RTC Campaign
On Friday, November 14, the Detainment Task Force delivered letters to local Amtrak and Greyhound managers. We are calling on these two businesses to prohibit Border Patrol from intimidating, harassing, and detaining travelers at their businesses.
This follows-up on a letter we delivered in person in July of 2008. We are writing a second time to request a meeting to discuss the policies and practices that allow Border Patrol authorities to board buses and trains and to request identity documents. These demands often lead to arrest, detention, separation of family, terrible emotional stress on separated families, and – eventually – to deportations.
The conduct of Border Patrol undermines local values of hospitality to outsiders and nondiscriminatory behavior. On behalf of those who have been harassed – US citizens and non-citizens alike – and their families, we would like you to consider the consequences of these actions and to consider stopping them.
If you are unable or unwilling to stop the enforcement practices of federal authorities, then we ask you to post signs that disclose information to passengers, your clientele, about the risks associated with entering the station and traveling by bus or train. These signs should disclose specifically, in English and Spanish, and ideally in other languages as well, that Border Patrol is present and will request documents, make arrests, and detain travelers, even if this means separating parents from children or spouses from each other.
As individual and organizational clients of Greyhound buses ourselves, and on behalf of many individual and organizational clients of your services in the greater regional community, we ask that you take this request more seriously by responding. We would like to hear from you by Wednesday, November 26, 2008 to schedule a meeting.
Thank you in advance for your time, including a meeting to discuss them further. To set up the meeting, please contact Ms. Pat Rector of the CNY Detainment Task Force, which is a Project of the Workers’ Rights Center of Central New York, at 315-474-4821.
