On Wednesday, newly elected Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced that she is no longer allowing city jails to accept detainees from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
On the same day that the president signed an executive order that would stop the separation of children from their loved ones at the U.S. border, Bottoms signed her own executive order to stop Atlanta jails from accepting migrants detained by ICE until she knows for sure that the separation policy has, in fact, ended.
According to The Hill, Bottoms, like many people across the United States, has been horrified by the Trump administration’s separation and subsequent treatment of the children of migrant families.
“As we work as a nation to end this despicable immigration policy, the city of Atlanta will not take the risk of being complicit in the separation of families at the border,” she said in the statement, The Hill reports.
The mayor said she hopes that Atlanta’s refusal to house detainees doesn’t result in migrants “being sent to private, substandard, for-profit facilities,” but added that the Trump administration’s inability to create an effective solution to family separation “demands that Atlanta act now.”
“On behalf of the people of Atlanta, I am calling upon the Trump administration and Congress to enact humane and comprehensive measures that address our broken immigration system,” Bottoms said.
While Trump has signed a temporary stopgap regarding family separation that includes gray-area language that may lead to families being housed indefinitely, Bottoms is not waiting until the president and his band of white nationalist Keystone Cops find their way.
And, once again, America is being shown the way by a black woman.