RESOLUTION FOR RETURN OF CHILDREN SEPARATED
AT THE SOUTHWEST BORDER TO THEIR PARENTS
WHEREAS more than two months have passed since a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite all the families it had separated as part of its failed “zero tolerance” immigration policy, and yet a new court filing on September 6, 2018, states that 416 children are still separated from their parents and families, including 14 children under the age of five, and 304 of their parents have been deported to their country of origin, 45 of whom no contact information is available; and
WHEREAS these actions by the Trump administration are contrary to the principles of a democratic society and have resulted in and will continue to inflict lifelong emotional damage upon the children, who reportedly have been placed into danger of health problems, brutality, molestation, suicide ideation, and even death, and who often believe that their parents have abandoned them, while parents feel guilt for not securing their children’s security and comfort due to fear of, or actual, prosecution; and
WHEREAS these actions are misinterpretations of existing federal regulations, illegal, and violate the rights guaranteed to everyone, not just citizens, by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and by the Protocol of the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which the United States is a signatory, and the American government has a moral and legal obligation to rectify its wrongs and reunite the parents and children;
THEREFORE BE RESOLVED that the United States Congress should immediately exercise all of its power to ensure the immediate return of the refugee children to their parents, absorbing all costs, including the return of deported parents, exempt from any prosecution.
THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER BE RESOLVED that theDemocratic Party of the San Fernando Valley will send a copy of this resolution to our two United States Senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, and to our local Congressmen: Brad Sherman, Tony Cardenas, Adam Schiff, and Steve Knight.
Submitted by Doris and Lloyd Dent, Assembly District 45
Dated October 1, 2018