 I wonder if there are people here today who have not been here before? Excellent. Well, welcome. We're so glad that you came today. And I would like to know who you are. You can start over here. If you would just tell us your name and your faith community or the organization. My name is Chris Lopez and I'm from St. Louis physical church. Welcome. You're our new partner in clothing. Who else had a hand up? Sister Wayne Ferry. I'm a DBM sister from Chicago. And we're for shareholders of Corset. Excellent. Thank you so much. We're welcome to Texas Weather. I'm Sister Judy Vaughan. I'm from Seattle and I'm part of the same group that went us with. We visited Dilly yesterday and we're shareholders of Corset. Excellent. And you're voting shareholders, right? Who else? I'm Jelly and I'm Martin. We're from North Side Church of Christ. Welcome. We're so glad you're here. I'm Michael Langford from Hamilton, Texas with an organization called Family and Friends. And we are supporting asylum seeking families as sponsors. Whoa! You can sign up right here if you're looking for someone. Where was another hand? I see the hand. It's kind of like hitting to our church. See it and not get there. Hi, I'm Mary Goodwin. I work with the Jesuits of the Central and Southern Province. We've been working with Corset and GEO trying to get them to adopt and implement human rights policies and then be transparent about reporting on that. And that's what was happening over here this morning. Is that right? Oh, thank you. We're just really glad to be able to host you and to have all of you as part of our group. I'm Katie Marzo with the American Immigration Council on the Delay Progoal Project. Excellent. Thank you for being here. I'm Chase Cobb. I'm just signed up and ready to work. That's how we like to hear. And a very warm welcome to all of you. This morning I've asked Reverend George Bradley to say our opening prayer. Reverend Bradley's church, one of Reverend Bradley's churches is El Divino Salador. And they have given us two rooms now for several years in which to store and put together the backpacks that go to the bus. It's just any possible three moments to have that kind of generosity. Full disclosure, I'm not the pastor there anymore. But I still have friends there. Let us pray. First of all, God, we are so grateful that you have called us all here together and we know it's summer and through your providence you're taking care of people who need to have their rest. But nevertheless, you've set this pathway before us by which we may live out your compassion and your care through our efforts and our thinking and our vision and our hearing. So strengthen us by your spirit that we might walk slowly and deliberately or quickly and maybe even with the odd misstep that we may advocate for your children who are seeking succor in their lives. We thank you for everyone who is here and we pray that our eyes and ears will be open today. This is our prayer in Jesus' name. I believe, was Sister Sharon going to introduce our guest for today? You are. All right, Rebecca, wonderful. Come on down. Thank you. Thank you so much. And let's give Liddy Dianna and her baby a big welcome before I even introduce and give her your bio. Liddy Dianna, let me tell you a little bit about her and I'm sure I won't do you justice because I know you've been working at this now for a long time. She lived in Dallas as a young child really and went to school up there, did not have documents and her experiences there as a student has led her in the direction that she has taken throughout her short life which has been many, many very positive things. So she really is focused on education and educating and creating safe places for students who are undocumented and so she worked at co-founded the immigrant schools program. She graduated at a UTSA, has her degree from there as an undocumented student and then she worked for Teach for America where she placed undocumented students, educators in schools across the country in 11 states across the country so she was able to recruit them and place them in places of education. She recently had a baby, had a baby girl, where is she? She's way in the back and so she continues to work in education. She has co-founded a school here for immigrants and she wants to create safe places for them. Just as an ad lib, my daughter teaches at Judson ISD you may know that immigrants are overachievers, students are overachievers and so what Sara told me the other day was that the scores for immigrant students are what have picked up the scores for the overall school. Isn't that amazing? And so, absolutely, they were trying to move all the, this is for you to know what's happening in the city, they were trying to move all the immigrant students, bilingual which means immigrant, to another school, take them all, there's 200 of them, put them in a smaller school, I don't know how they were planning on doing that. And when that happened, obviously the scores for the rest of the school were going to go down and so we fought and I was involved in that because I always liked a good fight to keep those kids in that school, not because of the scores, but because it was going to be difficult for them to go to the other school, transportation, their families and all of that. It was uncalled for, international. By the way, I'm going to at some point ask for your help in making sure that those kids are kept where they are. Candlewood is a really nice school, it's a beautiful school and they were going to be put in portables. Okay, just want you to know that. So here we go with Abideliana Carrizales who is wonderful, who has been at it for a long time and look at her, she's I think 20. That's great. So anyway, give her a big welcome. I'm telling you that I look like 20. I'm already starting the morning at a good note. But thank you so much for having me here to talk about an issue that is very dear to my heart. For the next 20 minutes, I'm hoping to share a bit more about what M-Schools is, the work that we're doing here in San Antonio to support our undocumented students and families who are in K-12. I'll give you a quick update on DACA and in-state tuition for undocumented students and then if I'm good, if I'm really good, I'll have a few minutes for some questions. So I'll make sure that I kind of go through this so that I can have that space to answer some questions that you may have. But to tell you a little bit more about myself, from what Rebecca shared. So I came from Mexico when I was 11 years old as an undocumented student. I grew up undocumented, went to K-12, came to UTSA, and then I went to UT Austin, all being an undocumented student. And this was back in the day when we weren't really having conversations about being undocumented. There weren't many scholarships for undocumented students of myself, so I had a very difficult experience, especially in K-12. None of my teachers made me feel comfortable enough to share my status with them. None of them created a space where my experience as an undocumented student feel validated. And as a result, I never shared my status with any of them. And that prevented me from getting information, from getting valuable resources that my family needed. For me, learning about the opportunities that I had, especially in higher ed. When I did share my status with my high school counselor and as a senior in high school, he had never met anyone that didn't have a social security number and thought that maybe my parents just didn't know how to get me one. So he called immigration. When I was sitting in his office, in his school, he called immigration because he thought he wanted to help me. He wanted to figure out how to get me a social security number. And he called immigration and he put me on the phone with an immigration official. Imagine that happening now. And the immigration official was asking me, but like, how do you mean you don't have a social? When did your parents come here? How did they come here? And they were asking me this question and I just got this feeling that this does not sound good. And so I told them that I didn't have that information and I was going to call back, you know, because I had to ask my parents. And that was the last time I went to my counselor's office. So unfortunately, instances like this doesn't just happen to me. There's more than 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. 