ACLU Hosts Open House

The ACLU of Nevada held an open house at their Reno office today.  The goal was to educate citizens about how to make their voices heard on the current immigration situation. The message there - that everyone has a voice.

"We can all be voices," said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.  "We can all speak out to our elected leaders, we can all speak out and talk about our concerns here, reach out to our leaders in Washington, local leaders, everybody has a role to play here because it's about our families.  It's not a partisan issue; this is a humane issue of American Values and who we are.  We help our friends, we help our neighbors, that's how I was brought up.  That's what this is about, helping families who are victims"

The ACLU has filed a class action lawsuit for a process to reunite thousands of children separated from their parents at the border.

"The bottom line is Donald Trump's family separation crisis is not over until the administration proves the policy has actually ended and every single child is returned to their family," said Holly Welborn of ACLU Nevada.  "We will continue to seek an injunction in court not only to get kids reunited but to stop future separations."

Locally, citizens are making signs and placing phone calls, urging leaders to act on what they say is not a partisan issue.

"We're tired of living in a political environment where we're promoting conflict for the sake of conflict," said attorney Jason Guinasso.  "We need to be resolved to put that aside and start coming up with some real solutions, build consensus and deal with the real problem, which is we need comprehensive immigration reform."

Others are writing what they call letters of comfort to the families in detention.

"And those will be read on a loudspeaker at the rally against Jeff Sessions' visit to Reno at the Peppermill on Monday morning," Welborn said.

She says the hope is to also translate those letters and deliver them to some of the families in those facilities.