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Family Separation at the Border: US citizens are now being detained


Looks like conditions have really improved since those pictures from 2014 earlier in the thread. :rulz:

Makes you wonder what the conditions were when they wouldn't let him in. Did they take down the barbed wire and move the chemical toilets?
 
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What Senator Jeff Merkley Saw at an Immigrant Detention Center for Children

Can you describe to me what you saw there?

I’ll tell you what was very difficult to see. One room had smaller cyclone fences—they look like the way you construct a dog kennel. They’re larger, but that’s the thought that comes to mind when you see them. Then they have these space blankets [light foil blankets], which is a very strange sight, to see kids using a space blanket as a cushion—but they don’t provide any cushion—or as a cover for privacy. There’re no mattresses in that section.

After they go through interviews, they go into a big warehouse. I called them cages, and the White House said that’s unfair, they aren’t cages. Well, call it a cell, then. It’s a cyclone-fence-constructed area. There were all these boys in this big enclosure, maybe three to four dozen boys, and they lined up, from smallest to largest, to get ready to go eat. The tiniest kid at the front of the line, he was knee-high to a grasshopper; he was 4, maybe 5 years old. They go up to age 16 or 17.
 
A family was separated at the border, and this distraught father took his own life

Soon after Muñoz and his family were taken into custody, they arrived at a processing station in nearby McAllen and said they wanted to apply for asylum. Border Patrol agents told the family they would be separated. That’s when Muñoz “lost it,” according to one agent, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the incident.

“The guy lost his s---,” the agent said. “They had to use physical force to take the child out of his hands.”
 
So let’s see. In the last year, Republicans have been responsible for this horrible human rights scandal, nominating and sticking by a child molestor for US Senate, and the entire Russia fiasco. I sure as shit hope the Democrats have some grand plan in place by November to use all this free ammunition, but I doubt it.
 
So let’s see. In the last year, Republicans have been responsible for this horrible human rights scandal, nominating and sticking by a child molestor for US Senate, and the entire Russia fiasco. I sure as shit hope the Democrats have some grand plan in place by November to use all this free ammunition, but I doubt it.

Wouldn't you expect someone who brags about seeing and talking to teenage girls while they are naked would be a kindred spirit to child molestors?
 
 
Down on the border, there’s a new trail of tears

Children face even more challenges in finding their parents. Many of the youngest ones aren’t even verbal, leaving case managers to try to put together the pieces.

Only one of the four children in Michigan, Wil, has been able to speak with his parent since they were separated. He talks to his father on the phone about once a week, excitedly answering the call from the ICE prison in Arizona where his father is being held awaiting a hearing on his asylum claim. The two also write letters, with the help of Wil’s case manager from Bethany. Wil often holds up a drawing of a heart that his father mailed him to the window, tracing it on his own piece of paper over and over again, his foster father, Silas, said. He sent his dad a picture of him in his soccer uniform in Michigan.

But in the 2½ weeks since they arrived, Bethany’s case workers haven’t yet been able to track down Karla’s mom, Jefferson’s mom, or Carrie’s mom in ICE detention. The kids ask often when they’ll get to see their mothers again, and Silas and Coryn tell them they don’t know yet, but that people are working hard to try to make it happen.

Silas said he overheard the four children in his custody last weekend sitting in the living room and talking among themselves rapidly in Spanish about what it was like when they were separated from their parents. Jefferson told his foster siblings that his mom cried and yelled when they were separated. Wil shared the story of seeing his dad led away in chains.

“I was sitting in the room in tears,” Silas said. “It’s 6-, 8-, and 9-year-olds: They’re kids but they’re talking like adults.”
 
Rep. Pramila Jayapal—‘They Could Hear Their Children Screaming for Them in the Next Room’

Thirty to 40 percent of these women came with children who had been forcibly taken away from them. None got a chance to say goodbye to their children—they were forcibly taken away. One said she was deceived, because they were in detention together. Then the CBP officers told her she was going out to get her photograph taken. When she came back, she was put in a different room, and she never got to see the child again. Some of them said they could hear their children screaming for them in the next room. The children ranged anywhere from one to teenagers.

Another woman came from Guatemala with her children, 8 and 12. Her husband was in prison for raping a 12-year-old child, and he was coming out. She was afraid her children would be raped either by him or some of his fellow gang members. She had been separated from her two children, she didn’t know where they were.

Another woman came fleeing gang violence, she had a 14-year-old child killed 9 months ago. Another child in a wheelchair, paralyzed in a gang shooting. So she came with her 3rd child, just to get one of them to safety.

Members of Congress should be following Jeff Merkley and Pramila Jayapal's lead on this. Go to detention facilities, visit with the people who've had their children taken, visit the children, bring cameras, don't let this be drowned out by Trump's latest distraction.
 
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions On Children Separated From Parents At Border, F-1 Visas For PRC Students, And Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision

This fucker can't even defend himself and his policies well to a friendly audience.

HH: There’s an organization called Kids in Need of Defense, www.supportKIND.org, and they are, they’re liberal activists, but they have a point that these children deserve representation, because many of them are eligible for asylum or refugee status. You’re the chief law enforcement officer. Are you guaranteeing that these 10,000 children have adequate access to legal counsel?

JS: I’m guaranteeing that they’re treated properly and lawfully. But so much of this is not valid, these claims. You just can’t decide you want to come to America regardless, and when you’re not, don’t meet the standards for asylum demand entry to the United States, demand that you appoint lawyers, and demand that you go through prolonged trials. About 20% of the unaccompanied children, come by themselves, that are stopped, are denied immediately. And 80, then the rest go through an asylum process, which is fair and just and takes time. And they get a hearing. And the judges are well aware that they’re young, and they treat them with the proper care and concern. And of the 80% who actually go through asylum processes, only 20% are successful. Most are denied, and many of them have no legitimate claim at all. They were just coming here because they’d like to make more money or for some economic reason.

He was asked about children and this was his response. He's criticizing calls to provide kids with lawyers. He's saying that kids can represent themselves in court. He's calling children greedy.

We have one of our worst people in a job where he impacts the lives of the most vulnerable every day.
 
Exclusive: Trump looking to erect tent cities to house unaccompanied children

They want to build a tent city. To house children. In the summer. In Texas.

The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the plans.

HHS officials confirmed that they’re looking at the Fort Bliss site along with Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene and Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo for potential use as temporary shelters.

The aggressive plan comes at the same time that child shelters are filling up with more children who have been separated from their parents. The number of migrant children held in U.S. government custody without their parents has increased more than 20 percent as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen rolled out the administration's new policy zero tolerance policy that separates children from their parents who now face prosecution.

More than 10,000 migrant children are being held at HHS shelters, which are now 95 percent full.
 
trumphat_makeamericaashamed.jpg
 
History won't look kindly on this human rights debacle.

One can rationally argue about our immigration and asylum process but there is no defense for this type of cruelty and abuse.

 
Depends on who writes the history.

Schoolbooks in Texas decades from now are going to say Trump was just protecting our borders.
 
Pelosi to visit U.S.-Mexico border next week

The California Democrat will accompany about 15 other Democrats on the trip Monday to San Diego, which is being organized by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, according to multiple House sources.

The trip comes as the debate over immigration — and President Donald Trump’s latest efforts targeting undocumented immigrants — rages in the Capitol.

The group will visit at least one facility housing migrant children who have been separated from their families — the effect of a controversial “zero tolerance” prosecution policy blasted by Democrats and human rights advocates. Under the strategy, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security aims to prosecute all suspected border-crossers, including adults traveling with children.
 
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