3.9 million of them are children who are in K-12, who are either undocumented or have at least one parent who's undocumented. Here in Texas, 13% of K-12 students are undocumented or have at least one parent who's undocumented. 13% is more than one out of 10 kids in our schools. Yet, despite this large number, less than 1% of school districts in the country have passed resolutions to support of undocumented students to protect undocumented students in our schools. We have 1,023 school districts here in Texas. How many do you think out of those 1,023 have passed a resolution here in Texas to protect undocumented students? Take a guess. Someone, give me a guess. Five. Five. So what else? Eight out of 1,000. You are close. Here in San Antonio, only one. In San Antonio, San Antonio ISD is the only school district that has passed a resolution saying that they're protecting the right to undocumented students. This is unacceptable, unacceptable because in this country, there's a Supreme Court ruling that states that every child has the right to a K-12 education regardless of their status or their parent's immigration status. So it is the responsibility of the schools to make sure they're having laws that protect them, policies that protect the rights of our students. Also, I'm sure that you just heard yesterday too what happened in Mississippi. There is one of the largest rates in this country. In the past 10 years, over 680 people were detained. I was looking at the news this morning of all the children that were left behind, family members, neighbors who were trying to give them food, trying to take care of all those kids that were left without their parents. This is happening and what's happening is that all these rates are impacting our kids, our kids who are in our schools. And if you have less than 1% of schools actually having plans in place to protect them, these kids are coming to school and afraid, are coming to school really with a lot of trauma and our schools are not prepared to support students the way that they need to. In California two years ago, I'm sure you've probably seen this video about the student called Fatima. She was 13 years old. She was on her way to school with her dad and her sisters when immigration detained her dad. And in front of her, they took his dad as she was going to school. So this is a clip from her. My dad was detained in front of me on my way to school. It was the hardest thing to watch, but I still went to school because my father showed me the importance of an education. I knew I had someone to support me there. I want to make sure that our schools are like the school that Fatima is in. Because she still went to school knowing that school had her back and the school had people in place to support her. I don't think that that's a reality here in Texas. It's certainly not a reality here in San Antonio and we need to change that. And that is why I founded M-Schools. Because I want to make sure that my experience in K-12 is not the same experience that students have. Here in San Antonio and Dallas, anywhere in Texas. So one of the things that we do in M-Schools, we do three things. One, we provide professional development for educators, for every teacher and school staff in our K-12 school. We provide professional development on things that they can do to make sure that they're supporting undocumented students, that they're having conversations about immigration through their curriculum, that they're assigning books about immigration and how beautiful it is to get an immigrant in their schools. And that's one of the things that we do, in our development, we have partnerships with school districts here in San Antonio. SAISD is one of our partners. Southwest ISD is another one of our partners as well. The second thing that we do is that we're trying to work really closely by organizing our families, organizing allies to make sure that school districts, more than one school district here in San Antonio can pass policies supporting undocumented students and families. I've had conversations with school districts here in San Antonio and many of them said this is not an issue. I haven't had any parent come to me and tell me that they need help. So that is what's happening. So we need to make sure that we're putting some pressure because schools are responsible to support our students. They don't have to wait for someone to come to them and tell them please support me. It is their responsibility to do it. So that's the second thing that we're trying to do. And then the third thing, we actually do workshops specifically for immigrant students and families to share information about their rights, and we have a program called chatlas which is kind of like an informal conversation. So we bring immigrants mostly undocumented families once a month. We gather together and they choose different topics that they want to talk about. So we've talked about purchasing at home, being undocumented. We've talked about opening a bank account. We've talked about accessing health services, fascination for their kids. This is all the topics that they want to talk about. So we're creating a space for them to engage in those conversations. And we believe that by those three things we can actually create a type of schools that our kids deserve. So that's what we do at M schools. In our first year, we were able here in San Antonio to impact 960 immigrant mostly undocumented students and families by providing workshops and all your rights by going to schools and talking to them and also through our chat lab program. We've also trained over 950 educators, teachers who are teaching over students throughout Texas. And then we've also been working with 20 school districts and organizations throughout Texas and also in New York to make sure that they're incorporating some of these practices into their organizations or their school districts. So this is what we do at M schools. I'm here located in San Antonio so this is our headquarters for M schools and I'm just really passionate to make sure that San Antonio can become the city where we can model for the rest of the country what it looks like when our schools are supporting or undocumented students. So we have a unique opportunity and I'm excited about that because there are school districts here in the city that gets it, there are school districts here that really want to make a difference for immigrant students. So I feel like with all of us together we can actually make that a reality. Here's a quote from one of our students in our chat lab. He said, M schools workshops have helped me understand and achieve your goals by army yourself with the right supported information. We have a lot of undocumented students in our chat lab who are in high school who don't have DACA and who really want to go to college. And like me, many of them thought that they couldn't go to college because they were undocumented. Like me, many of them are telling me I don't have DACA, I thought I couldn't go to college so I was just going to drop out or go back to my country of origin or just not pursue higher education. So we're doing a lot to make sure that our students are learning about their rights in education and they're realizing that there's an opportunity for them to access higher ed without having DACA status. So I'm really proud about that. But we need your help. So here's some ways in which all of you here can help in this cause. The first thing is to make sure that all of our schools in San Antonio have policies and practices in place to support our undocumented students. I don't know where you all live but one question that I want you to ask is whatever school district that you lived in do they have policies to support our undocumented students? How can we make sure that we're asking those questions to our school leaders and school administrators? Do they have policies to protect our undocumented students? Ask them if they have a protocol in place. What happens if an immigration official comes into a school? Do they interact with immigration agent? Do they even know the difference between an ICE warrant and a judicial warrant? I had a presentation with 200 teachers on Tuesday and I asked them to raise their hand if they knew the difference between a judicial warrant and an ICE warrant. None of them raised their hand. Because this is not something that we're trained in schools and educators so how can we