On August 9, 2018, Reproaction co-organized and co-sponsored an immigration panel titled, “Discussing Immigration Beyond Reform,” alongside Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, Kansas-Missouri DREAM Alliance, and ACLU of Missouri. Seventeen attendees joined in the discussion of how immigration is a reproductive justice issue, the ways detention centers affects families, LGBTQ experiences at detention centers, and how asylum seekers tie into it all.

We started out with two members of Resistencia, a poetry group, reciting relevant and powerful pieces. Following that performance, panelists discussed how what we may think of as ‘immigration issues’ are actually interrelated with other issues we tend to see as completely separate. The Trump administration’s  policy of separating parents from their children at detention centers operating at the US-Mexican border is just a part of the problem. People of all ages are being stripped of their human right to bodily autonomy via their confinement to cages and rampant sexual abuse at detention centers.

Panelists shared that, despite a court order, many families have not been reunited, and many of those that have are facing the journey ahead with children who no longer trust their parents (or anyone for that matter) and/or have lost their will/desire to speak. Speakers didn’t just talk about everything wrong with the ways the current administration is harming immigrants, they also discussed how the co-sponsoring organizations are helping, and what attendees could do to help as individuals and as members of these organizations. Even though the Trump administration has shown through policy and legal action that immigrants of color are not welcome regardless of the reasons why they are seeking refuge in the United States, there are social justice leaders in our communities and throughout the country who are working diligently to ensure that undocumented, documented, and asylum-seeking immigrants are all treated with dignity and receive the assistance they need to navigate the system.

You can see more coverage of the panel via the #KSMOTalksImmigration hashtag on Twitter.

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