 Good morning. My name is Kelly Allen. I'm the pastor at University Presbyterian Church here in San Antonio and chair of the Immigration Task Force for Mission Presbytery. On Monday, a large group of religious leaders from the south and southwest sent a letter to the president, the vice president, speaker of the House and Senate majority and minority leaders. The letter was signed by religious leaders from California, Arizona, New Mexico and many from Texas. It was pulled together by collaborative interfaith groups and IAF Industrial Area Foundation members. The three points of the letter are very important aspects of the current crisis. The first request of the letter is to ask that the Trafficking Victims Protection Authorization Act of 2008 be preserved. There is a lot of talk about expedited processes for the young people who are coming across the border, which means that in all likelihood these young people would be asked to speak about their case and attempt to make their case alone in front of an immigration judge. This is cruel. This is asking children who have been traumatized to tell their story in an alien environment without the assistance of an attorney or social workers or folks that can help them prepare their case. We are asking that our legislators continue the protections for these young people that are included in that act and not to roll back and to speed up the process of processing these kids back to where they came from. The second request of this letter is to allow for each of these young children to have attorneys. This is how they are able to tell their stories. This is how they are able to find out if they are eligible for asylum. This is a basic protection that we as U.S. citizens rely on to be able to speak to an attorney about our cases, but this is not a basic protection that we offer immigrants and we need to be offering that. Our nonprofit organizations like RAISIS here in San Antonio that are offering legal services to these children are stretched to the limit and they do not have the funds to keep up with the demand and so some children are going without this representation. Our third request is that religious groups, humanitarian agencies and social service organizations be allowed access, at least partial access to give support and encouragement to the young children and to simply be a presence of our community for the children that are in sheltered situations. There are a lot of restrictions currently in place and we understand the need to protect children and to be able to officially run organizations and to screen volunteers thoroughly. And yet we believe that these young children need to be able to connect with the broader community and especially to have spiritual support. So we request that there be an expansion of the openness and inclusion of organizations that wish to have interaction with these young people. These are our requests and we certainly hope that before the recess happens today or tomorrow that these requests are honored. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Monty Marshall, the senior pastor at Travis Park United Methodist Church here in San Antonio. The scenes from our southern border are gut-wrenching. Thousands of human beings, many unaccompanied children and youth, putting their lives at risk on a long and desperate trek over dangerous trails to seek refuge in the United States of America from the life-demeaning and life-destroying circumstances of their Central American homelands. Their circumstances remind me of a story from Matthew's Gospel of the Holy Family, including a young child named Jesus fleeing Herod's violence in their homeland and seeking refuge in Egypt. Having the plight of our brothers and sisters from the South and this memory of another refugee family that has informed the Christian tradition, I have to ask, isn't this a time for compassion? Isn't this a time for hospitality? Isn't this a time for justice? As it comes to the issues of migration, like the ones we face today on our southern border, the United Methodist Church has taken a clear and unequivocal stand. The United Methodist Church embraces the biblical mandate to welcome sojourners and strangers with gracious acts of kindness, hospitality, and justice. The United Methodist Church affirms that all immigrants are children of God made in God's image. The United Methodist Church is committed to providing real help for refugees, asylees, and migrants. The United Methodist Church is committed to the protection of uprooted women and children from all forms of violence and abuse. The United Methodist Church is committed to seek the unification of families divided by borders and legal status. The United Methodist Church is committed to the denunciation of xenophobic and racist reactions against newcomers. The United Methodist Church is committed to the preservation of due process and access to courts and to adequate legal representation for all migrants, regardless of legal status. The United Methodist Church is committed to tending to the spiritual, material, and legal needs of migrants. In response to the current crisis, the five United Methodist bishops in Texas have issued a pastoral letter calling the people of the United Methodist Church to pray and act with compassion and justice for the migrant children and their families who have come across our border at great risk to seek refuge. For these reasons, I have joined my colleagues in saying yes to compassion, yes to hospitality, and yes to justice by signing the letter Pastor Allen Just Outlined. This letter was sent on Tuesday to Senators Cornyn and Cruz and Representatives Doggett, Castro, Cuellar, Gallego, and Smith to express our position on the issues currently before the United States Congress concerning the border crisis. The Congress is debating the issue. Should additional federal resources be provided to aid in this crisis, we urge our local elected representatives to say yes to increased funding that will advance the cause of family reunification and provide sufficient legal representation, judges, and housing to meet the overwhelming need. The Congress is also debating the issue. Should the 2008 anti-trafficking legislation be rolled back to expedite deportations, we urge our representative to say no to this proposal. We urge them to keep the protections of the 2008 law in place. We invite all of these elected officials to meet with us to discuss creative solutions that protect the dignity and safety of refugees, ensure the safety of our border communities, and that fix our nation's broken immigration system. Thank you. My name is Robert Woody. I'm the pastor of Church of Reconciliation, a physical congregation, and I want to address what the next steps are that we as an interfaith group plan on taking as we go forward. First, we will request meetings with our United States congressmen and senators during their recess time to address these issues. We will continue to gather and try to organize interfaith groups to come up with compassionate solutions to this crisis. We'll continue considering our federal, state, and local policies that are being stretched by this crisis and to see when they need to be changed in order to become more adequate and more just in this situation. We'll also be continuing to try to reframe the conversation. This is not a question about an alien or criminal invasion. It's a situation involving children, young teens, and mothers fleeing because of fear, because of danger, because of crisis in their own countries. We have to reframe the conversation. And we will be encouraging all to provide support for those in need. And we encourage supporting those non-profit groups that are providing needs such as RAISIS, which was mentioned earlier, which is a non-profit that's providing legal representation to refugees and immigrants. They are at this point providing free representation to these unaccompanied minors. And they recently did a survey of 1,200 of these children for free. They need support. We encourage supporting that organization, RAISIS. We also encourage you to support the food banks, Catholic Charities, Episcopal Relief and Development, and other denominational groups that are raising and focusing their funds on the problems in the Rio Grande Valley. We encourage that. For other faith communities or non-profits that want to be a part of this interfaith group, we will have a gathering next Thursday, August the 7th. It will be at 1st Presbyterian Church at 10.30 to noon. This will be a gathering specifically of San Antonio GOAD, which is the San Antonio Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster. So we encourage any non-profits or any other congregations or faith communities that would want to be a part of this interfaith effort to join us next Thursday at 1st Presbyterian Church at 10.30. Thank you. Thank you.