make sure that whoever's in the school is prepared and know what to do if immigration comes into the schools? Right now in San Antonio we don't have schools that have these plans and that needs to be in place. The second thing is to make sure that we're increasing access to resources. There are wonderful organizations in San Antonio that provide so many important services and resources to our immigrant community. The problem is that our immigrant community are afraid and don't feel that trust to come out and actually access those resources. So a lot of those resources unfortunately go on tap. So what we have to do is that we have to bring those resources to our families. We cannot just host an event and wait for them to come to us because it's not going to happen. We have to bring these resources to them and schools are a great way to leverage this. Schools are bringing families, families coming to the schools all their time. Why aren't they, when they come what can they leave with information about their rights? What can they leave with information about where to access health services? What can they leave, use that space, that interaction that they have in our schools to leave and to access important information that is vital for our community. We have to leverage our schools and our schools need to be responsible and they need to know that they have this opportunity to support our immigrant students and families. So again, ask whatever school district or schools are close by, what are the policies? Are they sharing information to students? Are they utilizing or leveraging that interaction that they have with immigrant families or any parent to share resources that are vital for their success. And then lastly, create partnerships with schools. Like conversation and churches need to create partnerships with schools. There was a rating in 2006 in Ohio and it was a very small town. There was like 380 people detained and there was a lot for this small town. So what happened is that all of the people, most of the people that were detained had children at the school. So the school what they did was that they just held their children so if the parents did not come to pick up their children, they took everyone to the local church. And then they took everyone to the local church and that's where parents were coming to pick up their children. They had a partnership with the local church to make sure that their kids, no one else were touching this kids by their parents or someone that knew them. That's the type of partnerships that we need to establish here in San Antonio. With congregations, with worships, with places of faith, with everyone. This is a work that we all have to do together. And that was a beautiful example that happened there in Ohio that in the midst of that tragedy that our community were coming together. We need to have something like that here in San Antonio. Okay, so DACA and Dream Act. I want to talk about in situation. So right now, maybe probably also last month that the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on DACA. So they're going to make a decision. They're actually going to be hearing about DACA on November 12th. Given the makeup of the Supreme Court, it is likely that it's not going to that we don't know what will happen, but it is likely that it might not be a good outcome. So we are telling everyone who currently has DACA to renew as soon as possible. This is another way for us to also support our community is $495 to renew. That's a lot of money for our folks. A lot of money, especially if we have families who have two or three kids that could potentially renew their DACA status. This is a lot of money. And I know with Tino and with different organizations we were discussing about this late last year about ways that we can all fundraise money as a community here in San Antonio to help pay for some of these fees for students. So that's currently what is happening with DACA. Things continue to be in limbo. Many of the people especially here in San Antonio who have DACA just continue to kind of live their life in a two-year increment always kind of figuring whether or not they're going to have something part-minute. So it's still a battle that needs to be identified. But that is the latest on things we should note more on November of this year. So if you know anyone who has DACA status encourage them to apply maybe if you're at a weekend host some fundraising events for them especially if you know people fundraise events to help them pay for that fee. And then for the Dream Act Dream and Promise Act this is a piece of legislation that is actually really close to the Dream Act that was introduced in 2007 which will provide a pathway for citizenship for many undocumented youth in this country. Many of them currently have DACA. So this is more of a permanent solution that we all need. It passed successfully passed the House Judiciary Committee and used to go to the floor to pass the floor and then the Senate need to come up with a similar bill. We're optimistic but again we know the makeup of the Senate and you know it's going to be a very challenging fight so we don't know really if this is something that may happen. So right now for our undocumented students and families this is a very, very difficult time a very tough time and it has been like that for many years so I just want you to remember one thing about them that they're so resilient one of the most resilient people that you're ever going to meet because imagine living in a country that constantly tells you you don't belong constantly is trying to say you have access to this, you don't have access to this you can do this, you can do that and yet they wake up every morning, they smile they take their kids to school and they're like our neighbors and they smile and they do all these things. There's so much strength and resilience in our kids and I think we need to have those conversations and highlight that as much as possible With in-state tuition that is still in place nothing has happened with in-state tuition in Texas now if you're in Texas, really since 2001 if you're in Texas, you have been here for three years and have graduated from a Texas high school you can access in-state tuition and receive state financial aid even if you're undocumented that's how I was able to go to UTSA and UT Austin I was able to get my school paid for because of that law of that state law, that is in place and you do not need to have DACA in order for you to access in-state tuition. So if you know undocumented students who don't have DACA who have lived here in this country for a while who are graduating from a Texas high school they can go to college they don't need to have DACA they can go to college and you can connect them with us because that does one of the services and the support that we provide for students. So in terms of what you can do on this side and this is specifically with DACA, Dream Act and in-state tuition you promote a fair way that we can create aid as a community scholarships, a scholarship opportunity for undocumented students we need to leverage the philanthropy sector here in San Antonio. There's so many people that give them money through this and Antonio Area Foundation they have a lot of scholarships that they provide to students some of them required, most of them required for students to be U.S. citizens why is that a requirement? For philanthropy to make sure they remove that requirement. This is our people in San Antonio who should have access to those funds to be able to go to college so let's figure out how we can motivate and encourage the philanthropy sector here to donate and make those funds available to our students who don't have status and then with employment and internships we need to figure out what are the businesses here in San Antonio that are immigrant friendly businesses that understand they're creating like safe places for immigrant those that have DACA status to work right now for many of our students who are undocumented they don't have a way to intern or get paid for internships so we need to work with our higher ed institutions with employers, with businesses to make sure that they make it easy for students to intern with them without having to show that they have a social security number especially this unpaid, but not paid, internships they need to be able to do that we should be asking those questions