07/20/2015

Lutherans support release of detained immigrant families

CHICAGO (ELCA) – Leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) expressed gratitude for a move by the Obama administration to begin releasing some detained mothers and children seeking asylum in the United States. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have begun the process of reviewing cases of families in detention and releasing women and children who have presented a credible case for seeking safety and other relief in the United States.

“The release of mothers and children from detention centers aligns us as a country with our truer self,” said ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth A. Eaton. “We have always been a people who provide refuge for those seeking asylum.”

“We are profoundly grateful that the United States is one step closer to fulfilling its responsibility and long-held value of protecting those fleeing persecution,” said Linda Hartke, LIRS president and CEO. “Children do not belong in jails – nor do their mothers who have acted only to protect their very lives. Detention is inherently traumatic and damaging, especially for people who have fled persecution and violence in search of safety,” she said in a July 13 LIRS news release.

Based in Baltimore, LIRS is one of the nation’s leaders in welcoming and advocating for refugees and immigrants, working on behalf of the ELCA.

“This is extraordinarily good news for mothers and children, some of whom we visited in detention centers along the United States-Mexico border,” said the Rev. H. Julian Gordy, bishop of the ELCA Southeastern Synod based in Atlanta. “I am grateful for the perseverance and good work of LIRS, ELCA churchwide leaders and ELCA Conference of Bishops who signed the letter to President Barack Obama earlier this year.”

In a March 27 letter to Obama, ELCA leaders joined U.S. faith leaders in urging the president to “end the harsh policy of family detention and employ alternatives to detention where deemed necessary.”

“We believe this practice to be inhumane and harmful to the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of this vulnerable population. We also believe that it is inappropriate and unjust to seek to deter anyone, especially a woman and her children, from fleeing violence in their homeland to seek safe haven in the United States,’ wrote the leaders.

The day the letter was sent, Gordy, along with a group of other Lutheran and Catholic leaders, visited the Dilley Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, where they met with and heard stories of women who have fled violent situations in Central America.

According to LIRS, more than 6,300 mothers and children have been incarcerated in government family detention facilities since July 2014. Some families have now been detained for more than a year. In June, the Department of Homeland Security signaled a change in policy was coming when it admitted that family detention – which is not required by law for many of the families now in detention – is an inefficient use of federal resources.