 Good morning again. Thank you all for being here. I know how busy each of you are because we're all really trying to do every day what we can to help the employment children and fathers and children who are coming to our country to seek safety. Before we begin, twice Hamilton is from the Valley and she has an interesting story. She and other individuals on their own went to the bridge when there were these long lines of people coming out of the bridge trying to get into the United States. Anyway, she went there, they were all just taking water and land was really good and then they finally found each other. And actually Sister Denise and I were down there when they had their first meeting and they saw each other face to face before you just been texting them, didn't you? And so, you can talk in the plan right your time but anyway, so they established the angry tears and then they changed the focus. Anger folks, yeah. So, they are using their anger in a positive way and she wants to know a little bit more about that. Okay, are there any other folks here that are new? Lewis, we will introduce you when it's time to speak. Oh, here you are. Any other folks? Yes, sir. Nikki Robertson, Northwood Presbyterian. Nice to have you. Thank you, guys. Tracy was one of our founding voters. Ah, yes. Tracy Slater. Oh, for you Sassard, Sleaga Women Voters, Texas Issue Chair and I'm also the Legislative Chair for Texas Blue Life. Thank you for being here. My name is Kay Lorraine. I'm from Honolulu, Hawaii. I've been here, I took a leave of absence from my law firm and I've been here most of the summer working for RAISIS and picking up families, working mail bond court and picking up families or people from Taylor, Texas or all of the different detention centers around and taking them to the bus stations, to the airports, whatever and things are slowing down so now I'm looking forward to working with you. Yes, ma'am. Wendy Holbrook, I'm part of Covenant Baptist Church and we offer sanctuary and then I'm also coordinator for Interpay San Antonio Alliance. Thank you. Sir? Yeah. I'm Jonathan Fink. I'm a social action chair at Temple High. I'm here with my rabbi David Komarowski. I've been here before, but this is my first time. Thank you David for bringing me. Louder. Yeah, you have to be in C class. I'm here with Holy Trinity and you can blame Linda's email for having me here. And she is one of our faithful backpack volunteers. Thank you for coming. I'm Morgan Claesor with Texas Blue 30 University. Oh, yes. This is Dr. Jennifer Masa. She's here to learn more and see how TLU students can get involved. I'm so glad you're here. See, I've spoken to them on the phone, but I've not never seen them. That's what happens. You text or you call, but you don't see faces. There's somebody over here left. Wow. My name is Jeremy Hummel and I am a pastor at Lighthouse Church in Stoneham. Good. Thank you for bringing me. Anybody? Yes? Hi, I'm Christina Mendes. I'm a kid 16. We work with K-12 schools, universities. That's another person. Okay, anybody else? Well, I'll tell you, things are not as dire as I might think. But because I was anticipating this day and I'm actually anticipating my Sunday School class on Sunday, what we're going to talk about. But this is a book that I have loved for many years. It's called Gorilla's The Brace by Ted Loader. And I think Ted was a Methodist pastor. But anyway, he is written he and hearing now. Though he can speak my heart so much better than I can. And so many times when I'm needing to pray and I just can't, I can read one of these prayers and it allows me to receive comfort. So I'm going to read this today and it's called Sometimes It Just Seems To Be Too Much Gracious God, it just seems to be too much. Too much violence, too much fear, too much of demands and problems, too much of broken dreams and broken lives, too much of war and slums and dying, too much of greed and squishy fatness and the sounds of people devouring each other and the earth, too much of stale routines and quarrels, unpaid bills and dead ends, too much of words locked into explode and leave shredded hearts and lacerated souls, too much of turned away backs and yellow silence, red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth. Sometimes the very air seems scorched by threats and rejection and decay until there is nothing but to inhale pain and exhale confusion, too much of darkness, Lord, too much of cruelty and selfishness and intolerance, too much, too much, too bloody, bruising, brainwashing and much. Or is it too little? Too little of compassion, too little of courage, of daring, of persistence, of sacrifice, too little of music and laughter and celebration. Gracious God, make of me some nourishment for these starved times, some food for my brothers and sisters who are hungry for gladness and hope that being bread for them, I may also be fed and be sold. I'm going to ask Terry Burton, who is one of our collaboration leadership, and he is my interviewer, our speaker. It's very much my honor to introduce Luis Figueroa, who is with the Center for Public Policy Priorities deciding on Austin, I'm thinking. Luis Figueroa joined the Center in 2018 as the first legislative and policy director. He oversees the CPPP's comprehensive legislation legislative strategy. He was previously general counsel for the Texas State Senator, Jose Rodriguez, and executive director of the Texas Senate Hispanic Caucus. Previously, he served as the legislative attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, MALDEF, where he worked from 2004 to 2013. From El Paso, Luis received awards from MALDEF, Lulac, and representative Joaquin Castro, among other honors. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Speech Communications with a concentration on American Politics and Law from Trinity University in San Antonio. And his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law is licensed to practice law in the state of Texas. And this week especially, when we start talking about priorities and where we all want to start focusing, we are very honored to have you with us. Thank you Luis. Well, let me first say what an honor it is to be here. You know, I'm involved, as mentioned, in the policy fronts, both here in San Antonio and El Paso and in Austin. But I can't thank the direct service providers that are on the front lines, giving water, buying legal services, doing everything they can for the immigrant community, regardless whether it's here in San Antonio or in the Valley or El Paso, you guys are the truth heroes. I'm blessed to see a lot of good friends here, Lee Peron, who has done amazing work as one of my personal heroes. So I'm so glad to be here and it's an honor. What I wanted to just talk a little bit about is some of the threats and opportunities that are coming up in the next legislative session. As you know, we meet every other year. And every other year, it seems to be another onslaught of anti-migrant bills and legislation. And it takes a herculean effort to defeat a lot of legislation. We came up a short last session with the bill called Senate Bill 4 that we'll talk about. But we anticipate another session where immigration will play a role. And what I just wanted to just say on the onset is that your activation, whether it's an electoral or on the ground, it's so crucial to the legislative front. So now on the director of Senate of Public Policy Priorities, if you're not familiar with it, it's easier sometimes to say C-Triple-P. We have a really long tongue twister but we are commonly referred to as C-Triple-P. We do policy work on a number of fronts, budget, education, healthcare, our mainstays. Over the last few years, we have become more involved on immigration front because we believe in a Texas, we're all Texans, regardless of immigration status, regardless of where inside of town you are, should be able to have a healthy life, access to education, and opportunity for economic growth. So that's our fundamental principles and immigration has increasingly become a part of that. So let me just say, some of this is a little hard to read, so I'm just going to explain just kind of where we are on this. So this is some of the policy threats that we are expecting to see next session. And so the big one is the State Enforcement of Immigration Laws. We already passed Senate Bill 4 last session. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it was the one that they called the so-called Sanctuary Cities Bill. Some people called the Show Me Your Papers Bill. It essentially encouraged local law enforcement to engage immigration enforcement and created some incentives and threats for universities, local jurisdictions if they discouraged people from enforcing immigration laws. So the next line that we're going to see next session, they've already had some interim hearings on it, is a provision of the Immigration Nationality Act called 27Gs. 27Gs are a direct provision that allows for local law enforcement to do immigration work. In a way, it's a little bit better than what they're doing in Sanctuary Cities, at least they're getting trained, but it is a huge threat because that means they can actually do immigration enforcement. It does cost some money for the counties to enter an 27G agreement with the federal government. So the legislature is looking at trying to make it easier to enter into these arrangements which would just further blur the line between local and federal enforcement immigration laws and create more fear of reporting crimes, more fear of who you go to when you are experiencing a victim or you're a witness to a crime. So the other area that we see is denial of rights and protections to immigrant populations. This one you'll most likely reference the Dreamers. So Texas, as you all may remember, was the first state in 2001 to pass in-state tuition for undocumented students here in Texas. Subsequently, I believe we're up to 13 states have now adopted it. Every year we have to defend that law. Every year we're in a fight and the last big fight was in 2015. We had a big push to try to repeal that law and they couldn't get a hearing in state affairs because the chairman there did not want to see the bill. They couldn't get a hearing in higher education. This is a bill about in-state tuition, the amount of money you pay to college. So they put the bill in border security because apparently the Dreamers were a threat to our border security into our Texas. It was the only place they could get a hearing and the overwhelming opposition, there were hundreds of students and activists and faith-based groups like you all who came and showed up and testified against it to maybe a handful, I think there were like two or three people who testified in favor of it. By the end of the hearing the chairman of the committee, your own Senator Campbell who represents part of North San Antonio here, was backtracking out for the bill saying, well it's not really about the students it's really just about rule of law and was trying to come up with excuses about why this bill was being pursued and it was such a disaster that I think it's become clear how popular this law here is in Texas but that doesn't mean it's the threat goes away. We still expect that despite the overwhelming testimony and benefits economically to the students, economically to the state to the universities, to the colleges that will see a bill to recue it as well or they'll go after their ability to get Texas state grants the financial aid that allows them to attend these universities and then we saw one a couple of sessions ago where they were medically fragile kids so these are the kids with the most severe disabilities they wanted to put the undocumented children at the back of the line to receive services that medically fragile kids are entitled to that bill out past the house and we had to feed it in the senate at the very last second in 2015 so that's always a threat so these are the bills that try to take away protection for freedoms from undocumented and the last one is about penalties or fees so we saw this increasingly appear in different parts of law it's called e-verification where they tried to already law for government agencies but now they'll be potentially an expansion to private industry where you have to verify your employees through the e-verification system or suffer some type of penalty or loss of a license if you didn't so that's a bill we see every session as well these are just some of the threats that we'll see as we go along so I wanted to just kind of give a real quick recap of Senate Bill 4 last session what happened and where we are with it right now so Senate Bill 4 as I mentioned was the Show Me Your Papers bill last session it was a the governor's priority item last session it really started when Austin and other cities were taking a more aggressive stand against ICE and the governor fought back against it and the governor labeled on Sheriff Luca Valdez but she was honoring every single detainer pretty much in Dallas County and the label really didn't stick then it came to Austin with Sally Hernandez saying that she wasn't going to honor all the detainers so detainers when somebody goes into the prison system and ICE the federal government sends a form and says hey we want you to hold on to somebody because we want to see if they have status or if they're criminal or if they have some issues and Austin came up with a policy that said we aren't going to do that if it's not a serious crime they tried to limit the amount of detainers they were going to do which was pretty much in line with the goals of enforcement the goal wasn't to detain every single person but to really be focused on people who are committing the more serious crimes but the governor kind of flipped out about it and determined this was going to be a priority item for that session unfortunately the bill extended beyond detainers they got into local law enforcement and enforcing things on the ground the bills sailed through the senate in the first two months of the session before most of the time bills don't start moving until March they moved in February and the house where we thought things were going to get better it turned into a really ugly flight on the floor there was a provision about when you can inquire about immigration status at the point of detention or the point of arrest for those of you that are lawyers know that that's an important distinction and unfortunately the standard went back to the point of detention it really showed the true colors of the legislature and unfortunately that's how the bill passed and it's now in litigation the courts have struck down one provision that talks about encouraging local law enforcement they had a provision that was so broad that basically when we asked the senator the author of the bill what it meant he said we're trying to get at the wink wink nod nod culture of police departments and that was the standard that he was declaring about what discouraging local law enforcement was the court correctly figured out that was too broad not enforceable unfortunately the rest of the law is in place it's going back to trial court to look at some of the racial intents of the bill and whether there's some violations there and it's also on appeal on the other provisions on the injunction that Judge Orlando Garcia had initially put in place but was overturned by the other court so I just wanted to let you know that's kind of where things stand there will be bills next session to limit Senate Bill 4 for example creating safe places removing the standard back from arrest to detention it's going to be difficult to get traction on some of those bills but it's important to keep it on the record to keep showing that we're trying to improve on that bill and hopefully we can get a hearing on some of those so the other major bill from last session and I know many of you all testified on this it was a bill we un-affectionably called baby jails this revolves family detention centers as you all know Carnes and Billy are one of the few family detention centers in the nation and they're both here in Texas both pretty close to here south of San Antonio and essentially the big pictures thing is that the federal government was limiting the amount of time immigrants families particularly children could be housed in a family detention center under an agreement called the floaters agreement and the state was trying to get around that provision that law by saying if we license the detention center as a child care facility and then we can meet the standards under floaters and we can keep these people in these detention centers for a longer period of time so it's an end around a federal court settlement and essentially these children, these babies are put in a jail-like setting where it's in a period of time to pass tremendous psychological effects on these kids is the reports that we got in the testimony and many of you all could do the work and probably talk to this because you all read Rai's thesis but essentially these kids are there's instances of sexual abuse there's medical treatment that's not being provided to these kids even if those conditions were improved just the psychological effect putting the behind bars of being unable to move around has tremendous psychological and the pedagogical society came out really strong in opposition we thought we had the votes that killed us in committee even some of the most strident Republicans had some issues with this it went to the Senate floor we had the votes that killed there too and unfortunately a Republican and Houston switched their vote at the very last second to allow the bill thankfully the bill died in the House State Affairs Committee but now with the new speaker as you all know Joe Strauss from San Antonio is going to be our speaker next session we don't know what's going to happen to the committees particularly the really crucial House State Affairs Committee which is where most of the most egregious anti-immigration bills die and because of Chairman Cook who had a very strong Catholic upbringing and as a result would hold up a lot of the anti-immigration bills with the exception of Senate Bill 4 and so now with him retired with the new speaker we are the important of mobility and important of activation of faith-based groups is more important than ever because we just don't know what's going to happen in these committees with the new speaker so I mentioned a little bit