A viral fundraising campaign on Facebook has raised more than $13 million to help immigrant families that have been split up by the Justice Department’s zero-tolerance policy at the border.
California residents Charlotte and Dave Willner launched the campaign Saturday with an initial goal of raising $1,500 for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). However, the fundraiser quickly went viral with more than 350,000 individual donations.
Annie Ta, a spokesperson for the couple, told the Rivard Report more than $10,000 was coming in every minute for nearly five hours on Wednesday. The average donation has been around $38.
RAICES estimated a total of $14 million had been donated since June 16, which included the amount raised on Facebook and what the organization had received directly, said Katie Mullins, staff attorney with RAICES in San Antonio.
The minimum bond set for a single detained immigrant is $1,500, but fees could be upward of $5,000, and in certain instances, $10,000, Mullins said. She is one of about 50 attorneys working throughout the state providing free or low-cost legal help to immigrants and refugees.
Since April, more than 2,342 children have been separated from their parents after crossing the southern U.S. border, according to Department of Homeland Security figures obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday in response to mounting political pressure and national outcry, backing off his administration’s zero-tolerance policy. However, the need for funds and legal representation remained high for those detained.
The nonprofit RAICES plans to use the funds to hire more attorneys and fund its existing programs and services. Those services include the Family Reunification and Bond fund, which covers bonds to release parents, and the Legal Representation, Advocacy, and Education project, which works to provide universal legal representation for released unaccompanied minors in Texas.
In addition to funding legal services, RAICES is depositing money in commissary accounts for detainees so they can call family members and begin the process of tracking their children.
“The whole process is incredibly complex and confusing, and there are so many radical barriers to reunification” once a family is separated, Mullins said. “For some people, they have nowhere to turn [for] money in order to even make the initial phone call.”
In light of Trump’s executive order, RAICES announced Wednesday it also would use the donations to start a joint reunification fund where it would partner with other local organizations to ensure the money reach as many people as possible.
RAICES has reunited three families so far.
San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller told the Rivard Report that families seeking refuge in the United States often are fleeing dangerous circumstances, and have come with nothing but their hope for a better life for their children.
“These people, their lives have been damaged in so many ways, we have to think about how we are going to help them heal,”García-Siller said. “The trauma that they are experiencing arriving in the U.S. after leaving horrific conditions affects minds, hearts, and emotions, and affects people for good.”
While a change in policy is welcome, García-Siller said, “human dignity at the center of this picture has been missing,” which can be remedied by sharing blessings.
These blessings, he said, include the funding RAICES has received to help reunite immigrant children with their families.
“What started out as a hope to help one person get reunited with their family has turned into a movement that will help countless people,” Ta said. “When we all come together in community efforts like this, we can find an antidote to the feelings of helplessness.”
How and where can I donate to RAICES?
Either directly on their website: https://www.raicestexas.org/ or on the Facebook fundraising page: https://www.facebook.com/donate/490507544717085/10160522233250029/
This is not Mexico, this is the U ited States of America. We need to stay on top of stopping border crossing and send the children WITH their families right back to where they crossed. Why do we continue to imprison the illegals at our tax payer expense? No wonder the largest US Population is becoming Hispanic. We would never be so humanely treated if we tried to go to Mexico seeking asylum. My family are American Hispanics born here and dont want any more illegals crossing here to take my family’s jobs, if they come here to even work!
Trump, please dont back down.????
Anna, I think many would agree with your call to stop illegal border crossings and to send families with their children back to their country of origin without separating them.
Under Trump, illegal immigration has sharply declined, though there has been an uptick in the number of asylum requests from people fleeing violence and corruption in Central American countries.
Trump, unfortunately, has inherited a mess of an immigration situation. I think it’s safe to say that Republicans and Democrats alike want to end illegal immigration, though I don’t think Trump’s tough rhetoric and call to criminally prosecute every single illegal immigrant, which has lead to the separation of children from their families and the imprisonment of which you speak, is a sustainable or sensible way to end illegal immigration. Trump’s claim that Democrats want open borders is false and is a claim that I wish Democrats did a better job of rebutting.
