Seattle Human Rights Network

Yesterday HRN organized a video presentation and discussion on the human rights abuses occurring at detention centers across the country. The presentation and discussion was lead by AJ McClure of OneAmerica (www.weareoneamerica.org) and immigration and international human rights attorney Karol Brown (www.globallawpartners.com).  

The event was held as part of Seattle University’s Social Justice Mondays and was based on OneAmerica’s Night of 1000 Conversations (http://nightof1000conversations.org/) designed to raise awareness of the Department of Homeland Security’s policies and practices that routinely violate basic human rights of people in this country, particularly immigrants. 

We began by watching a short video containing interviews with detainees and then broke off into a lively discussion of the problems with our immigration system and the reasons why allowing our government to strip immigrants of their basic rights is opening the door for similar treatment of citizens. Many people in the room were shocked by the standard wait time for obtaining an immigration visa. Attendees were similarly horrified that the people portrayed in the video could be robbed of their rights, treated terribly, and then sent back to nations they didn’t know for seemingly no reason.

At the end, we discussed ideas of what we could do to ensure that the government restores these basic human rights, including writing to our representatives (sample letters were provided), encouraging immigrants to naturalize, and organizing further group discussions on the topic.