about 27G already so we don't need to re-talk about it but I did want to mention that we're both trying to bring multi-states into an interstate compact to do border security work this was a bill that came up two sessions ago it didn't get much traction by Senator Hall but it could potentially come up again we might need some mobilization particularly you all on the border who can talk about the concerns about border security and wrongful enforcement on the border and then we talked about in-state tuition already Senate Bill 1819 was a bill that failed last time that they tried to put through an affairs and border security hearing again we'll see that again in that session hopefully they'll die again but the dreamers are an important part of this work and then we talked a little bit about the children who were put in the back of the line for medical fragile kids and that's that bill right there that was 823835 from the 2015 session nearly passed so one will have to stay marginalized and I think the message on this one is another bill that nobody noticed in committee hearing they got all the way to the floor before somebody noticed it and it really got a lot harder to kill at that point so we always have to stay vigilant and we're going to try our best to keep you all in the loop about these types of bills that come out of nowhere another bill that has come up in the years past is requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote they call it documentary proof of citizenship this is an effort led by Chris Kobach who was just recently defeated for the governor of Kansas he was going around different states and communities trying to pass his anti-immigrant laws he was behind the farmers branch anti-immigrant legislation they did in Dallas and so this is an effort to really restrict the bill to register to vote it would decimate third party voter registration because people don't have their passports or certificates with them when they register to vote so this would be a huge hit to our ability to register people to vote it hasn't been a lot of traction in recent sessions but it has been filed continuously every session so depending again on the new speaker on the new chairs we have to stay vigilant on it so federal level too much to talk about there's too much going on the fed I just want to give you a list of things that are kind of up there that CCCP has been working on public charge rules these are new rules that would make it harder to get your green card based on the amount of income that you have based on whether your family has applied for benefits it's really an attempt to scare people to apply for public benefits that they're eligible for for their children and it's really an attempt to scare people away from applying for their green card as well the census citizenship question you all may have heard about that one we're very concerned about that and the impact of having an undercount on the census that's coming up in two years the photo settlement I mentioned earlier they're trying to get around that on the federal side too with new rules there DACA as always this is the deferred action for childhood arrivals these are the dreamers we are hanging on by a thread in the litigation to keep DACA any day now a decision can come down it's completely in DACA and it's going to become an issue in congress all over again and we'll have that whole discussion of WALB and DACA enforcement versus providing the dream act and all of that discussion that we had a year or two ago the attention found in separation there's plenty of people in the room who can tell you what's going on with that but coming from a past that I can tell you that it's not looking good the 10th city there is still operational and there's continuously concerns about the growth of families either being separated or detained or the standards not being met in ORR shelters the zero tolerance on the border as well these are the asylum claims and people who come across the border because they're deterred from coming across the port and they come across another area and they immediately are prosecuted and prevented from being able to apply for asylum claims and of course the new one we just heard Trump the birthright citizenship which is my opinion blatantly unconstitutional but with the Supreme Court you never know and it's a threat and so we need to be vigilant of it although I think it's more of a distraction than a real attempt to do something but you never know this person and so it's not all bad we do have some opportunities I didn't want to come away with the ending of like oh it's so dire we're never going to be able to do anything so real quickly Representative Cook has tried to pass legislation for undocumented to get access to driver's license or driver's permits with the new 12 Democrats and with the new speaker maybe there's life for this again maybe it's time to push this effort again this is a mixed bag a little bit because it puts an identifier on the license so some people are concerned that they might be identified as undocumented but also people being arrested for not having the license it's the most common way to get put into the system so there's a lot of benefits to it as well so I wanted to draw that to your attention there are now recommendations in the sunset bill for Department of Public Safety to put accountability on border security and so we actually have some metrics of what they're looking at and what their metrics of success are so that's a positive step and hopefully that'll pass this session so we just don't have uncontrolled numbers of DPS troopers and federal troopers and state and county and local policemen just infiltrating every aspect of the border community and on the local level is really where the action is so there's efforts to in contracts with detention centers there's efforts to locally to focus in on individuals who are wrongfully detained or who need to be released there's efforts on resistance on freedom cities like for example in Austin to reduce the number of people being arrested across the border so that they don't get put into the system but it all happened on the local level cities, counties, universities that's really where our best opportunities are right now and so all the efforts you do locally are crucially important as well and lastly some resources for you I was the co-founder of the Trust Coalition which is a coalition of faith-based groups business groups civil rights group with Lula who is one of the founding groups along with Maldeth and some of the other groups if you're interested in getting in touch with them there's a Facebook page there Facebook Trust Coalition Fatima Menendez at Maldeth helps run that list if you don't know her I can get you in touch with her and she can get you on the list and get you activated they're the ones who are really the inside capital coalition they're following all the bills and activating groups on the different committees so you really want to get into the legislative front not federal, not the local stuff but the Texas Legislature Trust is the group to go to for that and of course also you can always contact us at C-Triple-P and I met with my email on there but it's pigaroa at C-Triple-P.org so that's F-I-G-U-E-R-O-A at C-P-P-P at C-P-P-P.org so with that I'm going to open it up thank you for giving me the time to kind of go over some of the opportunities and threats for next session as you can see there's a lot more threats and opportunities but I also think there's a lot of hope after the elections we saw that maybe this is a year where immigration is a little bit on the back burner but without knowing who the speaker is without knowing the committees I'm not prepared to say that yet so it's absolutely crucial that we keep the pressure on early until we know what really is going to be a real threat until the session comes around so I'm just going to open it up now is that how we're going to do this next? okay sounds good so anybody have any thoughts or questions or ideas? yeah we asked you HB11 and HB40 63 and 68 HBs from last session or this session those are previous sessions all of those bill numbers are previous sessions so yeah there's no bill bill filing will start bill filing will start November 12 so November 12 you can go to Texas Legislature online and you can start looking at individual bills and we'll start tracking it at that point thank you yes has there been a study just to determine what core policy has caused to create these situations that we now face with our immigration of people moving from different countries? yes absolutely and the number one things that I've seen from the studies and there may be some academics who are more but I've seen the number one thing that I've seen is that they come for jobs and they come for security they're coming to flee the violence they're coming from their country an economic opportunity what I've seen is not the case is they don't come to vote they're not coming here because they want to become U.S. citizens they're not coming because there's no immigrants commit less crimes than U.S. residents and citizens so the criminal aspect that Trump keeps talking about is actually completely not in line with any of the research