STATEMENT: It is immoral, irrational, and unacceptable to hold our nation hostage over building a border wall

RALEIGH (January 8, 2019) – President Trump’s speech tonight sought to further hold our nation hostage over the building of a useless, massively expensive, and politically fabricated border wall – one that few want, security experts agree wastes our time and resources, and further divides our country before construction even begins. The government shutdown over this immoral and irrational political stunt has now led to hundreds of thousands of federal employees missing paychecks and halted vital services, affecting families and children across the United States.

The only crisis at the border is the one that was caused by the Trump administration’s cruel policies towards children and families—policies that actually jeopardize, rather than enhance, our security. Any crisis here was politically manufactured by the President.

It is further unacceptable to negotiate new immigration policies while the government is shut down. Calling for “compromise” creates a false equivalency between thoughtful discourse over reasonable, pragmatic policy options and the demands of a chaotic White House administration using a ransom note to dictate the way forward.

There is no ransom here to be paid; no bargaining to be done. Holding the nation, innocent federal employees, and lawmakers hostage in the name of a divisive, archaic border wall is harmful not only to our democracy, but in concrete ways, to millions of families and local economies across the nation. We are better than that as a people.

The vast majority of Americans oppose the wall and want the government reopened immediately. The Justice Center urges our North Carolina lawmakers to support bipartisan government funding bills that will end this reckless shutdown.