…………...In the past few weeks at least two faith-based agencies have sheltered or are currently caring for as many as 171 immigrant children who were separated from their families as a result of the widely condemned policy.
The service, which is sometimes called “short-term” or “transitional” foster care, is being offered by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which has helped the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement with placing foster children for 15 years, as well as Catholic Charities, which works under the purview of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.”....

Discussions of reforming our criminal justice system demand us to ask philosophical and moral questions. What should be the ultimate goal of sentencing and incarceration? Is it punishment? Rehabilitation? Forgiveness? For Catholics, these questions tie directly to the heart of our faith.

Even before the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy led to the forced separation of immigrant parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, religious groups cast a jaundiced eye on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency...


Now two left-leaning faith-based groups, the American Friends Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Association, are joining a growing call to abolish ICE.

NO ONE predicted the stunning victory of a 28-year-old Latina socialist in a New York City primary election for Congress on Tuesday.
But in retrospect, this political bombshell is a sign of the times — especially the deep desire for an alternative to the meek and compromised Democratic Party leadership that usually goes unanswered....

Ocasio-Cortez’s left-wing campaign cut through that. In a campaign video that went viral on the internet, with more than half a million views, she said: “It’s time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.”

Ocasio-Cortez has been especially effective in countering narratives that pit race against class. “I can’t name a single issue with roots in race that doesn’t have economic implications, and I cannot think of a single economic issue that doesn’t have racial implications,” she said. “The idea that we have to separate them out and choose one is a con.”

The outrage from both sides of the political mainstream is entirely justified, but the suggestion that this policy is unprecedented in the American tradition is — like most expressions of “American exceptionalism” — simply false.

WHETHER THROUGH direct government action or nonfeasance, or through the state-sanctioned actions of powerful private actors, the purposeful separation of parents and children has a long history in the U.S. — most often linked to racial oppression or oppression based on national origin or religion

Then there are the ways that policies of mass incarceration — set into fast motion in the final decades of the 20th century — result in the coercive power of the state forcibly removing parents from children.
With the highest incarceration rate in the world, the U.S. had, as of 2010, 2.7 million children with one or more parents who was incarcerated.

Imagine the reaction if congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in the U.S. congress, proclaimed that he is a Muslim first and American second? How about other Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu leaders stating that they are working to establish the Sharia law, the law of Moses or Gita in the United States? Yet the current administration is doing exactly that: establishing a theocracy based on ultra conservative Christian beliefs. But few people are as alarmed as they should be.

A multiracial, intergenerational crowd of social justice activists, union workers and people of faith gathered on the National Mall over the weekend to get marching orders for their next steps in a new Poor People’s Campaign.
Thousands of people prayed, cheered and listened intently as speakers called for a re-energized approach to fighting poverty and other social ills they say are plaguing the country. Organizers urged those who had traveled from as far away as Alaska and Alabama to raise their hands in a show of commitment to educating voters in the days ahead.

Kicking off on Mother’s Day with rallies in cities across the United States and ending with the gathering on the Mall, the campaign’s 40 days was intended to energize a similar interfaith effort on a host of mostly liberal causes.

A record number of Americans in the latest Gallup Poll say they believe that more immigration is a positive thing for the United States. The new poll, released on Thursday, said that fully 75 percent of Americans are of the opinion that immigration is good for the nation, while just 19 percent said it is bad for the country. According to Gallup,the percentage of poll respondents who indicated that immigration is positive went up 4 percentage points when compared to their 2017 poll asking the same questions.