I've seen and they also don't come for benefits or even in-state tuition or any of those education things although it's important to provide those the main drivers are essentially economic opportunity and security because they fear for their lives from what I've seen was there something recently either passed or intended to restrict asylum seekers from having jobs or working while they're waiting for their court dates do you know about that? I don't know about that I do know that they've kind of restricted the claims you can bring for asylum so some of the group claims I know that there was something like that you can't get employment authorization depending on your asylum application depending on your asylum application but that's been across the board right? depending on the case that's been a regulation for me to use that's not a new thing right? I couldn't hear well but 5 days after a person has had an initial asylum affirmative they are allowed to get a work permit but in fact it's not happening in 45 days in this coalition a lot of people are familiar with Sadat Ibrahim and he was released from Piersal on August 3rd and he was here last week for another hearing and he still does not have his work permit and he has a lawyer and she doesn't know why it hasn't finished yet I'm not the expert on that definitely consult some attorneys I think the plan is on your employment authorization it's my understanding you don't get it well you can go ahead of course we'll use the microphone now we'll figure out how to carry on any other questions? that was a great overview thank you I'm going to focus on the next legislative section okay this is the time that we want our collaborators, people in this group who work in this field every day and you have a report to give we know about that we can help you with this is the time please come forward we'll give you a couple of minutes I'm speaking for San Antonio stands if you saw back there was an invitation this Saturday at 10 o'clock at 9502 Computer Drive this is the group that is advocating for the local policies that Mr. Figueroa was just sharing with us right now one of the first things that we have heard about in the past we were looking for this site and release program which is so that they will not be detained so they will not go to any kind of jail where the ICE can have a possibility of picking them up if you saw on this morning's paper the newly elected DA Gonzalez has said this is his first priority so it looks like a very positive direction for us and we've been talking with Sheriff Salazar for some time about this and each one of the city council members and I think it's going to go at this meeting on Saturday morning we're going to introduce a new kind of a structure for it and so we invite you all to come if you'd like to be there I'm sure we'll be talking about the caravan I'm sure we'll be talking about the elections come Thanks for allowing me to speak for a moment in five months I'm Joyce Hamilton I'm with the group called Angry Diaz and Ouelas from the Rio Grande Valley and as Lenna said earlier we initiated on June 3rd when we were told that there were asylum seekers on the bridges particularly the one at Granosa south of McAllen and a group of us five people from Harlingen drove the 60 mile or so total to get to the bridge and take water and supplies and find out what they needed and that was the beginning of what could be an entire book at this point but that was the beginning of a group that expanded ten days later named itself Angry Diaz and Ouelas and Jenna actually was with us along with sister Denise at that meeting because my sister Linda had told me they were on their way down there and there was a lot happening at that moment and I wanted to make sure that they joined us at a meeting at Jennifer Harbury's home which was called so that we could organize ourselves and figure out what we would want to do some of you may know that Jennifer Harbury is a civil rights attorney who in the 1980s was in Guatemala and was married to a Guatemalan that became a freedom fighter and was detained and kidnapped and killed and she had changed herself to the Guatemalan palace for many days and went on hunger strike and it became a national natural attention was drawn to what the role of the United States was in Guatemala at that time and so that was 30 something years ago and Jennifer's my age and is living in Westlake of Texas and is just retired from the Texas Rural Legal Aid, TRLA she's very much an activist still it was at her house that we met she is the person who is responsible for releasing the crying children's tape that you all heard I'm thinking you did and which was really the impetus for the executive order to end family separation so she's one of our guides really in everything we do she's in Mexico City right now and on our messenger group she told us this morning that they are trying to get the caravan if you will, many desperate people families to take a route other than through Tomalipas which is the Mexican state just south of us that expands from Brownsville through Renosa and a little beyond because of the danger there are the cartels and the very highly organized coyotes there which is something we've been observing all summer and it's far more complicated than that but I'll just simplify it to say that angry theos and as well as since that point five months ago we've become involved in the bus stations McAllen and Brownsville where those families and single people who have been released from detention and are in the process of seeking asylum are dropped off or are taken to before they get on their buses to go across the country to their sponsors and family members so that increased from hundreds to up to well maybe a hundred a day up to about five hundred a day last week that's an average maybe from two hundred to five hundred from that rate and we've been there since the end of June committing their lives Monday through Friday alternating days down in order to prevent burnout trying to help people with their itineraries to help them understand their itineraries and to show them maps of where they're going help them with just a myriad of lists of needs those people have been either released from Catholic Charities which is a block and a half in the McCallan bus station or in Brownsville they've been essentially dumped by ICE at the bus station and we have an incredible network of people in Brownsville from the community who formed a support network to provide those people food and all those things that Catholic Charities does in McCallan so it's been an amazing five months of community groups coming together and reaching out just literally message groups going 24-7 to let people know okay we just got 10 people just arrived on the bridge here okay 25 people just came in were dropped to Brownsville station closes at 11 what are we going to do with these people for the night until the bus leaves in the morning really situations like that have been really rough just one thing closing here is that in our messenger group this morning we learned that Trump either today or tomorrow will be announcing his new policy and mentioning the birthright citizenship aspect that you just all know about and heard about the ending his desire to end birthright citizenship as well as the intent and this is really important to us down there right now and to you at the bus stations here to detain people at the border and put them into detention for longer periods of time maybe indefinitely so that we would not be seeing them at the bus stations any time soon which sounds like large detention facilities like Romeo and El Paso so I guess watch TV in the next day or so and see what horrors lie out there next so and thanks to my sister Linda for giving us all of their background on how to form a good backpack program because that's the base that we work from when we started our backpack program this is Christina Mendes right Mendes from P16 plus those of you who want to make a report please start coming up this way can we get them lined up like we did last time well I'm trying what you want to do please come forward so we can fish you through Hi Regan, I'm Christina Mendes I work with P16 plus and we do services for collective impact our network, Iplomas specifically focuses on dreamers so what we're working on right now is helping them transition to college so we're working with our seven higher institutions getting resources questions all in one spot so it's easy to advise students and our other piece that we just started planning yesterday was that we're going to host a conference for educators, administrators and community members specifically about the K through 12 system and the higher ed system so how to support our immigrant students and communities in those systems already so if you're interested I'll stick around after you need to show more okay just to let you know this is not a line of disrespect it's just we want to get all the information but as quickly as possible okay and please come forward three things one, I'm kind of in decreasing order of importance but I attended the parliament of oral religions this last weekend in Toronto 10,000 people of faith from all over the world you're going