrage here, or learn more about RAICES and make a donation here.
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