Immigrants' Rights
No policy of
terror in Kentucky
In 2011, an Arizona copy-cat was proposed here in Kentucky, Senate Bill 6. SB 6 would have mandated discrimination by requiring police officers to target people who seem like they might be undocumented. KFTC was part of a broad effort that successfully defeated the bill.
Here is what some members said about SB 6.
“The Bill of Rights says that we’re all innocent until proven guilty, but this won’t be true for people with darker skin and accents.”
Shekinah LaValle
Jefferson County
“SB 6 seeks to establish a sanctioned policy of terror that would systematically and willfully persecute Latinos living in Kentucky. It would wrongfully incarcerate innocent people for profit – including women and 
children.
"This is a crime against humanity. This is wrong. It is wrong in Rwanda, it is wrong in Sudan, it is wrong in North Korea, China or Nazi Germany. It is also wrong in Kentucky.”
Juan Gutierrez
Bowling Green legal
permanent resident
Read an op-ed published in the Georgetown News-Graphic by Scott County member Homer White about SB 6.
KFTC is working to create a society that supports the human rights of all people. We value the human rights of everyone, regardless of national origin, race, citizenship, immigration status or any other defining characteristic.
KFTC supports our allies in working for comprehensive immigration reform.
We also work to defend Kentucky against bad immigration legislation, especially attempts to divide our communities by colors and accents and places of birth. This is not what we want.
We want protected communities. We canʼt afford mandated discrimination. We want to stand united. Kentucky canʼt afford to turn neighbor against neighbor.
Learn more about the contributions of immigrants to Kentucky here.
NKY Supporting Our Neighbors Immigrant Rights Workshop
Heyra Avila, an animated young woman from Florence, addressed a group of us fellow northern Kentuckians on a Wednesday night at the end of long day. Her energy was infectious. Her story made a deep impression. She opened up about a precarious, hard-to-imagine trek that she and her family made over a decade ago between Mexico and the U.S.
Her parents, wanting to give their children a more solid future, had chosen to leave their small, metal sheet roofed home not too far from the U.S. border and try their luck over here. Heyra described herself as “lucky.” The dangerous journey they made across the dessert when she was four was safer than it was for most pursuing the same route. Her family had the good fortune of finding a car, providing them with overnight shelter and preventing them from complete exposure to the desert elements or predators—likely both animal and human.
Supporting Our Neighbors: Immigrant Rights
Join KFTC members as we host Youth Educating Society to learn more about immigrant rights in our community, and how non-immigrants can be better allies
Protect our families and communities; defend DACA youth
KFTC is guided by our vision for Kentucky, which includes our own dream of working for a day, “when discrimination is wiped out of our laws, habits and hearts.” And yet we are reminded daily of the discrimination that many Kentuckians face, including new immigrants.
DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – is an Obama administration program that allows undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to apply to stay in the country while they pursue their education or employment.
NKY Racial Justice Meeting
Join KFTC members as we discuss ongoing work around issues related to racial justice. This includes fighting hate, promoting fair immigration reform, just treatment for all residents of Kentucky, and more.
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