Committee on Human Relations
RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, the separation of children from their mother or father - or from both - is a violation of the human rights that should be afforded to all children; and
WHEREAS, the just struggle to protect the right of children to stay with their families is at the core of the struggle in this country to complete our imperfect but developing democracy from its original perpetration during the genocide of the native American and the holocaust of slavery when children were ripped from their mother's breast and the guidance of their fathers; and
WHEREAS, this struggle is inspired by both our spiritual, cultural and democratic ideals of what is right and just; and
WHEREAS, in the reality of the failure of the U.S. Congress this City Council had urged Barack Obama, then President of the United States, to issue executive orders to at least temporarily prevent deportations that separate families with U.S. born children or DACA eligible children;
WHEREAS, the alternative to separation is the de facto deportation of U.S. citizen children, and children raised side by side with U.S. citizens for the greatest part of their young lives, to countries they know nothing about and in which they are placed in the most disadvantaged and dangerous positions, denying their rights as U.S. citizens and their universal rights as children; and
WHEREAS, President Obama did indeed issue executive orders which provided the deferral of deportation and the provision of work permissions for undocumented individuals brought to this country as minors and which also provided the same deferrals of deportation and working permissions to undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children or such minors and further established the practice of prosecutorial discretion to defer such deportations in order to prevent the unjust separation of families or the de facto deportation of U.S. citizen children until the Congress could arrive at a permanent solution; and
WHEREAS, the...
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