‘Education, Not Separation’: Teachers March to Shelter for Immigrant Youth

On Independence Day, loads of educators marched to a shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, chanting requires freedom.
The protesters are delegates to the National Education Association, the kingdom’s largest instructors’ union. The NEA is keeping its annual representative meeting here July 4-7. But the protest turned into not sanctioned by using the NEA—it became a grassroots march prepared via educators, who were horrified to study their convention was blocks far from a facility for immigrant children.
“The experiences those children are going through are going to scar them for existence,” stated Gladys Márquez, a Chicago-vicinity excessive school instructor of English-language newbies and the chair of the country wide union’s Hispanic Caucus, who helped arrange the march. “As educators, we know that as a way to effect the entirety, from their mastering, their social-emotional properly-being, their sanity, their livelihoods—the whole lot. And we just don’t stand for that.”
Educators marched all the way down to the shelter decked out in crimson, white, and blue, and American flag garb, preserving symptoms and chanting slogans like, “This is what democracy seems like!” and “Down, down with separation, up, up with schooling.”
The facility is known as Casa Sunzal, and it is run by way of Southwest Key Programs, a controversial nonprofit that homes migrant youngsters who’re unaccompanied or who’ve been separated from their dad and mom. The organization says on its internet site that its venture is to provide a safe and friendly surroundings for children. Meanwhile, authorities-run immigration detention centers have come under hearth currently for squalid and overcrowded situations.
Neil Nowlin, the vice chairman for communications for Southwest Key, stated there are approximately 200 boys and women, aged sixteen and 17, currently housed at Casa Sunzal. The vast majority of them came to the USA on their personal, he stated, frequently from Honduras and Guatemala.
Nowlin stated 9 accredited teachers offer education to the youngsters in the safe haven for 6 hours a day, 5 days every week. The children research all of the basics, he said, together with English, records, and math, in addition to vocational training.
Southwest Key Programs has needed to near at the least two Arizona shelters remaining yr—one closure was because of reports of staffers abusing children in their care.
Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate, led a protest at Casa Sunzal closing week, pronouncing he couldn’t get any facts at the kids in the facility. Southwest Key Programs later replied to Houston information web site KHOU, pronouncing it turned into now not a prison but a shelter, and that 234 licensed experts take care of the children.
Still, educators on Thursday had been outraged at the thought of youngsters being held away from their dad and mom. They additionally see Casa Sunzal as a symptom of the bigger difficulty of America’ remedy of immigrant kids and families.
“As a teacher, I consider that all youngsters, and anyone, need to be respected, and kids should no longer be in cages,” stated Kathy Aslamy, who teaches close to Seattle. “We can not just take a seat by way of and be silent. This is not who we are as a rustic, this is not who we’re as a democracy. … I will endure witness to all of these children. I can’t see them in cages.”
Many teachers said they train immigrant college students, making this issue particularly personal to them. Some educators additionally talked about how they or their families are immigrants themselves.
“I consider myself, that I’m free, and I think they need to be unfastened as nicely,” said Heba Kazem, a Boston instructor who immigrated to the U.S. From Egypt. “[Teachers] apprehend the kind of trouble they are going via, so it’s important to be their propose.”