Additionally, I’d challenge you to find ways that illegal immigrants (who have been in the US for years, have established lives here, and who have no criminal records) have in fact contributed to our economy.
So, if you agree that both Democrats and Republicans alike want to end illegal immigration, then what exactly have Democrats suggested to end it? I haven’t seen a solution put forward by the Democrats. What, if the Democrats had control of Congress and the presidency currently, would they do about the issue? Would this still be seen as an issue or would illegal immigration simply be allowed to continue as-is without report?
Trump administration’s actions are merely a symptom of a major problem we have in our country. Do you think that the children’s suffering, endangerment, peril, or fears began after they crossed the border and were separated? How many different ways could they have been extorted, kidnapped, raped, or murdered before they reached the border? They have been vulnerable throughout that entire process. I would argue that even when separated from their parents in the USA they are actually much safer then the situation they were just previously in, otherwise why continue to arrive in thousands while knowing the consequences?
The only reason a “no tolerance” policy ever gets instated is because after so many repeated attempts and failures to control the border with leniency and give people a legal means of entering the country, people by the thousands recklessly abandon that process and take advantage of the loopholes in order to secure themselves a place faster than others. They literally force our government’s hand to act. The more you break the laws, the harsher the government is going to become about enforcing them..this makes sense to me. There is clean logic to this.
It’s like when you’re driving on I-10 South in traffic and need to exit 410. You signal, check cars around you, and safely enter the exit lane with plenty of space remaining. You needed to do this because its a long line to the exit and many people want on to 410 to get home safely. As you finally approach the ramp, a speeding car nearly clips the exit barrier and shoves their way in front of a car 3 cars ahead of you. Maybe it was an emergency. Maybe they think they are the only ones who have done that so it’s okay…but that’s never the case. They’ve broken the social code. They’ve broken the law. They don’t care. They care about themselves. They don’t care about everyone else in line waiting patiently. We see it everyday. Illegal immigration is like that to those who want to enter our country legally.
Due to the high frequent number of people cutting in line or doing whatever it takes, the government decided to respond harshly to make it undesirable if you get caught. When one side ratchets up, why does it not make sense that the other does as well? How is Trump any more evil than the people who would risk their childrens lives to get ahead in the first place?
I’m just asking, sincerely, if you don’t think tough rhetoric is the answer, then what is? How do you suggest we solve the issue? Criticism is easy, solutions are much more complex. Your post is level headed and I appreciate that, but you don’t put forth any solutions.
You have brought up some really great points, and you’re right about the solutions being much more complex and the criticism easy. When Trump effectively ended DACA last year, I appreciated that he was in effect forcing Congress to pass legislation that would protect the Dreamers; however, we saw that Congress’s efforts were stymied by the inability to effectively compromise on immigration reform — the courts eventually stepped in and the DACA fix lost its urgency.
As a Democrat, and one who has worked closely with immigrants (or, “illegals”, since language in of itself has become polarized), many of whom were indeed undocumented, I tend to side with the more moderate Republicans who have been arguably more effective at presenting solutions towards immigration reform. Rep. Will Hurd’s bipartisan DACA bill, which includes some framework for increasing border security, is a start:
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/16/hurd-daca-bill/
However, I’m afraid that it’s increasingly difficult to present sensible immigration reform when the current administration’s solution is building a $20 billion wall while claiming that all Democrats want open borders. The Democrats could do a better job in rebutting this claim; I feel that this is simply not true, but is a claim that’s par for the course in these polarized times, and is undoubtedly believed by many of Trump’s supporters, much to my dismay.
As far as solutions go, I think the zero tolerance policy was implemented way too quickly, and we are seeing the fallout of it. Please convince me that there’s an easy way to reunite over 2,000 children with their parents. Did the DOJ have appropriate guidelines in place for reuniting this number of children with their parents? Will there be children who are never reunited with their parents?
I believe Trump’s harsh rhetoric has already resulted in illegal immigration reaching lower numbers since his election. However, the zero tolerance policy is inhumane and the fallout from it is borderline catastrophic.
