On June 19, Juneteenth – the day set aside to commemorate the abolition of slavery – Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner held a press conference regarding a proposed locally-based detention center that would house undocumented children who are being separated from their families as they attempt to cross the Texas-Mexico border.
Turner encouraged people to “do better” to keep immigrant families together and invited the Rev. Greg Han, director of Interfaith Relations at IM, to share the following wishes of our organization:
“There is hope. Dialogue and collaboration help us to understand one another and work together. And service, serving the greater good and those who are most vulnerable, lights the way. A wise leader once said, ‘If we dare to dream beyond our current city’s conditions, if we work hard and if we put aside our biases and recognize that no one person can do it by himself, we can be a bigger Houston, a bigger city and we can even rise above our own individual personalities.’ That man is Mayor Sylvester Turner in his 2016 inauguration speech. We are stronger working together, and together we can end these separation policies and work on something better.”