The movement for human rights is growing and Border Action Network is building the infrastructure to take the movement forward no matter what happens in Congress in the next weeks. We are creating human rights committees of immigrants' and border residents' who are fighting for the human rights of all people and to make policy changes locally and nationally. We invite you to join our struggle. Donate to support human rights.

Your contribution will support the hundreds of “defensores comunitarias/community defenders” who are working on the border to transform our communities into places where everyone leads lives with dignity.

Border Action and our allies are creating teams of people in each border state who will go door-to-door to document the violations of immigrant’s and border resident’s human rights. This information will be added to an on-line secure database shared with border organizations from New Mexico, Texas and California. We’ll co-produce a series of reports with an international human rights organization analyzing the patterns of abuse. And then we’ll use those reports to inform our communities and to pressure national and local decision-makers to change their policies and stop rights violations.

Using this strategy Border Action and our allies have already made significant steps forward and reduced human rights violations on the Tohono O'odham nation and in Southern New Mexico and El Paso.

Make a secure online contribution so that we can train more community defenders and create real solutions to our human rights crisis.

You are invited to be a part of this important campaign for human rights on the border. We have launched a fundraising drive to make sure that this campaign reaches from the backyards of border communities to the halls of Congress. Your $10, $20, $50 or $100 will make a difference. We're a lean and mean organization that is getting results. No fancy desks, no DC lobbyists. Just thousands of immigrants, border residents and their allies working together for change.

People from across the country have invested in this work and have shown that this fight is not just for immigrants but for everyone. I ask you to contribute now, when it is critically important.

Please join us and donate now.

Sincerely,

Randall Smith

PS. Host a house party! House parties are a fun and easy way to multiply your support for human rights. Download the House Party Kit here. If you have questions give me a call at (520) 623-4944. We'd love to help you get your family and friends involved.

About Border Action

Border Action Network formed in 1999 and is a grassroots membership-based immigrant and border community organization based in Nogales, Douglas and Tucson. Our mission is to ensure that our rights are protected, our human dignity upheld and that our communities are safe and healthy for everyone.
We are 300 dues-paying immigrant and border families and allies. Members form local organizing committees that develop and lead campaigns, recruit new members and organize actions to create communities where everyone lives in dignity.

In six years we have made significant improvements in the lives of border residents and immigrants.

• In 2006, we negotiated an agreement with the Tohono O'odham Nation Police Department that they will not cooperate with the Border Patrol.
• In 2005, together with the Tucson Paleteros Union we defeated a proposed City law that would have disproportionately harmed immigrant workers.
• In 2005, we formed the Border Community Alliance for Human Rights with immigrant community groups in California (American Friends Service Committee San Diego), New Mexico and Texas (Border Network for Human Rights) and Washington, D.C. (Latin American Working Group). Together we have broken new ground by developing a community-developed border-wide strategy for strengthening border organizing while impacting national policy.
• Border Action members have sent over 20,000 postcards and hundreds of drawings by immigrant children and organized marches and delegations calling on Senator John McCain to support comprehensive immigration reform. With his May 2005 announcement of the Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill, we saw the impact of our work: the Senator has become a proponent of legalization and family reunification. We don't agree with everything in his plan but it is a start.
• In 2004, we registered 2,000 new voters in Nogales and 320 new voters in Douglas, and defeated the anti-immigrant Proposition 200 in Southern Arizona.
• In 2002 we won a coalition campaign that prevented the construction of up to four privately run federal prisons for immigrants in Arizona and California.