Re: “Washington governor, AG stand by state prison notifications to ICE” (Aug. 22, Native Information):
Gov. Bob Ferguson and state Lawyer Normal Brown’s continued assist for our state’s facilitation of the deportation of people leaving our state prisons is unconscionable and indefensible. It displays the identical racialized attitudes about these we condemn to jail as disposable and past restore that, many years in the past, turned our jail system into warehouses of exclusion of individuals of coloration.
The people who face deportation upon leaving our state prisons are people, too. These serving lengthy sentences usually got here to america lawfully as youngsters, dedicated a criminal offense as a younger grownup and haven’t any ties to wherever aside from right here. Deportation for these people is the worst doable punishment our state might impose, made worse by the truth that they already served a sentence — usually an already excessively lengthy sentence — for his or her crime. Now, they face deportation to “third nations” the place they could be imprisoned indefinitely with out cost.
It’s time our state leaders have the braveness to interrupt freed from wicked tropes about crime and punishment, and stand for a system that upholds the Structure, our state values and customary decency. Lawless, medieval banishment shouldn’t be that.
Jennie Pasquarella, authorized director, Seattle Clemency Undertaking
