Friends Meeting of Cambridge, holding to our deepest beliefs in mercy, peace and justice, cannot abide any U.S. policy which forcibly separates children from their parents, those who are immigrants and asylum-seekers. As Quakers, parents, children and United States citizens, we condemn this profoundly and deliberately violent course. We utterly reject the idea that God or Scripture condones such actions. Family internment camps are little better, evoking the shame of the Japanese internment camps of World War Two. We must work to reunite the nearly 2,300 parents and children already separated. International law and human decency require us to keep ports of entry open to asylum-seekers who are often fleeing brutal violence in their home country. We call on President Trump, Attorney General Sessions, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to see that such cruelty makes no U.S. citizen safer but only sows misery, and diminishes us all, the jailer and the jailed, the liars and those lied to. Let us turn from this evil work.
