The Alliance for Family Reunification (AFR) of Prince William County and other groups will hold a second candlelight vigil and protest, Thursday evening, outside a Virginia facility housing immigrant children who were separated from their families by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
The Bristow protest and vigil will take place July 26 from 8- 9 p.m., outside of Youth For Tomorrow, which is located at 11835 Hazel Circle Drive in Bristow, Virginia. Youth For Tomorrow is currently housing immigrant children who were separated from their families.
The administration faces a July 26 deadline to reunite up to 3,000 immigrant children separated from their parents under that policy. As of last week, only 14 percent of the children had been reunited with their families. Only 57 of 103 children under the age of five have been reunited, despite a court-mandated July 10 deadline.
At the vigil and protest outside the Youth For Tomorrow facility in Bristow, Virginia, the alliance will demand that the administration take immediate and transparent steps to reunify the children with members of their biological family.
It is not a protest against Youth for Tomorrow, but the administrations policies regarding the children. AFR held a similar protest to mark the missed July 10 deadline.
AFR has grave concerns in regards to have the unification process is being handled, and fears that instead of being unified with their parents, children could be placed in foster homes indefinitely.
According to Politico, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would not promise the federal government would meet its court-ordered deadline to reunify migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"We will do our best, but we will not cut corners," Nielsen said at the Aspen Security Forum.
The New York Times reported that officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection deleted records that were needed to connect parents with their children.
Additionally, a recent Washington Post Editorial claims the administration severely bungled the reunification process.
The result is Third World-style government dysfunction that combines the original sin of an unspeakably cruel policy with the follow-on ineptitude of uncoordinated agencies unable to foresee the predictable consequences of their decisions — in this case, the inevitability that children and parents, once sundered, would need at some point to be reconnected.
The Alliance for Family Reunification of Prince William County is a non-partisan coalition of concerned individuals and organizations seeking the immediate and transparent reunification of families separated at the border by the Trump administration.
Based upon a media release by The Alliance for Family Reunification. Articles cited were included in the release.
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