with employers with businesses, what are they doing to create opportunities for immigrant youth to participate in to learn those skills so those are other ways in which we can be be helpful on those students and I don't know how much I might have but this is a question so I think I can take maybe one or two questions yes and I mentioned one of our members most of our membership is immigrant women a lot of them are undocumented and they mentioned that on the south side ISD they could not take their children to the doctor they did not have a Texas ID to take them to a doctor's appointment they were requiring that the school district south side ISD so she was saying that in the south side the school district maybe south side south side ISD were requiring parents to show a driver's license or a Texas ID in order for them to take their children out of school for medical appointment or for any of those things this is so unfortunately this tends to happen a lot I want you all to know something the law in Texas does not require you to show our parent to show a driver's license or a Texas ID for them to come get their children out of school you can show a Mexican passport a passport from Honduras you can show a passport for whatever country you're from or a madrigula to get your kid from school you're not required to have a driver's license or a Texas ID so that's a violation of law however a lot of school districts because every school district they don't know this information they all assume that we're all US citizens in this country that every parent has a driver's license I've been to so many schools here in San Antonio the first thing I get asked when I go to the front office is for my driver's license so one of the things that I do in this training that I have for educators for front office school staff is about that about the things that we can do in our schools to make sure that we're creating safe spaces for immigrant families and asking for an ID that they don't have is not a safe practice to create that safe environment for them so that is completely wrong that is a violation they do not need to have a Texas driver's license to get their kids from school so any other type of ID that has been issued by the government which means that they can use their password from the country of origin or any other ID that they have but this is unfortunately what is happening yes ma'am so they're not reapplying for DACA these are people who already were granted DACA prior to 2017 so they already have it they already have a two year worth remit so what we're asking them is to renew so they can get at least another two more years in case something happens in November they have that additional two more years and that's what we're asking people to do I will take one more question and if not I wanted to end with this quote but does there any other question yes there are some cards with me that I'll pass out I don't think I put it in oh maybe I did oh look up there that's my email but I'll also give you my cell phone number and I'll have some cards as well but I'll end it with this slide can we all just recite this together it is our duty to fight for freedom it is our duty to win we must love each other and support each other we have nothing to lose but our chains here's my information I'll have some cards as well so I'm having to pass this around thank you for having me this morning to share information about our school yes we're in New York my co-founders in New York so we're covering those two states for now but in two years we're helping to expand to the next seven cities where most undocumented lives which includes places in Nevada and California and Georgia and Illinois so we do have some funds to expand to other states in the next two to three years thank you again thank you I forgot to tell you we're all moving to Kentucky to vote for Amy McGrath get you through the senate try to get you through the senate before I introduce Jean our treasurer I'd like to introduce someone that I never get to introduce because she jumps up too fast but it's her turn to kind of take over this meeting Linda Baxter and I co-chair this committee and we divide the work evenly I do the fun part and she does the hard part the reason we have backpacks coming every day is because Linda has raised funds she's written grants she's conversed with denominational organizations to collect the money we need and just the other day I heard her say something that is so significant she said like well tell me if we need more money I need to raise it it was not a question of well we might have to stop doing that particular thing we'll just get more money which I know since I have the fun it means she will just find that money for us so that we can continue to do what we do and so when she steps up well I'll let you give her a round of applause for the round of this organization Gene Heidelman is usually racing all over south Texas in his truck carrying blankets and carrying this and that for real Texas but today he's here with our trainer's report thank you I was racing around getting a haircut so I didn't get here in time to hand these out so here we can pass there's not enough for everybody so I can share the financial statements anyhow the difference between Leonard is that Leonard always reminds me that we're running late so I have to hurry but I still will hurry one of the things that has happened is that this is a June report and now we're into August well that's going to change the purchase of some software so that we'll be able to get more current data the lack of timely data hasn't been too much of a problem because we had money where that really becomes a problem is if you start running close then we've been fortunate that we haven't been running close but if you look at the statement the obvious one that all of us see very quickly is backpacks as of June for the month of June we spent $32,649.72 on backpacks for the year it was $173,000 on backpacks that's our big expense in just running well over budget that's what Leonard is placing money for I might add that that does not include all the donated things the in kind there's much higher than that for the month we did raise $10,000 more than we spent and for the year we've raised $17,527 more than we spent so financially we're doing okay but that can change if the money quits coming in because it is still going to I just wanted to announce if any of you have thriving insurance or perhaps other insurances you can check with your own insurance company they are willing to donate $500 a year to an organization of your choice with you could just fill out a little form is it thriving action team excellent so check yes it's easy for you to do and your bank account stays just the same as it always was did you have any questions for Jean I'm not trying to be cool or to cover my eyes because I'm crying I really have difficulty with Mary Grace sometimes she's very hard to work with I wrote my glasses today and I'm at age now where I honestly can't see my bathroom so I'm having to wear my only other pair okay for our minute so we have 55 minutes we're going to get out of here on time so I need everybody who comes up to speak to not have to be more than 5 minutes really 3 see what I mean well because I have people and sister Sharon's not here today but I have sister JT and they look at me and I know that I need to keep things on time okay so sister Pat do we have anything and then also would Mary Grace if you have anything Mary I'm just going down the board members if you have anything please come up so we can do this I live with JT and she's sitting in front of me our committee met and we have some new members and what we're doing right now is taking the chief issues that we want to that we are concentrating on and become specialists each of us specialists in the one that has a passion and then to be able to use some of the newer software we're working with to be able to send out to the membership when things are timely because a lot of us all of us belong to a variety of different credible groups that have the same heart the same passion the same direction that we do and we want the whole of membership to be able to send in responses and also to educate so we'll also have and we'll be sending out another link to take action but also pieces of information that we find helpful for example the border the whole border project has outlined