A Silicon Valley couple, horrified at the images of immigrant children being separated from their parents, are marshaling their vast connections in the tech community and beyond to raise $13.8 million — and counting — to “Reunite an immigrant parent with their child.”
Charlotte and Dave Willner, some of Facebook’s earliest employees who are now at Pinterest and AirBnB, started a Facebook campaign Saturday morning to raise money for a nonprofit legal defense fund in Texas with a goal of $1,500, enough to post bond for one immigrant parent who crossed the border illegally.
In true Silicon Valley style, however, the post went viral, and by Wednesday afternoon more than 360,000 people had donated nearly $14 million — with donations continuing to pour in after Trump signed an executive order stopping the family separation policy — making it the largest single campaign on the relatively new Facebook Fundraisers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has been critical of Trump’s plans for a border wall, and COO Sheryl Sandberg both donated an undisclosed amount to the fundraiser, according to a Facebook spokeswoman. The Willners were Facebook’s 250th and 270th employees.
“We are hopeful that the president will stop family separation, but that doesn’t mean our work is over or that our focus can go elsewhere,” the Willners wrote on the fundraising page. “A change in policy doesn’t automatically bring babies back to their mothers or erase the trauma from these innocent kids.”
The campaign, which the Willners said will end Saturday, came amid an international outcry — from Democrats and Republicans, politicians and religious leaders — over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating children from their parents when they cross illegally or show up at the border to ask for political asylum.
“Thank you for giving us something concrete to do!” wrote one donor, Hollie Larkey Ancharoff.
“We all have to do something to stop this atrocity being committed in our name,” wrote Mark Podolner, another donor.
The Willners have a 2-year-old daughter and were moved by the viral photo that Getty Images photographer John Moore shot of a young girl in a red shirt crying at the feet of her mother and border patrol agents.
“It was the closest thing we could do to hugging that kid,” Dave Willner said.
An eight-minute, secretly-recorded audio recording released by ProPublica on Monday of children crying and pleading for their parents is equally heart-wrenching.
“These aren’t kids we don’t have to care about. They’re like our kids,” Charlotte Willner said in a phone interview from her San Francisco office Monday. “When we look at the faces of these children, we can’t help but see our own children’s faces.”
The Facebook Fundraiser campaign started taking off mid-morning Saturday when one of the Willners’ Silicon Valley friends offered a $25,000 matching donation. At one point Sunday, donations were pouring in at a rate of $40,000 an hour. Late Monday, Dave Willner was tracking $3,000 per minute.
The donations are being sent to RAICES, a Texas nonprofit that offers free and low cost legal services to immigrants. When the Willners’ campaign started going viral, RAICES called in volunteers to help execute its new strategy based on the overwhelming influx of donations.
“I have no better way to describe it than just absolutely stunned and incredibly grateful because the funds that have been raised will enable us to do so much work,” said Jenny Hixon, director of education and outreach for the nonprofit.
Reuniting families is a quagmire, she said. The best-case scenarios can take weeks, she said, while worst case can take months or never at all if parents get deported while children are still in detention. No matter how long, she said, the trauma and heartbreak is so great for families that “the damage has been done.”
A CNN poll released Monday shows that two-thirds of Americans oppose the Trump administration’s practice since early May of separating children from their parents. A majority of Republicans — nearly 60 percent — however, support the “zero tolerance” policy that has resulted in the separations.
The government separated about 2,000 children from their parents in the six-week period through the end of May, the Trump Administration announced Friday. Children are being housed in a former Walmart in Texas, among other shelters, while their parents are detained for prosecution or asylum hearings.
The Trump administration officials said the policy is designed to deter families before they make the dangerous crossing to the U.S. in the first place and insists Congress must take action to pass an immigration bill to correct such incentives.
While the biggest donations to the Willners’ campaign came from some of their wealthy Bay Area connections, the campaign reached a broader audience as the number of donations increased but the giving amount dipped to $5 and $10, Charlotte said.
One donor, Carolina Valle, posted on the fundraising site that she had crossed the border as a child with her mother. “We are sick to our stomachs over this,” she wrote. “I cannot imagine being ripped away from her. There has to be something else we can do?”
Some donations are coming from “small heartland donors,” Charlotte Willner said, including her Republican relatives in the Ozarks and her husband’s family of Democrats in Missouri.
“What’s been so encouraging is watching where the donations are coming in from,” Charlotte said. “I’ve had so many conservatives, the very evangelical side of my life, being excited about this.”
At the same time, the Willners leveraged the expertise of their tech friends to jump in when they or donors had questions.
BREAKING: Border Patrol @CBP just gave us this video of the detention facility we toured yesterday in McAllen, Texas. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, or interview anyone. To be clear: this is government handout video. pic.twitter.com/Zjy80qIZFZ
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 18, 2018
“We have lots of people we know who are good at different parts of this,” she said. When a potential donor was confused about how to donate, the Willners contacted a blogger friend who posted an explanation. When donors asked how they knew the Texas nonprofit was legitimate, they had a friend write up a post and add a link vouching for it.
While the Willners campaign is ongoing, Charlotte said there are numerous worthy nonprofits doing work along the border and she hopes another wealthy individual or celebrity might find a similar charity and match the RAICES donations.
“People are wondering, where does this stop?” she said of the political divisiveness, but the heartbreak at the border seems to be bringing people together. “Where do we find our commonness again? One place we find it is here.”
