Friends Meeting of Austin (Quakers) holds the victims of mass detention and deportations in the Light and calls for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE’s recent shooting of Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez in Austin and his continuing detention without adequate medical care are only one example of the cruel and dehumanizing treatment being perpetrated by ICE nationwide.
Established in 2002 as part of the Homeland Security Act, ICE has become an agency that evades legal accountability, kills, brutalizes, dehumanizes, separates, detains, deports, and terrorizes people, citizens as well as the undocumented.
Friends believe that there is that of God in every human being and seek to love thy neighbor, no exceptions. We hold in the Light those involved, including ICE agents, and we are called to work ceaselessly to diminish violence in all forms. Friends Meeting of Austin calls upon Congress to abolish ICE immediately and to facilitate a just and humane immigration system.