We are religious leaders serving communities of faith in Southwest Florida responding to the construction of a detention camp in the Everglades. Recent government actions are so extreme and egregious that they compel us to stand together to bear moral witness and say “Stop!”
Named “Alligator Alcatraz” by its promoters, this camp made up of cages in tents was built by the state to support the federal administration’s efforts towards mass deportation. Its construction takes a policy that has already gone too far and moves it into the realm of cruelty.
As people of deep faith, we believe in the sacred value of every human being. We honor the immigrant population, recognizing their value to the larger community and their honest efforts to build a life here among us. We see clearly that the majority of the people who are being uprooted and brought to these camps are not the hardened criminals the administration would like us to believe. The people they are pursuing so rigorously and stashing away so cruelly are mostly law-abiding human beings like us with stories, with families, with sorrows and regrets, with hopes and dreams. In fact, the crime that most have committed is to enter this country with the dream that they might be able to live a better life here than in their home country…