From Amy’s Facebook page:

Hello, dear friends. I want to share the below story with you from Karissa Porter, an incredible volunteer with Calor Humano. If you were not aware, our group aids our neighbors in immigration detention in much of Kentucky–connecting them with legal resources and covering legal fees when possible, making sure they have funds for phone communication and a little extra food from the commissary, helping them get home (which can be hundreds of miles away) upon release, and just helping them through our care and actions to know that they are indeed cared about and valued through all of the hell they’re being put through for no good reason.

PLEASE, share widely to anyone who may like to contribute financially, volunteer, or spread the word. Please contact me if you are interested in serving with us!

WE CURRENTLY HAVE A GENEROUS DONOR WHO WILL MATCH ANY DONATION UP TO $350. Please help us meet the match!

To contribute to our vital work, here are our current donation options:

Venmo (@calor-humano-ky)

Write a check to Calor Humano. (DM me for address.)

**Our group is in the process of applying 501(c)3 status, so additional donation methods would be available in the near future.

Now, please read Karissa’s touching testimony:

“I really want to say this not because I am doing anything extraordinary, but simply because I have been willing. Willing to put myself out there and be uncomfortable and not have the answers, but to be a connection.

Twice this week fellow volunteers in this work of helping our neighbors in ICE detention have reached out because the cost has become personal. Close family friends have been detained and incarcerated. Twice those folks have not been able to contact or connect with their friends. Twice I reached out to the network of neighbors that I am connected to and both times within 5 minutes the women were found and put in contact with their loved ones.

These women are caring for each other, surrounding each other with support, offering their limited phone and text money to the newest arrivals and willingly giving their food and very small resources to each other.

Y’all, this is hard work. This is not easy. The stories are painful and often overwhelming. The hurt is real. BUT so is the ability to offer some hope and healing. We can be present. We can listen (in most cases, read the messages) and offer a word of compassion. We can give $20 for snacks and deodorant.

I spent 35 minutes on a video call with Carlos today. His cell currently has 19 men in a 10 person cell. While talking to him he put me on the phone with a cellmate from West Africa and one from Saudi Arabia and another from Mexico. He showed me a lunch tray – it was not food you would choose to eat if you had options – but all I received from him and his friends were words of thanks and blessing.

It’s worth the late night texts and desperate search for someone.

It’s worth the tears I shed over yet another unjust story.

The human connection, the human warmth (Calor Humano) is worth my discomfort.”

Thank you so much for your time and consideration for this incredible cause.

Louisville SURJ, whose community defense network provided the poster at the top, notes this on its Facebook page:

Since January, Calor Humano has helped 55 ICE detainees get home after being released from KY detention centers.

Calor Humano is Spanish for human warmth, something our quizling mayor, Craig Greenberg, lacks because of his overwhelming desire to kiss the butt of an orange-hued conman, rapist, racist, pedophile.