an incredible fashion the process by which one from a sign at the border to whatever happens thereafter which is a complicated but another goal that we have is to deal with the varieties of families we belong to groups we belong to have very different approaches to immigration and sister Sharon who's also on this committee not today sent out a paper that will be sending it's called Beyond Partisanship there's also a toolkit with it for when you're getting together with your family you can leave and decide to see each other again in the next five years so it's educational as well as action oriented so if you have any questions in that table in the back and one of our newer members said this little paper it's basically about trying to have short enough but interesting enough and honest enough that it can be an elevator speech that you can use anywhere and survive thank you Terry anything for collaboration good Joe could you speak to this Joe can you speak about collaboration not this so we're going to send it out on this serve today but just take this information down if you can attend okay it's a concert that's being given at Madison Square Presbyterian Church and it's to benefit the IWC so it's at two o'clock Madison Square Presbyterian Church filigree is the name of the group yes sister Susan we'll give you five minutes because you have a lot more to do I'll take everybody's time sister Susan I'm with the Benedictine sisters and I always say our monastery is down the street down 910 in and just our corporate responsibility project for those that are new we put together these articles and some of the different court cases and some of the things that are going on in our area and we kind of compile those as part of our ministry to the coalition and so someone was teasing me before we started all these meetings this morning that it's not fake news we subscribe to these different publications so that we can have the articles because many of you know you can only get the first sentence or two if you're not a subscriber sometimes on the internet so we feel like that's part of our ministry here so this just keeps growing and growing we try to put together some of the main articles that are happening and so there's really not enough time to go through everything in five minutes but you can look and see we've tried to group them according to some of the things around the child detention but also the one of the things that just popped out to me on the front page there is how many people have been apprehended by the border patrol in the first nine months of the fiscal year of our government 688,000 so but you can just page through and just see some of the topics and some of the areas that we try to document over the different you know just since our last meeting so and I think that you know like sort of in there too we have some of our local stories about our city trying to get reimbursed for some of these immigration funds that have been spent and I know Tino is here today too representing our city and you know just so many of the things that are happening collaboratively here which is really awesome and I know one of the articles Henry Quayar said that those funds were going to be delayed and so we'll see what happens there but there's many many statistics just in that about how many people have been going through our city in the last few months family separations in that area we have a celebrity with us today sister Jean Darrell who was arrested so she was one of the sisters the nuns that went to Washington DC and really laid down in the Capitol with the children's pictures who have died on their chest and she was one of the ones that was arrested so thank you for that witness and I know that you know it got a lot of publication here in our city and you know a lot of people I think their awareness was raised through your effort so thank you just to say only a few people really got to lie down I was not one of them they had us already and it wasn't planned it was only five people and then another five I'm not sure if the second five got to you got to be infamous so but anyway and so just you know you can just see going through how much is happening two other things that I just want to raise up with what's happening too at the beginning of the meeting some of our delegation that's here from our shareholder work through the Interface Center on Corporate Responsibility this work is we buy some shares in these companies so that we can raise the questions and so yesterday the Jesuits are here they leave the delegation with a core civic that others have bought stock and we went too dilly to see the the facility we had all had to submit all of our paperwork a month ago and I decided that you know we were too dangerous to talk to any of the people being detained but the core civic persons that gave us the tour and all and so anyway so today we had a debriefing some of you saw the meeting that we had before this meeting to debrief and just hear from others who are going into dilly or who are lawyers and are raising some of those questions and see you know what we heard from the core civic persons and then you know what they see on the ground and that type of thing and it informs how the shareholders try to interact with the groups and I always remember Lena saying I never knew that that was one reason to buy shares but it's one way that many of the religious groups over oh gosh over 40 years have done this work you know to be able to raise those questions and put these things on the ballots of corporate America and interact with these companies and in all of that too so and it helps us you know on the ground and you know we feel too that like we're resources to the other shareholders because we know so much of what is going on here and you know those kinds of things as well so and then the last couple of things on our handout are the whole things about the you know some of the events that are going on and then also we just keep trying to document the court cases as they come down because those are happening on a regular basis and of course our courts are still functioning you know in that sense and making the determinations and that type of thing and then just one other thing that I'll add on that same July 18th when Sister Jean was arrested it was a sort of a Catholic nun thing that took all the White House into trying to talk to the White House persons about you know how we felt and so it was very hard to get into the White House that day because so many people were calling and it was busy busy busy that type of thing and several of the persons I still want to write that up and we'll put it in our news articles before we put it on to the website was that some of the people from the White House when people did finally get through said I think every nun in America has been calling this today so we're getting the message and so things like that that was the back and forth and so anyway when you think that we're you know at a stalemate or that we're not making a difference, please know we are making a difference every single day and I think when you see these articles you see how much work there is for us to do and thank goodness that every meeting we have new people coming in and saying they're signing up for work so thank you Is the nun here? She's probably out accompanying someone to an appointment Sister Denise Barbra if you have anything on the airport and Jane are you there? We'll do it this week I did our numbers have gone down quite a bit those coming to the bus station the numbers have really been very low but in the last week they went up from 900 and now 1,000 we heard so was it 54 people to the bus station this morning and 54 also to the airport this morning so those are higher numbers than we've had for a while I think we had higher numbers yesterday so we've gotten a lot of new volunteers who are kind of bored at the bus station right now but what we've been doing is trying to get volunteers involved in the other areas with the clothing at St. Mark's and then the showers have begun so showers I guess this is the second week showers is led by Sven Jussing from Dedes and all the volunteers are here through IWC and so they have showers Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday afternoon so if you're looking to volunteer and they do need men also because men take showers and then and you know if it comes to a point where