to ask me for details but I'm not going to have them but I am telling you that it was announced by that parliament Jim Wallace with Sojourners in D.C. started the call Richard Rohr is involved with that the chair of the parliament but they're working on meeting the caravan in Mexico and walking with them across the border at least one to one so if there are 7,000 so one person walking with one person again that's all the details I have but just so you know that information I will feed it when I get it but that's all I know no that's all the details I have okay name the the meeting the meeting was a parliament of world religions okay the second thing and this is just information and you can do with it what you want but if you're interested give me your name and I'll connect you the Seattle Peace Choir is going to be in San Antonio January 23rd through 26th they are coming specifically because of what is happening in terms of folks coming across the border and immigrants and I hear they're a fabulous choir and they want to offer their song however that could be at whatever events that you might already have I have suggested to them that they sing at the bus station and at the airport and they're doing some other things but if you have an event in your head or something that they would be helpful to have them come give me your name and your email and I'll connect you with them directly and the last thing the faith based initiative immigration and refugee action team will be meeting right after this and we look at ways of how to leverage and strategically engage congregations so if you want to be a part of that conversation stay thank you and today I'm representing Vita Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance and I just wanted to give you some information we are having a statewide meeting getting ready for the session and it's going to be in San Antonio and it will be at the Raices office at 802 Kentucky and it starts at 1030 and it will be a day long meeting probably till around 5 o'clock and we have people coming in from Houston Dallas, the valley El Paso and some western so there will be people from all over so I hope some of you can attend I know it's late notice we also have we have a way to register but I don't have the link with me but if I can send in to one of the I've seen people maybe you can do an email and send it out but this is a very important meeting getting ready for the session in the past we've had Luis Figueroa train us and he did a great job so we spend a lot of time in Austin lobbying so I hope that some of you can come and maybe help us out I know we're all going to be doing work during the session maybe we can coordinate some more so again this Saturday at Rises on Kentucky yes ma'am we form the immigration for Texas Alliance based out of El Paso sponsored by the border network for human rights and they're the ones that organize the statewide coalition okay I'll send it to Lena and then she can send the registration there's no charge we just kind of want to have an idea about how many people will be there any more questions thank you good morning everyone for those of you that don't know me my name is Manila and I oversee the bus station project for Rises I'm really excited to share that since the beginning of our project in May we have provided people orientations to more than 2,000 families and have referred many of these families to our partners out in LA Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City Philadelphia and Boston and we are continuously working on expanding that network so that we can continue to refer families out I also want to share that we now have a point of contact for overnight shelter needs for single men and dads in their sons this will be at Posada Guadalupe and our point of contact there will be Veronica Carolina and I'm Nate Roder also with Rises just kind of a general update on some more of our programs and one event plug so at the ICE liaison meeting with the director of the Pearsall detention center many of you know people released from Pearsall sometimes show up at the airport in the bus station at 3-4am we're trying to change that and apparently that was a surprise to ICE they had no idea so hopefully we'll see something a little more reasonable they said they could do better we're still paying bonds for parents that were separated from their children under zero tolerance and also children who were separated from their parents who have since aged out of custody and are now in ICE detention but fewer and fewer because the people who are bond eligible mostly have been released but there's a large contingent of people who remain in detention particularly in family detention and crimes in Dilly we're eagerly awaiting the results and the release plans for all of the dads who are in carns with their sons and the moms who are in Dilly with their kids I think around 100 family units and we hope they get released once they get their positives on their credible fear interviews triggering the asylum cases and if they don't get released after those positives we're gonna have to really step up on that so we're hoping for anything good there also we're paying attention to the new Attorney General to see what they're gonna do about the cases that Sessions have remanded to himself you talked about the Florida settlement was one of them another is kind of a more tricky one having to do with bonds and release on bond for people who were detained right after crossing the border we filed an amicus brief along with a bunch of organizations including the Sarah Rainey's one Migrant Center for Human Rights out of Pierce Hall kind of voicing our opinion that we don't want to see policies that would go into more indefinite detention so we're hoping that those just get dropped and we start to see more happiness for release for people which is really just maintaining the already terrible status quo and the events that I want to plug at Tuesdays at Rainey's which is the first Tuesday of every month we didn't do it this Tuesday because it was the election so that's gonna be next Tuesday like five days from now at 802 Kentucky it's a movie showing of Sweeney's Descartes which is Carport Dreams it's about growing up and documented in Texas so I hope you can join us for that and going forward every first Tuesday of each month 6 o'clock I think it's 6 o'clock it is 6 o'clock there will be a Facebook event great Nate, that 20 million plus that you all got for bonds is it's limited to families that were separated or can it be used for other families that are in detention but weren't involved at the time of the separation from the Facebook fundraiser a lot of that is going up to scaling up our legal programs statewide to deal with people in detention my question is can that money be used for people in detention that weren't involved in the family separation a lot of it is it can be it is thank you is this your last time okay hi I just have a few things first off the city were preparing some formal comments on the proposed public charge rule change that are due on December the 10th for those of you who have heard about the public charge rule change it would be a huge change in the way that immigration law is being applied for people who are applying to become particularly legal permanent residents under the rule change they are changing the way they are looking at people's eligibility to become legal permanent residents and it is much more really than just whether or not they used public benefits in the past they are taking a look at many different factors to decide whether or not someone will even be eligible to become a lawful permanent resident in the United States and this really it kind of starts to look like the merits based system has been proposed because they are looking at things like the age of the person who is applying their health condition of themselves, the level of education whether they can speak English their educational background and if somebody doesn't meet those requirements whether or not they had any problems in the past with immigration whether or not they had any recede of food steps in their family it will not matter they would be denied so this is something that the city is very concerned with and we are preparing some comments together with our public health department we have also assisted the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce who is also submitting comments on behalf of the chamber on that issue I encourage everyone who in any of the organizations to make comments on this issue we can talk a little bit about there is a lot of different organizations that are strategizing on this but they can talk about some of the ways that they make effective comments the city is also talking to some of its citizenship service stakeholders and we are trying to increase the number of citizenship workshops and finding more venues for naturalization our local USAAS office has told us that the number of naturalization applications has consistently been high over the last couple of years which is really great news many people are becoming citizens and become a citizen can't be deported which is really great and also apply for some of your own family members which is also