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WRITE TO YOUR MP

Urgent: stop the deportation of the Sanchez sisters

I am writing to you to ask you to apply maximum pressure on the UK government to prevent the deportation of Ivania Rodriguez Sanchez, 24, and Karla Rodriguez Sanchez, 26.

These two Salvadoran refugees faced kidnap and death threats. But as a result of an admin error, they are being separated from their parents and deported imminently.

El Salvador is a country in which Amnesty International notes "widespread human rights violations, erosion of the rule of law, and criminalization of dissenting voices." The violent gangs and corrupt nature of the regime has been clear in the last two weeks with Trump’s deportations there.

The two women threatened with deportation have a legitimate claim for asylum after violent threats by criminal gangs to their family and violent rape threats to themselves.

Because of a minor error in their claim, they were taken into detention and like so many fast-tracked for deportation.

By the time they turned to their MP, they were already being scheduled for deportation this week.

Emergency legal appeals are in process but their deportations are clearly motivated by government targets for mass deportations.

There will be hundreds if not thousands of similar deportations in process resulting from immigration procedures that are both seriously flawed as well as hostile to asylum seekers.

We welcome the increased speed at which claims are being dealt with. But the current immigration system is both under-resourced and exceedingly hostile to asylum seekers.

The mass deportations must end.

These refugees' MP, Nadia Whittome, supports them but this is not just an item of constituency casework. It is the responsibility of all of us to demand a humane and properly functioning asylum process.

Please do everything in your power to stop the deportations of these two women, and all those like them.