there's more volunteers more days are possible Wednesdays are not possible because that's when the showers at Travis Parker are used for the homeless on Wednesday clothing St. Mark's has agreed to take on the clothing to start with they're going to do open a close room on Monday and Wednesdays Salvation Army has Goodwill has agreed at commerce to let the family shop there but they've given us I can't remember the number your number Tina, 45 15 I don't know a bunch of vouchers worth $20 each and the expiration for those is the end of September we were hoping that we could do St. Mark's Monday, Wednesday and then the other days have volunteers who could take the list and take the families on the list and go to Goodwill and the Goodwill vouchers would stretch through October November as St. Mark's gets going but today we've heard that they're not willing to go beyond the September expiration so maybe we'll all just take a voucher go shopping and take the close to St. Mark's I don't know so both things need both of those outreaches need volunteers at St. Mark's would be to obviously take care of the room and then also escorts to and from the Resource Center need to shower at what time in the afternoon the time is very slightly depending on what day Thursday they have lunch and they usually don't get everyone out of the September 30 at St. Mark's so I think Tuesday Thursday they start at 2 and the volunteers come sooner to set up and on Tuesday they're starting at 1 at 7 they ended up not we were going what we were going to try to do what we were going to try to do is get the families go to St. Mark's quickly get their clothes go get a shower well so I'm using from Ted's they're giving out the socks and underwear at the shower area and they're going to continue doing that but they had some clothes too and I mean they barely had any clothes and the moms just kept shopping and shopping going through and they and they backed up showers for the afternoon so there's people who ended up not getting showers because they were busy getting those clothes you know this is we want to make sure people get their showers yes they're at Travis Park Church in their basement any other questions just as the size says James not here to talk about the backpacks as of I think maybe the 5th of August we have given out 21,762 backpacks which is actually about 500 more than we gave the whole year last year which was a tremendous record last year because the years before that had been 5,000 so we really have the number of backpacks we just took today 21,762 that is the airport and bus station together okay do you have anything about overnight hospitality well the number for overnight hospitality for the month of July overnight hospitality at the Travis Park shelter was over 5,000 for one month and that brought us up to over 16,000 since that shelter was opened at the end of March but those are numbers that are only huge huge shout out needs to go to Carlos Carlos is the one that has been managing the volunteers there and it takes a lot of people to manage that and before I let John say his piece I want to give a wonderful grateful shout out to Jim Langford stand up Jim the community Jim Langford stand up or wave at least you, yeah I'm from Texas a little town 67 miles north from this spot right here he drove here this morning to be part of us Jim helped to organize the sponsoring of a family we had a father and a son with no sponsor no place to go the child had been hospitalized and he and his community had been preparing for this for some time and this was their time and if you want to talk about the joy if you want to hear about the joy that's contagious in the community grab Michael not Jim forget about Jim grab Michael after this meeting especially if you're an attorney what? especially if you're an attorney oh yeah, he needs to talk to an attorney I just want to add three commercials really quickly so we know that Carlos's job is really really hard day in and day out of the shelter and Emily and Cynthia it's a really really difficult job and we need to support them as much as possible buy them coffee, give them hugs the folks who are doing the volunteer work in the shelter at night it is a really fun job it can be a really wonderful time especially if your volunteer coordinator opens with our job here is to be a non-anxious presence we're not supposed to get everything perfect we're not supposed to make everything run super smoothly, we're just here to be a non-anxious presence and keep people safe and then you can have a really wonderful bonding time it's very meaningful for church groups it's very meaningful for friend groups the conversations you have at 4am are amazing some of the things that you hear yourself saying like wow I really do feel that way but I just want to encourage you if you haven't done that work reach out to some friends reach out to some friends who might not understand exactly what's going on because there's some really meaningful interactions that can happen but then we also always need to keep in mind that it's extremely difficult the job is for Carlos and for Cynthia and for Emily and give them as much support as we can as possible the other commercial I want to make is the San Antonio Mennonite Church we have our hospitality house back in the day we were just using numbers we're going through now we just have families who have been there for a long time the numbers are going through Travis Park Church and we have families because of medical issues or because of the detention centers if you're interested in supporting one particular family and I mean we're taking a mama to the doctor's office because we have kids who've been with us for so long we're enrolling them in school and pediatrician appointments and mental health support if you're interested in that please reach out to me at the San Antonio Mennonite Church it can be a very transformative thing kind of a one on one deep relationship with one particular family and then the last commercial is that we lean very heavily on Sarah Raimi and the migrant center for human rights our church gives her free rent but then that allows us to ask her for a lot of things which is not fair at all but she is in need right now for fundraising she spends all of her time in the detention centers working on her fund raises so there are a number of people who are on her board here but I just want to remind her reach out to the migrant center for human rights send them some aid she's doing really really fabulous work and I just had that horrible realization you know you stand up in front of a group of people and you see someone that you owe money to and it's nothing like that and she's also wearing sunglasses which makes it so much more intimidating so I'm going to pass the money off real quick those of you who are new this is your first time you're getting a very different view okay now then are those in our group who we consider our partners, our cloud readers our friends would you like to come up and talk about anything that's going on I've seen Nate do you know do y'all have anything or do you just want to be quiet do you have something okay anybody else I'm sorry I can't even see very well with these sunglasses good morning I'm Tino Gallego some day of immigration days I'm for the city so I have a couple of things first of all we had a city council e-session meeting where the migrant resource center was the only topic of conversation on the agenda that was yesterday afternoon we had a very long detailed report to our city council and mayor about the operations how much money has been spent the different things how it's kind of come together and how it works and functions and get some feedback and input from our council members on the migrant resource center and next steps in the future so I think it was a really great presentation for anybody who was able to attend and you know we have we're in the middle of budget season so part of the reason you had to have the big presentation about the migrant resource center was for the city to be able to justify making another ask to have these kinds of programs funded for the next fiscal year and included in that discussion and presentation obviously is the great work that the IWC has been doing before we even started and has been a great partner and collaborator and teacher and motivator and coach and mother and a father for everything that the mayor