CAMPAIGNS
Join Our Movement!
Our work cannot be done without YOU! Without people willing to take a stand- we cannot win. There are many ways to plug in and all of them make a difference- sign a petition, write an email to your legislatures or school board, come to a meeting or take a stand with us in the streets!
Join us in fighting against the rise of detention centers in PA, ensuring our schools are safe spaces for our youth and families, and mobilizing against the institutions that continue to fail and harm our people!
ICE OUT OF PA
In our state of Pennsylvania, we witnessed detention expansion which often leads to increased enforcement and attacks on our people by ICE, while also incentivizing their caging for profit. This goes against our deepest values.
The immigration detention system as a whole is inherently abusive, unjust, and fatally flawed beyond repair. We call on the Biden administration to take bold action towards ending the expansion of detention in our state, including the Alternatives to Detention Program!
We learned that after 30 years of detaining migrants in inhumane conditions for profit, York County Prison - the detention center responsible for the largest ICE footprint in Pennsylvania - will cease its private contract with ICE after August 12.
York has a long history of human rights abuses that further affirm our mission to end all detention in Pennsylvania. Please see fact sheet below that highlights some of the major findings of the dire conditions detainees face at York County Prison based on interviews Juntos and other community partners conducted in 2019.
Report Detailing Detention Conditions at York County Prison
As the Biden-Harris administration falls short of its promise to address the criminalization of immigrants, Juntos sees shutting down detention centers as a top priority. We must demand every person detained at York County Prison is RELEASED, not TRANSFERRED. The contract negotiations between ICE and York County is a great opportunity to take our chance and shut down the largest civil detention facility in Pennsylvania.
Sanctuary Schools
Our youth demand schools where learning, not policing, is prioritized. The City of Philadelphia public schools currently spend $31 million a year on ensuring that schools are policed, while there is a major asbestos problem, insufficient nurses and counselors, and unhealthy lunches. Parents are getting picked up by ICE right outside of schools, while the City has NO policy on school or administrators interactions with ICE. Our youth deserve schools to be spaces of sanctuary and learning instead of spaces of criminalization and fear.
JUNTOS PODEMOS
Over the last four years, we have seen a generation of young people - born in the U.S. to Latinx immigrants with varying legal status - come of age and become eligible to vote. Juntos Podemos seeks to engage these young people on civic issues to build the future our communities deserve.
Our community is too often talked about during election cycles, but never engaged as equal partners in defining and designing the democracy change and power-building efforts that we want and deserve. Through Juntos Podemos, we utilize our longtime connections and role as a trusted hub to launch a voter engagement and information project that mobilizes community members to the ballot box, movement spaces, and beyond.
Safety We Can Feel
We are LatinX for Black lives committed to fight fiercely to eliminate systems of violence that operate in Black and Afro-LatinX communities. Locally this means organizing around the upcoming contract negotiations between the City of Philadelphia and the Fraternal Order of Police, supporting black led organizations and working against anti-blackness in our communities.
Beginning in the fall of 2020, we worked with our allies in Amistad Project, Movement Alliance Project, Vietlead, Pennsylvania Working Families Party, Reclaim Philadelphia and Philadelphia Community Bail Fund to ask over 1,300 Philadelphia residents where Philly feels we can find real community safety.
Shut Down Devereux
Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health is planning on opening a children’s detention center in Devon, PA.
The practice of locking up migrants seeking a better life is a multi-million dollar industry in the U.S., and now Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health joins the list of companies intending to profit from that exploitation with a $14 million contract to open up multiple youth detention centers, including one in Devon, PA.
At Juntos we vehemently stand opposed to the expansion of immigrant detention in our state, and we echo the local community of Devon in demanding that Devereux abandon their plans to lock up immigrant youth immediately.
