Four-year-old Luka Quiñones lit a candle on Sunday night to pay homage to the immigrant network and explicit hope for the other young people who have been separated from their families.
The son of Alliance control team member Gia Quiñones, one of 30 to 40 people most dressed in a coronavirus protective mask who attended a socially remote candle vigil at the Universalist Unitarian Church in Spartanburg.
The occasion organized through the Unitarian Church for Alliance, a social network that promotes the improvement of the quality of life of the Latinx network in Spartanburg.
Gia Quiñones said the wake-up component of a call to national action after allegations of serious human rights violations were recently reported at a U. S. immigration detention center and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Georgia.
Church pastor Scott Neely said the rally “is aimed at explicit solidarity with immigrants. “
“These are other people we all have for our food and our economy,” Neely said of the immigrant community. “They are an integral component of our community. We need to express ours for their humanity and how connected and countered we are in them. “
Alice Sutton, president of the church’s social justice board, said there is nothing more heartbreaking than a child separated from her parents.
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However, this has been declining for decades and is only getting worse with stricter immigration policies that are causing the breakdown of families, he said.
“You take 3- and 4-year-olds and don’t even know their parents’ names,” he said.
Quiñones said many asylum seekers came here from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, locked in tents near the border, where young people are separated from their parents.
To download the legal entry, immigrants will need to provide the right documents and find out why they are seeking asylum, he said.
“The formula makes it more difficult to unload asylum,” he said.
At the Irwin County Detention Center in South Georgia, detained Spanish-speaking immigrants spoke of invasive gynecological exams, hysterectomies performed with consent, lack of physical care and harmful situations that led to large outbreaks of COVID-19.
According to ICE’s knowledge included in a USA Today article on September 17, two other people from the Irwin County facility have been referred to hysterectomy fitness professionals since 2018, but in a statement, Dr. Ada Rivera, medical director of ICE Health Service Corps.
“Detainees have informed consent and medical intervention in such a way that a hysterectomy would never be performed against the will of an inmate,” he said.
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The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was reviewing a report from a whistleblower that federal immigration detainees had undergone unnecessary gynecological surgeries, adding complete hysterectomies, without their consent, according to USA Today. Immigration lawyers said they were interviewing detainees to the extent of the problem.
Natalia Swanson, also a member of alliance’s control team, called the allegations a “horrible violation of our human dignity. “
“Just listening to what has been done and the story of injustices in detention centers leads you to a chance more,” Swanson said. “I think strength comes in combination to cry and be aware of what’s going on. At the end of the day, we need to create a sense of hope. “
Sutton said many of the 23,000 Latinx citizens in Spartanburg County were undocumented, some of whom were young men separated from their families.
Many deport if they go ahead and tell their stories, he said.
“Your coverage is unknown,” he said.
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In addition, he said families with at least one undocumented user were eligible to obtain stimulus checks under the CARES Act, even if their children are U. S. citizens, he said.
It is estimated that 43% of the Latinx network is below the poverty line in Spartanburg County.
In response, Sutton Church created a fund for these families, other churches came together, and the effort spread across the state, he said.
To donate to the fund: https://uucs. org/support-our-imjected/.
Neely and Swanson said they expect more people to be aware of the difficult situations immigrants face.
“A basic workout is treating others the way we need to be treated,” Neely said.
USA Today contributed to this article.