really great and you can vote so they are experiencing a very high volume of people who are trying to naturalize and they have a lot of need for venues to be able to hold naturalization ceremonies there are large ones around town so we are trying to assist them in that we are also trying to assist our local organizations who help either provide citizenship classes yet English is a second language classes and assist people in filling out the N400 form which is what you use to become a citizen in getting those in so that they can all have their applications in because of the backlog currently is about 12 months of wait time between the time you apply and the time that you are going to have your interview so we are telling people starting next year if you want to actually vote in the 2020 elections you are going to have to get your application into the queue sometime in the spring in order to first have it approved you take the oath and be sworn in and then finally you have to register 30 days before the election to be able to vote so it is a message we are trying to get out there and hopefully we will be able to offer some support in organizing some more events to help people along that process I am asking for people to save the date December 3rd I have a date saved to use the San Antonio Central Library Auditorium I want to have a convening event on healthcare and immigration I have had a lot of people talk to me about different things touching on healthcare and immigrants whether it is public clinics at the bus station to serve that population or if people wanted to have a medical legal partnership which is having lawyers at hospitals and clinics there have been lots of different ideas floating around I think it is a good time to bring people together and talk about those and start to see what we can do together to make some of those proposals happen so save the date December 3rd 1-4pm at the Central Library Auditorium did you give it time? 1-4 that is what I have the reservation for that is always important you have to go to reservation times in there they will just take the date finally the legal services contracts that the city was providing we are in the second year of that we are still funding the crisis catholic charities and American gateways to provide legal services for family spacing removal the main qualifications for services there you have to be a San Antonio city resident and you have to have 125% federal public guidelines the idea is you just go into either one of those providers and if you are a San Antonio resident you can do it in this program and it should be 100% free for the legal services finally there are a couple of things I just got here from forced from home the Doctors Without Borders presentation that was the exhibit that is there next to the courthouse I don't know if many of you have seen it it is a really great presentation it actually overlaps a lot with what this group does and you all are on their list of things and that is really great for those who haven't the forced from home Doctors Without Borders exhibit highly recommended it will only be here until Sunday so it takes about an hour to get all the way through it but they really kind of walk you through what it is like to be a refugee and the challenges you face in every single stage being forced from home leaving home what you take with you when you arrive at a camp the choices you have to make there it is a safe country and they have actual doctors who have done work in those countries to talk about their experiences so it is really a great exhibit finally we are transitioning to a new immigration liaison we will be transitioning out of this job it is going to be a while because I committed to serving as immigration liaison until we hire someone else so our estimate is probably January somewhere mid January it could be later whether we can get all our interviews down the time so you will be seeing me at least a couple more times do you have any questions I have a couple is it just in the evening or is it day long it starts at 9 so it goes from 9 to 12 and then 1 to 5 students are schools mostly so 4 to 8 is the better public time on weekdays and on Saturday and Sunday it will be 10 to 6 yes I went this morning I went at 9 and that was fine don't go much later because I did and I got into 3 school groups I guess they are going like every 8 minutes there is a charge I have a second question on that public charge are they still making an exception for Cuban coming across yes, it is my understanding that there are many categories that people don't apply to so really there are usual vulnerable groups that are excluded from the public charge and people who are taking right now status people who came to the United States and are adjusting that way I think the Cuban patient entrance probably is still going to be exempt from this requirement but if you are doing a family based petition there is a vast majority of people who are trying to become the Uber residents this is going to apply to you and this is in addition to the requirement that you have heard of of having a sponsor file an affidavit of support a legally binding contract that says that if the person is going to go on color benefits then you as the sponsor will pay for that that is a requirement now that will continue to be in effect plus they are going to have these additional requirements it is very important that we will change it is kind of flying under the radar it is very confusing and hard to follow but we are trying to at the very least get San Antonio's perspective into the conversation at the federal regulation level can I mention also so Citrope has been really involved on this issue in particular and Dunkleburg is one of the leading experts on this if you go to that blog site there is a ton of materials on there there will be sample comments we were always organizing around this we were waiting after the election to really talk about it but please visit our site because then Dunkleburg has been really organizing the state around this issue thank you Tina great I am glad to hear it thanks Hi everyone my name is Raya I am an intern with the Ligerent Center for Human Rights I have a few brief updates the first is that we have received an increase in requests from selling seekers in detention at Purcell from Cameroon and the Congo I think last week we received I want to say 10 letters from individuals requesting help additionally so the migrant center is based in San Antonio we worked just down the street but we worked at Purcell so I was at Purcell yesterday doing visits and I was finally able to meet with an individual who was in quarantine for three weeks there were about 30 to 40 people in quarantine I believe and so this was an individual that had been on our list for several weeks but we were told that we were not able to meet with them because they were on medical security so obviously we were not able to know what was wrong with them or when they would be out because that would be rich privacy but I think those are things that we need to know as people who want to help them and I met with this individual and there was another individual on my list who was also a medical quarantine that we weren't able to meet with but this individual had said that they were released from quarantine three days ago and just had their credible fear interview so there's a bit of a backlog for a lot of the people who were sick and I don't know exactly what was going around I heard chicken pox but the individual I met with had them lost additionally the Migrant Center for Human Rights recently kicked off our Human Rights Learning Program which is a workshop where we go into local high schools and we talk about everything that has to do with immigration we do an overview of immigration and asylum law and do little case studies with students so we'll present them with a case and ask them do they think this person will literacy the asylum or a cat or withholding of removal and it was really exciting because I think as you can imagine, we're all outraged by the state of immigration but these high school students think it's absolutely ridiculous just how immigration law works and we're also looking for underwriters for this program so we recently went to Kipp High School and did workshops with Spanish classes and soon we're going to be going into Alamo Heights High School and doing workshops with students there so if you're interested in underwriting this program or if you're a teacher or if you know any teachers who would be interested in inviting us into their classrooms would be so appreciative and one more thing I don't know how many of you are signed up for our newsletter but I'm going to pass around a newsletter signed up to both sides of the room and I'm also so recently we updated our newsletter now it is like I think it looks better, I updated it but now it's like via email and it's a little bit more it's more user friendly so unfortunately I don't have a very good example of the digital newsletter but what I do have are the articles that were included on our newsletter and our old physical newsletter so please please sign up for our newsletters I work really hard on them but also there are really good updates