From Sarah, migrant shelter manager:

Don't live locally? Here's how you can help:

We are partnering with CCS to create a country-wide support network for asylum seekers. We are looking for two things.

Many of you remember Holly Herman as the Administrator of the Southwest Conference office for several years. See where Holly’s leadership gifts have led her. (Thanks to Rev. Dr. Tina Campbell for the heads up.)

Prison phone rates are out of control, with local 15-minute phone calls costing up to $25 in some states. For the 2.7 million children with an incarcerated parent, this often means losing essential relationships.

A new bipartisan bill in Congress would re-establish federal authority to provide the same consumer protection to communication in prisons, jails, and detention centers as there is outside of those facilities and will bring down the cost of these calls.

Please take a moment to read the message from the Southern Arizona Sanctuary coalition. And please, please, take another few minutes to contact the Bishop of Tucson, the Pima County Board of Supervisors (contacts below) and Casa Alitas at alitas@ccs-soaz.org or 520-591-6390 to ask them NOT to further traumatize migrants and asylum seekers by using a detention facility as a shelter location.

The administration has announced plans to terrorize our immigrant neighbors with threatened raids starting this Sunday morning (July 14) and continuing during the week.  The effect of these capricious and callus attacks on families and children is dire and the raids stand as another example of the administration cruelly separating families.  Instead of working on compassionate immigration policies with a focus on dignity and humanity the administration continues to double down on their punitive and often violent tactics that create chaos.  These raids come from a place of fear, suspicion, and hate; living in that kind of hate is antithetical to the gospel that teaches love for humanity. 

As people of faith and as the United Church of Christ we are called to love our neighbor and right now our immigrant neighbors need our love. Here are resources to provide information, sanctuary, and advocacy for our siblings who are being targeted and threatened by these raids. 

A prominent New York City pastor is suing the United States government for interfering with her legal right to provide spiritual support and pastoral services to migrants and refugees at the border.

The Rev. Kaji Douša, senior pastor of The Park Avenue Christian Church, a congregation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, filed suit Monday, July 8, against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) for violating her First Amendment rights and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

You have until July 9 to take action on a rule that targets “mixed-immigration status” families.

While attention to the treatment of immigrants has been focused elsewhere, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has quietly proposed a rule that would impact 25,000 U.S. families by withdrawing housing assistance if a member of the family is undocumented.

This rule change impacts legal residents and citizens who are eligible for the housing assistance they are receiving. Many of these families have citizen children. The impact would be to separate families or force families to leave their home or apartment.

from Rev. Cindy Parker, Church of the Red Rocks UCC:

Our plans are to purchase about 1/4 acre in Sedona and install a triplex consisting of three factory-built two-bedroom two-bath homes, each of which will be used by one family.  The families will share the kitchen and living room.  We will be able to serve six families at any given time, and estimate that we will serve 50-100 people per year. 

We have filed our formal application with HUD and, if all goes according to plan, will receive the grant money by the end of the year.  We intend to be open for business by the start of the 2020-21 school year. 

Now my request for help.  Are you aware of anyone else who has provided transitional housing primarily for families?

Lights for Liberty vigils to end human concentration camps are planned across the nation on July 12, 7 – 9 pm local time. In the SWC:

AZ locations include Eloy, Flagstaff, Phoenix, Sedona, and Tucson.

In NM vigils are planned in Taos and Estancia.

In El Paso the vigil will happen at Cleveland Square Park.

from Barbara Ammirati | Save the Children | Border Project, Team Lead
U.S. Emergencies, US Programs & Advocacy

Save the Children is seeking to fill two short term- approximately 30 day, temporary positions to support children’s programming in Deming and Las Cruces shelters, as we transition to local partner management.

Sanctuary guest at First Congregational UCC Albuquerque, Kadhim Al-Bumohammed, 66, is allowed to leave the church without fear of deportation, after his case was reopened on June 26.

After coming to the U.S. from Iraq in 1994 he was granted refugee status, but when he accidentally missed a deportation hearing in 2017, ICE instructed him to turn himself in for deportation. But he went to FCC Albuquerque for sanctuary, instead, where he's lived ever since.

After the Board of Immigration Appeals reviewed his case, his deportation order was removed.

Current needs:

The kitchen needs eggs, fresh fruit, fresh veggies (yellow summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes, onions) and frozen mixed veggies.

The bodega needs summer clothes, especially for kids (shorts, tank tops, sandals), bras (sizes 32-38), and bottled water.

Want to give but aren't sure how? They have an Amazon Wish List!

Please ask your member of Congress, as they work on appropriations legislation, to not invest any more money in policies that fuel and feed the administration’s efforts to increase border militarization and continue terrorizing immigrants. How we invest our money reflects our values as a nation, and right now those values are corrosive and harmful. This has got to stop. Congress should instead invest in policies that uplift family unity, address the root causes of forced migration, and prioritize human needs by respecting the rights and dignity of every person.

As a justice-seeking people, we cannot remain silent while state laws transform us into a map of “haves and have-nots” with regard to access to reproductive health services. Protecting access to the full range of reproductive health care for all – including safe, legal abortion – is an imperative rooted in our deeply-held faith beliefs in social justice, moral agency, and religious liberty for all.

Please contact your members of Congress and urge them to cosponsor and support the Women’s Health Protection Act.

Lutheran Social Services is in desperate need of more churches to host groups of 30-100 migrants on a regularly scheduled basis. Congregations do not need to provide a physical location.  A space in Glendale for hosting migrants Sunday through Thursday is available. But it is sitting empty many days due to a lack of groups to serve as hosts.  

Read on to see the ways you can help.

On Saturday, June 29, Ktizo United Church of Christ, in partnership with Shadow Rock UCC, Pinnacle Presbyterian and Brophy Prep communities, will welcome an estimated 35 refugees from Central America seeking asylum in the United States.

There are many ways to serve from helping to translate if you speak Spanish, to driving them to the bus station or Sky Harbor International Airport, serving meals, cleaning cots, laundering blankets and towels, bringing clothes, shoes, diapers, food, toys and games to emptying trash and washing dishes.

Kitchen volunteers, current needs list, and a need for an entertainment coordinator / event planner - from shelter manager, Sarah.

The children who come to our border are often fleeing violence and poverty and have endured a long and dangerous journey. They should be met with care and kindness. Once here, every measure should be made that they be placed with family and community sponsors. Instead, as of now, more than 2,500 children are being held in a “child detention facility” in Homestead, Florida.

Contact your members of Congress to let them know this is no way to treat anyone, especially the most vulnerable among us, children. We need to invest in ways to unite families and ensure the best continuum of care for children. Please urge your member of Congress to support the “Shut Down Prison Camps Act” and the “Families Not Facilities Act.” These legislative measures make sure that the government can’t house children in substandard “emergency influx shelters.”