If ICE Takes Me, The Kids…
October 16 was just another Thursday at BCNH, except for the immigration attorney.
That was new.
Our Haitian and Ukrainian clients are increasingly afraid that ICE could arrest and detain them, even though they are all here legally and have committed no crimes. Sadly, their fears are well grounded. So we helped them prepare for that nightmare by developing “caregiver plans:” legally binding instructions designating a guardian to take responsibility for their kids should the parents be disappeared one afternoon.
Patrick Long, an immigration attorney (and State Rep) from Manchester, was here to walk our clients through the forms and signatures. We were able to retain him thanks to a grant from the NH Children’s Health Foundation.
Not all of our clients were fully prepared for their appointments. It takes courage and determination to plan for such a horrific possibility. Some emotional resistance and procrastination is understandable. Frankly, setting up a clinic like this has required BCNH to come to grips with the darkness that the Trump Administration has spread across the country. How can it be necessary to help families prepare to be ripped apart, and not by some gang or terrorist, but by the United States itself?
We commend the parents who make these plans for the children. Virtually everything refugees do is an investment in their children’s future; their hard work, their drive to succeed, it’s all to create a future for their children that won’t include political persecution, gang violence, civil war, Russian bombs, the Taliban.
BCNH’s focus has been on the parents and children who could be disrupted by ICE, but perhaps we should also be including the parents’ employers in the plan. They should get a prompt notification that their employee won’t be showing up for work today or any time soon.
Why are we not all planning for—and insisting on—a future in which New Hampshire’s businesses have the employees they need, New Hampshire’s communities have the young, ambitious, and diverse families they need, and where displaced people from around the world can live in peace knowing that their children are safe?
