Rally in support of immigrant families set Wednesday at Hays Courthouse

Local grassroots organization Mano Amiga will hold a rally on Wednesday to show support for keeping immigrant families together and out of detention facilities. The event is scheduled the day before the American civil Liberties Union’s “Families Belong Together” Rally at the Border. Participants in the San Marcos demonstration are encouraged to attend the ACLU’s event if they can.

At Mano Amiga’s rally, scheduled for 5:30-7 p.m. at the Hays County Courthouse, speakers from several pro-immigrant groups will discuss the “zero tolerance” immigration policy and its results.

Mano Amiga has issued a statement condemning the executive order signed June 20 to keep families together, calling the decision an “intentional obfuscation of the fact that the order allows the U.S. government to jail men, women and children indefinitely” and pointing out that it does nothing to reunite families that have already been separated.

“We need to stop prosecuting parents for asking for asylum and seeking refuge. People are coming here because they are afraid in their home countries,” Mano Amiga co-founder Karen Muñoz said. “We need to welcome them into this nation which, for so long, has claimed to be a country of immigrants. We should live up to those words. We need to fight against incarceration and against internment camps. The pursuit of happiness is a foundational principle of the United States and the way we’re treating these people is fundamentally opposed to that principle. We should not be criminalizing these children’s parents. Families belong together, but not in detention.”