on all things to do about immigration and what we're up to at the migrant center so I'm going to pass around sign up sheets and then some examples of our old newsletters please sign up so this is an ignorant voice story so it talks about somebody's difficulty in gathering evidence in detention as you can imagine it can be pretty difficult when you don't have access to certain resources to build a strong case and then this is a policy analysis by the executive director Sarah Rainey talking about asylum seekers have a right to box so please take a look at that thank you so much, thank you for your time good morning everybody my name is Drew Galloway from Move, Texas I will give a quick civics update on our work and then go into our immigration program so youth turnout I'm proud to announce was 568% up in Texas over the 2014 election just in Bear County there was two full turnout points up over that amount like the state average so Bear County actually outperformed the state for the year so far we've registered a little over 29,000 students by hand we have distributed 239,000 voter guides which includes immigration issues that are important to young people this cycle we went and knocked on 20,000 doors made 14,000 phone calls and since 73,000 text messages including 19,000 conversations through those text messages with other young people and we are getting ready to begin registering students for the city of San Antonio election so it's been an exciting cycle for our immigration justice program we are working hand in hand with SA stands on site and release here in San Antonio we've been meeting with city council people and hope to have draft memos on everybody's desk by late November we are also meeting with the San Antonio library with the director of the library to inquire if we can make library cards as part of identification for site and release to sort of make the available IDs more varied we have two Know Your Rights sessions coming up this month one is in Sikini at Texas Lutheran college or university that's going to be on the 28th and then we have one later this month in San Antonio that will be announced on Facebook later this week our Know Your Rights graphic novel is finalized and going to print will be distributing print and digital versions of this document which is a visual version of Know Your Rights that's more targeted towards under 30 individuals and then also we have a college campus SB4 handbook which is more of a policy manual on campus police and how SB4 impacts universities we are doing that hand in hand with SA rise currently we are seeking student input on several of our campuses on the finalized document and that will go through print and digital distribution throughout Texas as well and finally for the first session ever we will be working in the Texas leg session on a youth agenda and we hope to release that in early December so thank you so much can you name your group again? sure that was Move, MOVE All Capitalized, Texas and it stands for Mobilized Organized Vote and Empower we are a nonpartisan grassroots organization building power for young people thank you so much very quickly I run Nowcast SA which is a nonprofit local independent online news organization we have covered Interfaith Welcome Coalition since it was first dreamt up and I wanted to let you know that two things one this year we were accepted as the challenge grant from the Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the McCarthy Foundation they will match any donation individual donations to Nowcast SA up to $1,000 this year through December 31st and if you are able to sign up for a monthly donation for as little as $5 a month the Knight Foundation will match at the annual rate if you contribute $5 a month they will contribute $60 if you contribute $50 a month they will contribute $600 immediately to us and it's very important and also if you are not receiving our newsletter you can text free update to 66866 and you can get onto our newsletter so you can get all the information about including others Interfaith Welcome Coalition I'm asked to see that we are finished by 11.30 so sister Sharon would you please come aboard on the bus station were you supposed to do that who was supposed to do it because I know that sister Denise is not there okay well it was anyone asked by sister Denise yes I was but I was afraid to do that you want me to let's see okay are you ready I was waiting for the other ones the other groups this will be short sister Denise has said that that she gave the number of backpacks that we have given this year this month this past month October 1778 backpacks last month the most in one month so far this year about 70 to 110 families a day we received depending on if it's the beginning or the end of the week the media publicity has brought us more Spanish speaking volunteers Linda Jane Freed is traveling so Linda Lennon will report on the backpacks I'll be glad when Jane gets back we're getting more and more interest which is really a great thing people are wanting to come in and help us pack backpacks they're wanting to pack them and bring them to us they don't want to just don't make money they really want to do something tangible so we've had lots and lots of emails and that's a great thing last Monday we packed the very most we've ever packed we packed 450 backpacks we were there for four hours this week I've gotten requests from people to go out and do little workshops and let them know how to pack the backpacks and what to put in them so it's very exciting but we could use more volunteers and after doing this for Jane she needs more help and since I'm the numbers person as of October 31st we have delivered to the bus station and the airport 17,187 backpacks this year 17,187 backpacks as of October 31st last year we've delivered a little bit shy of 5,000 490,000 4,000 okay our Joe here or is John ah, John you're here we forced Joe to go on vacation this is John Garland I would just say this is about hospitality and since our last meeting we've hosted in conjunction there's a really wonderful collaboration between Catholic Charities and Raesis and the Interfaith Welcome Coalition and then individual homes that are opening up and there's the Casa Nacho run by the Catholic Charities and the Casa de Marito run by the Minernami Church where I'm the pastor and since our last meeting and Jeffrey who's here in the back here is doing a lot of transportation we are Mennonites he's a Catholic but we are building a statue of him in our church he's doing a number of people have been through trauma informed hospitality training that we've been offering every other week more or less and it's very, very basic it just says this is what hospitality is like for Mennonites folks and then the other thing I want to mention is that this is the season that a lot of folks are getting sick at the bus station and in the airports and so if you need to have your hands laid on you today because you've been ill and you're feeling, come on I think Mariela's been sick maybe three or four times in the last couple of weeks and Nate has been spending a lot of time at the bus station a lot of gentle kindness this is why we sent Joe away for vacation John, you said you're offering trauma informed hospitality training, when does that happen? it's generally on Wednesday nights and if you haven't gotten the invitation that means that we did not do a good job sending them out but we've trained maybe 60 or so folks in the last couple of weeks it's just a one hour training talking about based on especially with men how to engage with women who've been sexually traumatized and then also how to make increased felt safety with children and with adults when they're in a very different space and they need to rest there's lots of studies out there and there's a lot of really neat tips and it's just a matter of writing through this I'm sorry, sister Sharon I skipped a little section and that's what threw you on sister Pat, do you have anything on education or advocacy? advocacy that you want to talk about? also Mary Grace do you want to come up there and talk about the sanctuary? I'll just say while she's walking I've been here for the first time from your faith community or your organization and would you like to give a point for that group please let me know if you are by your name on the assignment she did oh I just, I totally with the evidence trying to get through this we will have an advocacy meeting the IWC advocacy meeting directly after this one probably this corner up here a number of our people belong to the different groups that have given reports thanks to Sharon and to Lucretia and her husband they came up with the need to collaborate because we realized early on as we began how complex these things are in terms of the service as well as the advocacy so drawing from the best of what's coming out of people's hearts, minds and wills we have gathered this advocacy committee which is going to keep improving I'm sure as we get out there and get bring from our different collaborators what their expertise is and what we need to do in this accession in Texas that's not surprised what you should have picked up I hope at the back we didn't have Texas impact do a training