#WhereAreTheChildren Rally in San Antonio

#WhereAreTheChildren Rally

By Sister Martha Ann Kirk

A few hundred San Antonians gathered on May 31, 2018, in Guadalupe Plaza in San Antonio, TX, to show their concern about the treatment of immigrants and especially children who are suffering. Nearly 1,500 immigrant children have been lost in the system, meanwhile, the current Republican administration is enforcing a policy to separate immigrant parents from their children at the border. Father Jimmy Drennan, Rabbi Mara Nathan, and other faith leaders gathered on stage uniting in prayer for families.

Incarnate Word Sisters Yolanda Tarango, Leti Rodriguez, 

Mary Margaret Bright, Jean Durel, and Martha Ann Kirk 

were among the participants. Sister Mary Margaret 

regularly does volunteer ministry with immigrant families.

A sixth grade teacher, an Honduran woman who has been in the US since she was five years old, said she and other Hondurans who fled violence have now lost their DSP status and may be deported. A Guatemalan woman whose children taken from her talked about the extreme pain she felt “like losing and arm or a leg.” Eventually she got her children back. Now she was appealing to the humanity of US government people “who also have children” to think of how this feels and to “be human.”

Nicole Foy, Assistant Director of Women’s Global Connection 

and a member of the CCVI Justice, Peace, and Care of Creation Committee (right) 

and Cynthia Layton, an immigration attorney

Nicole, a mother of three daughters, said, “San Antonio shouted loudly tonight against the Trump Administration’s policy of separating immigrant families seeking refuge in the US. Children need their parents ESPECIALLY in times of vast change. I cannot imagine fleeing a violent place with my children, making it to America to ask for asylum (a LEGAL and humane thing to do), only to have my children ripped away and sent thousands of miles away to be detained separately in an unknown place to me. The New York Times reported in April that since October 2017, 700 families had been separated at the border. #nofamilyseparation

Congressman Joaquin Castro, State Rep. Diego Bernal
and immigrant advocates and families passionately spoke
about protecting these children who are at risk of violence and trafficking.