Border Patrol Disasters

[candygirl200413]

So I felt like this needed its own title frankly because it's been upsetting me and it's just getting worst and worst.

Here's the background:

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley demands answers on children detained at border

Quote

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley is fighting for human rights.

According to a press release from Merkley’s office, he investigated one of the immigration detention centers to see how children are being treated once separated from their parents. On Sunday, June 3, he was admitted to a Customs and Border Patrol processing station where families are torn apart, but was denied access to the center where children are being detained.

“Not only was Merkley unable to see anything of the conditions that children were living inside, supervisors at the site refused to answer questions and referred Merkley back to the head office in Washington, D.C.,” the release stated.

Merkley followed up with that office, which is the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and demanded answers.

“It is outrages and cruel to intentionally inflict trauma on vulnerable children, including toddlers and some as young as 12 months, by separating them from their parents or family members and placing them in separate detention facilities in order to influence or deter parents from seeking asylum in the United States,” Merkley wrote in his letter to ORR Director Scott Lloyd, according to the press release.

Merkley continued by saying that under U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions “zero tolerance” immigration policy, “children must be forcibly separated from their families, falsely labeled ‘unaccompanied alien children,’ and transferred to your agency’s custody.”

He pointed out that other press reports show more than 600 children have already been taken from their families since the policy was initiated at the start of May this year, bringing “the total under your care to a staggering 11,200.”

The UN has also weighed in on this issue and called for the United States to “immediately halt this practice.”

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani from the UN human rights office told reporters in Geneva that, “The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child.”

In Merkley’s letter to Lloyd, a copy of which can be found online, he demanded answers to a list of questions no later than Friday, June 15.

“He also reiterated his request that he and other members of Congress be able to visit ORR facilities and speak with children and staff,” stated the press release.

According to that release, some of the questions from Merkley included:

-- How many children in the following age groups is the ORR or its contracting agencies currently holding in detention?

-- Newborns to 1 years old?

-- Between the ages of 2 to 4 years old?

-- Between the ages of 5 and 8 years old?

-- Between the ages of 9 and 13 years old?

-- Between the ages of 14 and 18 years old?

-- What is the average and median length of stay for these children? How does this figure compare with 2017 and 2016?

-- How many ORR facilities are currently operational for children and what is the capacity for each of them?

-- How many organizations and companies contract with ORR to house children separated from their parents and unaccompanied minors? What are their names?

-- What bathroom facilities and accommodations do these shelters have and are the conditions sanitary? For instance, are there bathrooms, showers, and towels? Are there rooms for the children that have beds with bedding? If so, how many beds per room? 

“It is imperative that children, regardless of their nationality, be treated with a bare minimum standard of fairness and compassion throughout our immigration system,” Merkley wrote in the press release. “I eagerly anticipate your prompt response to these critical questions.”

Then Rep. Pramila Jayapal had a video of visiting these places today:

Spoiler

 

A few of the quotes she said: 

"Some of [the mothers] heard their children screaming for them in the next room. Not a single one of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening.”

"One woman said ‘I want to be with my children’ and the Border Patrol agent said: ‘You will never see your children again. Families don’t exist here. You won’t have a family anymore.’ ”

Finally, racist kelber elf announced this a few hours ago: 

Trump administration moves to block victims of gang violence, domestic abuse from claiming asylum

Quote

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has ordered immigration judges to stop granting asylum to most victims of domestic abuse and gang violence, a move that would block tens of thousands of people, especially women, from seeking refuge in America.

The decision, which immigration advocates are sure to aggressively fight, came as Sessions seeks to use the authority of his office to sharply change U.S. immigration law to make it less friendly to asylum seekers.

The attorney general has the power to issue decisions that serve as binding precedents for immigration judges. In this instance, he used a case involving a victim of domestic violence to rule that survivors of such “private” crimes are not eligible for asylum under U.S. law.

“Generally, claims by aliens pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum,” Sessions wrote in his ruling. “The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim.”

In a speech earlier in the day to a training session for immigration officials, Sessions telegraphed his position, saying that “asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems— even all serious problems— that people face every day all over the world.”

His anticipated “ruling restores sound principles of asylum and longstanding principles of immigration law,” he said.

Sessions emphasized at the conference earlier in the day that judges will be required to follow his interpretation of the law.

The government does not appear to keep statistics on exactly how many asylum claims fall into the categories Sessions is now excluding, but advocates estimate that domestic violence victims seeking asylum number in the tens of thousands each year. A large share of those requests have been successful, as a result of several administrative rulings and court cases during the Obama administration.

“There are many, many Central American women and women from other parts of the world who have been able to obtain protection,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “Many women sitting right now in detention under these claims might lose their right to obtain protection and be deported to dangerous situations.”

I'm looking for links on how to help, but I'll be calling my democratic reps in my state cause my repug obviously doesn't care. I'm also looking for organizations and such to help as well as looking at ACLU and other involvement. It's just been truly upsetting me that this is happening especially because the children are in concentration camps and are separated by their mothers because they are brown.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[candygirl200413]

Now this is happening. He wants camps for CHILDREN.

Exclusive: Trump looking to erect tent cities to house unaccompanied children

Quote

WASHINGTON 

The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention.

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.

“HHS will make the determination if any of the three sites assessed are suitable," said an HHS official.

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.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS is responsible for the care of more than 11,200 migrant children being held without a parent or guardian and must routinely evaluate the needs and capacity of approximately 100 shelters , which are now 95 percent full.