with a thanks follow I shouldn't say bottom Reverend George October 30th it was quite excellent and so there's a summary of that especially on page 2 and 3 at the bottom Texas impact resources they do a weekly witness every week during the whole session which is helpful and then also on the other page page 3 under necessary tools and the important that you put in your computer immediately capital.txt.gov where it has a lot of information that's helpful for Anthropocene and also to give off this sheet Texas impact gave us we need to know our legislators we're building relationships with them not we know pretty much who's been elected and whatever so this lawmaker information sheet is for you to fill out so that as you go about the business of being actually God's voice and care of those who are most vulnerable that you gather this kind of information to be able to label to the people that we expect to do the work that we need to do together and on the back I have just a few points we have some real veterans on our advocacy committee, Sir G. Thomas Dwyer is one of them Olga who just spoke recently was very much one of them and also Meg who's from the Presbyterian advocacy as well as from the leaders and their veterans so JT I asked JT what I could put on here knowing that we're not starting a lot of legislation work really until the first of the year or thereabouts and so there are a few points for you to consider and you can read them so I'm not going to say them again being sure that you put into your computer that particular website www.capitaloftexas.gov is really really important I don't know about you but I've been so inspired today by the groups the voting was great where's the guy from Texas I think I got all 73,000 of your tweets so just wondering you're in my box, you're in my everything eventually I said my God it's two hours before the polls called closing and they were still doing so talk about enthusiasm it's great G to the group she's my expert at home and elsewhere you know Luis had to leave but he gave us incredible information this morning I just want to emphasize in relation to the sheet that sister Pat just held up and what Luis said some of us worked incredibly hard in the last session to try to kill the bill that would have licensed Carnes and Dilly do you hear what Luis said why was that bill killed look down on the sheet if you picked it up on the table and one of the things that I asked you to find out about your representative is his faith tradition people that bill died because the director of the Texas Catholic Conference and Bishop Burns of Dallas visited with Brian Cook the chair of that committee that helped the bill it passed the senate as Luis told you it was in the committee in the house to be heard state affairs the senate bill came over thank God Strauss put it to state affairs and so Brian Cook had control of those two bills and because of his Catholic upbringing that's what Luis told you you have to really research on that paper that sister Pat left on the table for you to fill out now there's a little problem a great number of you have a new senator or a new representative and up on that website you only have the people it only has from the 85th session you won't get detailed information off that website for the newly elected state people so you'll have to go to other sources but many of you have people that served in the 85th and will be serving again in the 86th and you can get information about that thank you I'll be next sister Susan Mika for those that are new I'm with the Benedictine sisters our monasteries in a burning and I'm sorry Luis had to leave but we're the ones that started the center for public policy priorities in around 1985 and finally we're getting someone now that's going to be working on some of these other issues we've been pushing the center to do that so yes we're the ones our Benedictine office Ruben is my assistant he's here in the back we put together what we see ourselves as part of the whole coalition documenting a lot of the articles and the different court cases that are going on so at every meeting we try to pass out this now it's gotten to be a number of pages we say immigrant family detention update so those of you that are new to pick up one we'll put it into a PDF after this because we always get other information maybe that we didn't have before the meeting and we try to update everything and then send it to the leaders of our coalition to post and we actually made the font bigger on the first page and over into the second page we've been promising you that we were going to try to do that so then we now put the activities on the second page and thank you Tino for that we use a lot of the information that comes from the different sources to try to and many of these activities have been mentioned already today and then the third section is the articles so we subscribe to some of these newspapers so that we can try to actually capture those articles and Ruben does the summary and puts the link there so if you need more information and I just want I mean of course like this time it's mostly on the caravan also the troops going to the border and then on the very end on the very back page there the feds signed a new contract with Delhi and we had mentioned that before that we figured that that is what was going to happen when the other small city said that they were no longer going to have that contract so they have and there's a lot of details in that article kind of mind boggling in many ways and part of our other work is with shareholder advocacy we sometimes own shares in some of the companies where we raise questions and since there's so many new people today are reported at the last meeting that I was just in New York at the beginning of October and we met with Corsivic number of the shareholders the Jesuits are actually raising or they're leading that dialogue and so questions about like are you working on a human rights policy and then also they're working on like a sustainability report many of the companies now are annually publishing sustainability reports so I was at the meeting able to raise a lot of nitty gritty questions on behalf of like our group and others about what's going on in Delhi because that was of course it is the one that runs Delhi and we just got a press release this morning from CalSTRS the California State Teachers Retirement System voted, the board voted yesterday to divest from for profit prisons so they're going to be selling their shares of Corsivic and the Geo Group, the Geo Group is the one that runs Carnes so very interesting and they're saying that it's going to put pressure on the CalSTRS which is the California Public Employees Retirement System because oftentimes they go in tandem so the one now, the teacher retirement one, CalSTRS just voted yesterday to do this so we'll also put this press release with all of the information that we'll send and make into a PDF so thanks so much Gene I totally skipped a whole middle section Gene is our treasurer We're running late so let me just summarize very quickly we're taking money in, we're spending money but we're taking more money in and we're spending That's good I'm Mary Brace is coming up, in terms of fundraising we have done, the reason we have more money is that we have very generous stuff this year now we're starting to worry about next year because it's coming so that's what we're working on right now is our budget so that we can start the process if any of you have contacts or links to funding sources please give them to me because that's how we've done this, thank you I don't see Moon or Natalie but I wanted to remind everyone of our accompaniment training this is a program where we have women or men to their ice check-ins hearings or ankle monitor check-ins and the training Spanish is not a requirement the training is going to be next Tuesday night at First Unitarian Universalist Church at the crossroads of I-10 and 4-10 easy to find hard to get to but we're going to make you a sandwich if you come at 6.30 for sandwiches or at 7.00 for the training itself thank you okay so I think most of these things have been announced but okay so the doctors we got orders exhibit 4-11 please go see that this evening in conjunction with that there is a thing at the UTL Science Center Holly Auditorium called Bearing and Witness again is in conjunction with this exhibit and accompaniment training you just announced that okay I think that's it so is there anything else I want to thank you every person that is here showing interest in this issue I want to thank our collaborators all these young folks here I'm old so I can call them young so to come up and give their reports on what they're doing that makes us relevant because we know that immediate thing that's going on so as we close thank you for being here thank you for your support and we will have a meeting in December so please come it's I think the 13th December 13th so please come thank you oh my gosh we have a meeting okay did you do what you wanted to do gosh Terry okay there will be an after this meeting right somewhere after this meeting and there's also going to be the faith based initiative on immigration that leads here somewhere thank you