The Architecture Lobby and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility have issued a joint statement condemning the Justice Department's widely criticized zero-tolerance immigration enforcement policy that has led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents as families seek asylum at the border.

"It is immoral and inhumane to separate children from their parents, and to use family separation to deter people seeking refuge or asylum. The United States must uphold international and U.S. laws protecting people fleeing violence and persecution," the statement reads.

The two organizations, which work to advance architecture by advocating for social justice reform within the field, are calling on architects, designers, planners and allied professionals to boycott any design work relating to these policies. This includes, as the statement says, walls, checkpoints, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, detention facilities, processing centers, and juvenile holding centers.

The Architecture Lobby has been vocal in their opposition to the current administration and its policies, consistently calling on the field to make clear their work will not be exploited in the service of xenophobia, discrimination and racism. Since 2004, the ADPSR has been similarly pushing against architecture's complicit role in the imprisonment of vulnerable communities, in particular, pressuring the AIA to amend its code of ethics to explicitly exclude participation from members in designing these types of facilities—something the organization has yet to do.

The organizations are once again asking the American Institute of Architects to take a stand against governmental infrastructures that use the built environment to enforce inhumane policies. As Michael Sorkin cautioned, "just as doctors are enjoined by their oath from the actual performance of state-sanctioned murder, so architects should resist when confronted with the design of death chambers. But today, hundreds of architects are engaged in the design of spaces of living death that defy every precept we should hold holy. These are lines no architect should draw."