resource center needs and does we've always been very reliable allies for us in this work and what we want to thank you for everything that you've done whether that's you know prodding us on the days before and linking up to the opening of the center itself and you know just making yourself available for all the help right I see many of the people that work at the bus station and the airport all the time and so I get to say it and I get to live it but I think it was really important for our leadership to hear it and I'm glad that they were able to hear about all the work that you had done in the past that was a precursor to what we're doing now and how you continue to help support us and what we're doing and as was mentioned you know we have some new partners taking on some new responsibilities for what is being done at the bus station and that's particularly the areas of showers and clothing donation which is tough it's tough right those are tough logistical challenges and I'm very glad to see that there's been more groups to be getting involved and wanting to do the work and we're glad to see that it is being done because it's something that's very obviously needed and I've asked for it right we have had some success doing it and it's also caused some problems for the actual center itself logistically so it is really helpful to have other people step in and provide the capacity to move people and do the shower part of it which is definitely a challenge and also the clothes not just because it's hard to store them in the small space we have make sure that there's enough sizes for everybody but having people do that is really helpful and important so my other things I want to just provide one little tidbit of information we are closing in probably somewhere here in the weekend or next week on 20,000 beds beds being used for sheltering at Travis Park I think at the last the last count we had was like 19,600 some so we're coming up on like a big milestone for us we've gone 20,000 since May, since March 31st so that is a really really big and important milestone to hit also kind of gives us an idea of how far we've come I was touring this base the other day with some leaders from the LDS community I hadn't gone over to the shelter in a while and I looked around like wow, 20,000 people it's left on these cots it's like it just kind of blows your mind you've ever been in the space and seen the cots they're all kind of just stuck up there on the side 20,000 times these have been used for the last few months and it really is kind of blows your mind and on that we have a new collaboration with the LDS church they've approved 75 of their their people doing the missionaries the missionary work here in the US to work on the migrant center and IWC and everything associated with it so we're going to have some increased capacity for these I think they're most of the young men but there are also some young women who will be doing some work with us and so if there's anything that you can think for them to do right, so the migrant aid was going to be tough for them because most of their volunteer capacity is during the day unfortunately we did talk to them about that but is there anything else even if it's kind of the back office kind of work I think it's something else that we can explore to have them help us with I have a couple of other announcements unrelated to this one on this about the strategic planning process and I know that we have some IWC at the first charrette that we did about a week and a half ago and that is the kickoff to the strategic planning process what we're going from here is we're going to have the input that people made that would be the conversation starters and the drivers for work groups that are forming around certain areas whether that's education you did I talk about that earlier for city services or healthcare and we have some kind of cockpit recommendations that people would have about to make San Antonio a more welcoming place for immigrants on those particular topic areas we'd like to start doing some work groups on that the other thing I'm looking for help with in this is that we had our first listening session a couple of days ago with refugee residents of San Antonio to ask them basically the same questions giving them their own space to do it not having these kind of big hull with all these other people who work in this space for residents themselves so I'm looking for more organizations or people who would want to host these kind of listening sessions where you can bring some of our immigrant residents into a space where we have a facilitator interpreters take down what they say and just let them tell us what they want to see from this community so if there's anybody who when I can help with that I'm looking at you to somewhere where you go but anyway finally I have an announcer from Anne Anne says she's sorry she couldn't make it today but Anne is asking for a couple of things first for people to come out to the global it's up here, there we go the global gathering for compassion which is going to take place on August 12th at noon at Main Plaza it's going to be led by the Mayor and City Council and Anne is looking for someone to represent IWC as a reader on the issue of migrants and asylum seekers in the litany of lament and love so if there's anybody who would be interested in fulfilling that role for Anne I'm sure if you don't have a contact information to get for you but if you already do feel free to contact her directly she is looking for somebody to help with that and she also sends her thanks for all of the co-laboring and co-loving for our migrants anybody else have any questions for me? and I'm not using the backpacks could those be used at the challenge? I'm sure they could be yes that could be we need to get them to show you a scene from the talking act Nate you were here I can't see hi everyone, I'm Nate Roder and I run our bond fund at Races we have this rolling call for volunteers to help us pay bonds that's really just spending a day at the ice office at Crosspoint Handing and paperwork that gets people out of jail that day so it's really important and it's really just a bureaucratic step if you're able to do that get in touch with us at volunteer at RacesTexas.org and we have these other rolling volunteer needs as well and we massively appreciate it the other thing that's not up here that's been really causing me to stay up at night is the expansion of the migrant protection protocols the Remain in Mexico policy that last month extended to the Laredo and River of the Valley Ports of entry and that's been a really difficult problem to attack and some of us in this river are kind of working on that right now and it's kind of a constant discussion among folks in Texas to see what we can do about that there's been some amazing work in Tijuana in San Diego that I was able to check out last month but it will be hard to replicate in the Laredo so keep that on your radar as we're thinking about the policy changes, thinking about why there's fewer people at the bus station because people aren't getting let into the country and forced to remain in Mexico in Texas so that's just kind of generalized source of trauma for a lot of people and what again that runs our bus station program I will hand it to her yeah so things have definitely been a lot slower at the bus station less people coming in but we're still showing up and doing what we can this week we actually transported 40 individuals to that first ice check-in so a lot of the people that are crossing in Eagle Pass and Del Rio are being assigned ice check-ins on the first Tuesday of the month and so for the people that have been at the micro research center for a couple of days or weeks that had to show up at the ice office but couldn't make it to their final destination sometime we were able to transport them in collaboration with the city of San Antonio to that first ice check-in so we're glad that we were able to do that because we're the people that don't have travel arrangements or don't have sponsors being able to check this one thing off that list was just brought so much peace to them so we're able, we're glad that we were able to do that yeah question bus station there was an individual who had a clock in Miami but she wasn't going to get to Miami until 10 o'clock in the morning and so the fear but the bus leave in San Antonio was late which