Keep Our Family Together.

If my husband and I are deported, they will put my two youngest children in foster care.   Just the thought of that rips me apart - so we made the hard decision to enter Sanctuary to keep our family together.   My name is Oneita Thompson and I now live in a church.  My husband, Clive, and I started our family in Jamaica, but after gang members killed my brother and threatened our lives,  we took our 4 children and fled to the United States 15 years ago.  We filed for asylum and received work permits. Over the past 15 years, we have worked, advanced our education,  and sent our children to college. Our children did not qualify for financial aid, so we worked hard to pay for their education.  On top of working, I went to school and now work as a nurse assistant. My husband Clive works as a machine operator.   Over the years, we saved and scraped together enough money to buy our own home.  Our home is the heart of our family - it's where we cook, where we eat, where I wake up to the smiles of my children, where we are together as a family.  It means everything to us.


I will never forget when I listened  to the message from ICE on August 24, 2018.  They told me that my husband and I had to come in for deportation the following week.  My heart was racing, and all I could think about was my family being torn apart and that we would be killed if we went back to Jamaica.  As parents, Clive and I will fight to the end to keep our family together.  We asked the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia for help, and decided to enter Sanctuary.  We had to leave our home, both our jobs, our kids' schools, and our friends behind.  We are now living in a church in Germantown. We cannot leave the church for fear of being arrested.  We enter Sanctuary not only to stop our deportation, but to challenge immigration laws that tear hundreds of thousands of families apart.  We enter Sanctuary to call attention to these laws that are immoral, unjust, and are hurting people all over the country.   We enter Sanctuary to call for compassionate and just immigration laws.

We have lost all our income and need your support to pay for food, for expenses for the kids' school and daily life, to pay bills we still owe, and to keep our home.   We have no idea how long we will be here, so are raising $30,000 to support us for a whole year.   We have faith that we will win this, that justice will prevail, and we will return to our home as a family again.  But we can only do it with your help.  

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you!


Sincerely,
The Thompson Family


 Click the links below to hear more of our story:
WHYY 
The Inquirer