Pence, Trump, and Sessions have spent the last year and a half using their power to further engrain white supremacy into the trenches of our nation. They use the rhetoric of “Law and Order” to tear families apart and criminalize migrants, asylum seekers, and Black and Brown people. By eroding protections for our people like DACA & TPS, allowing ICE agents to enact dangerous raids with impunity as well as criminalizing migration and asylum seekers, we are experiencing the oppression and devastation of our community at an unprecedented level not seen in decades.

Detaining families together is not a valid solution to family separation. People seeking refuge do not deserve to be met with chain link fences and trauma. Children should not be growing up in jail cells. We need to expand the scope of our outrage to include the inhumanity of the detention of thousands of immigrants all over the country. The emotional and physical violence inflicted on our families by the U.S. is irreparable, and to then further rob them of their freedom is revolting at best.

We have seen the effects of this in the streets of Philadelphia, where almost 50 people were disappeared in one week last month as a result of dangerous ICE raids, leaving many Philadelphia children separated from their families. Families are ripped apart right here and in the wake of so much injustice, it is more important than ever that we enact local change. It is time for us to shut down the Berks Family Detention Center and free our families that have been detained indefinitely right outside of Philadelphia. It is time for us to expand the meaning of sanctuary and make sure we are a true Sanctuary City by ending the dangerous P.A.R.S. contract with ICE as well as ending data sharing with them.

We must take action now to create tangible change for our people and create a precedent for this country to combat the brutality it has inflicted. If we continue to simply demand that families belong together, we will easily see the ballooning of more family detention centers like Berks Family Detention Center and mass incarceration. We can do better, at the border and in Philadelphia, to put an end to this nightmare.