meant all of the other buses might also be late and we didn't know what to tell her about what happens if she missed that because we told her as soon as you arrive in Miami tell your family take you immediately there because we didn't know what would happen if she missed it so what would have happened if she missed it yeah I mean yeah so the question is what happens if someone doesn't make it to their ice check-in on time in our experience we've made the same recommendation for them to show up as soon as they can when they arrive to that final destination and we've never come, we've been able to follow up with people to make sure that that worked and we've never come across a situation where there were negative consequences for not making it on time um yeah that's what we've noticed I mean they could but it's absolutely necessary yeah and so that's like what's happened in the past and so we can't provide any sort of advice like you show your bus ticket and you'll be fine we can't say that but what we can say is that in the past when this has happened it hasn't been a problem I would probably recommend that somebody take their bus ticket to say like hey there was no way I could have physically made this but we can't say what ice is going to do at a given field office and so we can't provide that sort of advice we can just say what has happened in the past and hope that that bears out in the future what's working in Tijuana that you saw? what's working in Tijuana that I saw I wouldn't say that it's necessarily working but it was an incredibly inspiring program that was put on by a number of groups including Alotro Lado and Innovation Law Lab and probably some others that I'm missing Alotro Lado is a legal service provider in Southern California and in Northern Baja California and they have a four story building in Tijuana and on the ground floor is a cafe where they get food donated and it's open to everybody and it's on a sliding scale and the second floor is a medical clinic on the third floor is like a kind of legal space and childcare and on the fourth floor is the law offices and so when I went it was a pro se I-589 workshop and so it was helping people who were enrolled in the remaining Mexico policy fill out their asylum applications so that they stay in good standing with the court that they're being forced to go to that's in San Diego but they're not allowed to leave Mexico and so it was a workshop with volunteer lawyers who were coming down for the weekend who were filling out people's asylum applications with them and I was also helping people fill out their asylum applications and it was also uploading everybody's documents to a super secure server so that when they went through when they eventually made it if ICE or CBP had taken their documents they had access to them because they were storing all of that it was also a huge source of solidarity I've never been to any of these legal workshops where there was so much breaking down of the attorney client hierarchy relationship there it really felt like we were all in this together kind of elbow to elbow with people who had been subject to this horrible inhumane policy and so the strategy is keeping people in good standing with the court while they're forced to remain in Mexico providing all the information about what this incredibly complicated policy really is and what their expectations are and then getting them in the best possible situation to win their case what it actually does go to that individual hearing that can be so so I thought it was working it's hard to replicate in Nuevo Laredo because Tijuana and San Diego it's just different in terms of what organizations are existing and what the infrastructure looks like than in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo right now but that's something that a lot of really smart, really hard working people are working on right now question? what does it look like right now in Nuevo Laredo? what does it look like right now so I'm actually not doing a ton of work myself on it I've been kind of party to a few of the calls and conversations I don't know if there's anyone from Justice for our neighbors here so J-Fon I've been in touch a little bit with J-Fon I'm just like exploring doing some work in but I've been incredibly admirable of their to jump in but I don't think anything has started yet I hope it does there's also folks at UT Law who are kind of coordinating a lot of the the local efforts with people who are doing it nationally to set up what will probably amount to the same kind of service like doing that asylum workshops filling out the applications but probably not the same model it might be something that's more remote or even if it's just like information gathering and providing like, know your rights charles and just instructions there's that too also a lot of the people who are enrolled in in Nuevo Laredo are actually in Monterey and so providing access there is also complicated this gets kind of interesting because if you have a whole response network here but those numbers start to slow down how do we begin to understand the possibility of transference of energy or supporting those things yet to come the Mexican side so to say the question was we have a response here how do we translate that to the Mexican side and that's the challenge for those of you who are here in 2014 who have began just think about the needs we have then and what we're doing now how we have how we have transformed ourselves our missions the same we're walking alongside people and changing to the different needs that are happening but we'll stay true to that but just think about all the things that have changed I stand in awe of the people that spoke about what you're doing I really am humbled to be able to know you and be your friend and I am grateful to the people in the IWC who continue the fight and every day so thank you very much for being here thank you for sharing and let's all think about this over the next month to see what we want to do how we want to move forward thank you very much I have a couple of case law updates versus a matter of LEA as a quick update this is a case where a man in Mexico is threatened by a cartel the cartel wanted to sell drugs through his father's store they threatened his father and they threatened him he fled from Mexico to the United States and they attempted to kidnap him and shoot him quick background on asylum cases asylum is based on religion, nationality a membership of a particular social group that can be such as if you're gay if you're from a certain tribe on your politics or has been established on a lot of case law based on kinship, your family unfortunately acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker in December 2018 had a decision that kind of chipped away at a particular social group being based on kinship and unfortunately denies an element in this case because unfortunately a lot of cases in process I'm currently working to right now where essentially threats are being made against your family or your basis for asylum based on your family unfortunately that's going to work to hurt cases so that's one thing that's kind of in the pipeline and you'll be hearing a little bit about the second one is a migrant protection protocol a few people alluded to it as a quick update on that usually when you come to the United States and try to establish a case for asylum there's a credible free interview and that allows you to stay in the U.S. detention center while you do that as other people have alluded to this remaining Mexico program means that they're being sent back to Mexico usually given court needs three or four months out and unfortunately that means attorneys cannot help you as Reyesa has mentioned U.S. attorneys can't really work with you when you're in Mexico so you've got to unfortunately rely on volunteers where the very few pass attorneys who are willing to travel with people so you can imagine how much more difficult as the gentleman in red alluded to how much more difficult it is to actually establish your legal rights and protect your legal rights when you're homeless, essentially homeless and hundreds or even thousands of miles away so those are our updates we're the Migrant Center for Human Rights I've got a newsletter sign up here if anyone will go ahead and put it in the back it's a yellow sheet but anyways thank you for your time yeah, God bless