Unless your family is 100% Native American then, they too, immigrated for one reason or another. The USA is a land of immigrants. You’re complaining about Hispanics (Latinx) becoming the largest minority, yet state your family is Hispanic. I think you’re having some cognitive dissonance along with some things you need to unpack. No one is taking your family’s jobs. In most cases, those seeking jobs fleeing violence in their home countries end up working minimum wage jobs.
didn’t the Native Ams come from somewhere else?
https://www.facebook.com/donate/490507544717085/10200467987684366/
I wish they were as compassionate regarding their fellow Americans as they are about other countries.
I think the money they’ve collected will be used up pretty quickly. While the media and left boasts of having turned Trump, it does not seem they understand what has happened. Under the Flores settlement of 1997, the federal government could only hold those under 18 for 20 days. That is why under 18s were being separated. Now, they will be held with their families (so-called), for as long as it takes. The Flores settlement will only apply to unaccompanied under 18s.
Can you provide links that include information of the media and the left’s boasts of changing Trump’s mind? I’ve read that many groups — the United Methodist Church and various other religious groups, for example — have been reported to have had an influence on the administration’s decision to issue an executive order ending family separations. Not to mention the public’s outcry and disapproval from Republicans and Democrats alike.
To say that the media and left “boasts” of having turned Trump sounds a bit hyperbolic — that’s why I’d like to see proof of this. I will add that it seems that pictures of children in peril, which have been featured by various media outlets, can be credited towards shaping the public’s perception of events (e.g., wars, famine) and/or raising awareness of such events. For that matter, I suppose one could claim that the media “boasted” about shaping Trump’s perception of the Syrian Civil War by providing images of children suffering after a chemical weapons attack.
Instead of another fence, why don’t we help Honduras and El Salvador control the brutal gang violence and provide economic incentives to provide jobs so these people can just stay in their countries to begin with.
Here’s a link to a gloating article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/21/trump-retreats-on-immigration/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.624011015108.
The use of pictures, other images, and fiction create perceptions that for some reason twist the minds of ordinary folks. In the current situation, Time Magazine has meanie Trump looming over a crying girl. It turns out, the girl was not separated from her mother, but the mother separated the child from her father who is happy with life in Honduras. Without telling him, she headed north with the kid for “a better life.” Now, who is responsible for that?
I was in LA during the Rodney King riots. The newsman (so-called) Stan Gold on KTLA played the video of King being subdued time and time and time again until the place blew up. He later received an award.
There are hundreds, thousands, of examples. But at the core, the media is irresponsible and sensationalizes everything. Today, whatever the problem, it’s a crisis that must be dealt with immediately.
The Washington Post article is an opinion piece. Show me opinion pages that don’t contain some level of “gloating” or publications praising their coverage of major news stories. That’s fair game for editorials, op-epds, and the like.
I think it’s hyperbolic to state that the media is irresponsible and sensationalizes “everything”, as you’ve claimed. Through selection bias, it’s easy to find examples of sensationalization to back up your claims. Opinion pieces are easy examples to provide proof of sensationalization. To claim that the media, as a whole, is “irresponsible” is bit of an exaggeration, is it not?
You’ve given an example of the Time cover — I certainly think that cover is a sensationalization; great example. However, in your other example, you’ve provided an example from a news event from the 90s. Again, an example of selection bias.
I challenge you to find another example that isn’t an opinion piece or a new story from another decade, particularly one that pertains to the current immigration issue of zero-tolerance.
I can only give you examples with which I am familiar. I can give you several images used by the press, not in editorial pieces, to misrepresent the Vietnam War. I can also give you a headline from the LA Times describing an attack on my base that was a big nothing burger but they made it seem like the end of the world.
As for the current immigration issue, isn’t the Time cover enough?
No, because Time magazine isn’t representative of media as a whole, which you have claimed is irresponsible, presumably as a whole. It’s just one example of a sensationalist magazine cover. It doesn’t speak for all of the media.
Obviously, this is misrepresentation of media as a whole being biased and irresponsible is something I take issue with. I don’t like speaking in absolutes and wish that those who constantly criticize the press would recognize the nuance of news coverage; differentiate between opinion pieces and news; recognize and acknowledge our tendency for selection bias in today’s media landscape.