Because of the large fluctuations in referrals of unaccompanied minors, the administration said its appropriate to have a mix of “standard” beds that are available year-round, and “temporary” beds that can be made available to address any increases in migration flows. HHS can place unaccompanied children in an appropriate setting while a sponsor is identified who can care for the child while their immigration case proceeds. It helps protect the border but also prevents vulnerable kids to fall into the hands of traffickers, officials said.

“The lack of parental protection, and the hazardous journey they take, make unaccompanied alien children vulnerable to human trafficking, exploitation and abuse,” the HHS official said.

Trump has blamed Congress for allowing the loopholes that require federal authorities to release illegal immigrants to await hearings for which many don’t show up.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a roundtable last month with Trump charged that those loopholes also prevent the administration from quickly deporting unaccompanied children.

“It can take months and sometimes years to adjudicate those claims once they get into the federal immigration court system, and they often fail to appear for immigration proceedings,” Rosenstein said. “In fact, approximately 6,000 unaccompanied children each year fail to appear when they've been summoned. They're released and they don't show up again.”

Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children and families have been apprehended since 2014, when a surge of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan mothers and children raced into the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, fleeing violence and poverty.

The unaccompanied children are generally turned over to family or held in an HHS shelter, like a detention center or tent city. Now those who arrive with their parents are being separated from them and also sent to HHS shelters or sponsor families.

Leon Fresco, a deputy assistant attorney general under President Barack Obama, who defended that administration's use of family detention, said the Trump administration is also likely going to need to return to Congress soon for more money if it wants to keep up this aggressive detention approach. He said it's much more expensive to separate the parent and children and hold them in two different facilities than keeping them together using a monitoring system.

“The point is separating families is not only controversial, it’s also inordinately more expensive,” Fresco said.

Advocates accused the Trump administration of using the children as pawns to score political points.

“Detaining children for immigration purposes is never in their best interest and the prospect of detaining kids in tent cities is horrifying,” said Clara Long, U.S. researcher at Human Rights Watch. “US authorities should focus on keeping families together, ensuring due process in asylum adjudications and protecting the rights of children."

 

[AmazonGrace]

Camps, you got 'em

 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

I wish I could get down there and help those kids, I have nothing but time on my hands but no $$ and I'm in Iowa, no where near the boarders. What is happening is a crime, it's in human. 

[apple1]

I can't stop thinking about this. So awful. Even a nursing baby torn from its mother's breast.

 

I have no words.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

Every time you think Trumpy and his henchmen cannot possibly go lower, down they go again.  How can any decent human being continue to stand with him?  How is there any excuse to do this to children?  These are the acts of evil people who have lost their humanity. 

[Audrey2]

7 hours ago, PreciousPantsofDoom said:

Every time you think Trumpy and his henchmen cannot possibly go lower, down they go again.  How can any decent human being continue to stand with him?  How is there any excuse to do this to children?  These are the acts of evil people who have lost their humanity. 

Sadly, I don't think Trump and his henchmen ever had their humanity. I believe they were always monsters, who tried to approximate normal as long as they could. I'm adding Hannity to this as well, besides the direct policy makers.

[Howl]

That essence of sniveling evil,  Jeff Sessions,  quoted the Bible in support of this heinous family separation policy. As WaPo noted, this is the same verse used in support of slavery. 
Sessions cites Bible passage used to defend slavery in defense of separating immigrant families

Spoiler

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday used a Bible verse to defend his department’s policy of prosecuting everyone who crosses the border from Mexico, suggesting that God supports the government in separating immigrant parents from their children.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions said during a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak and protects the lawful.”

Government officials occasionally refer to the Bible as a line of argument — take, for instance, the Republicans who have quoted 2 Thessalonians (“if a man will not work, he shall not eat”) to justify more stringent food stamps requirements.

But the verse that Sessions cited, Romans 13, is an unusual choice.

“There are two dominant places in American history when Romans 13 is invoked,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. “One is during the American Revolution [when] it was invoked by loyalists, those who opposed the American Revolution.”

The other, Fea said, “is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.”

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Presiduncial credo: If you repeat the lie often enough...

 

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Presiduncial credo: If you repeat the lie often enough...

 

This isn't unprecedented- Trump was very much a part of the Obama wasn't born here and isn't eligible to be President (birther) movement.

[AmazonGrace]

So you thought you could take the bus 

I guess they don't want tourist money

[fraurosena]

I agree. Let's call a spade a spade. Little children, toddlers and babies are being kept in American Concentration Camps.

 

[fraurosena]

"Anything less is cruelty in it's purest form."

 

Edited June 16, 2018 by fraurosena
deleting merged post because they don't belong together

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. I am shaking with rage right now. 

 It seems Repugliklans interpret "suffer little children" as a directive to inflict cruelty on them.

[fraurosena]

The face of evil behind these abhorrent practices is Stephen Miller. The idea of separating babies from their nursing mothers sprouted from his morally corrupt and callous brain. Fucking sociopathic bastard.

 

[fraurosena]

I agree with this sentiment, except for the very last part. I hope they get hit by a falling tree, and suffer. A lot. For a very long time. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Against Immigrant Children"

Spoiler

What does “pro-life, pro-family” really mean?

The idea behind that phrase has long been an important organizing principle for pro-life groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

For many who work for these organizations — or who vote for candidates endorsed by them — being “pro-life, pro-family” is not a euphemism for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. It acknowledges that protecting children, including ones not yet born, often requires protecting and supporting their mothers and families too.

We are in the midst of a serious crisis for vulnerable children and families, though, and these “pro-life, pro-family” organizations have been largely silent.

The crisis is the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from undocumented parents, even when the families are asking for asylum. In one particularly horrific case, a mother said that her baby was taken from her while she was breast-feeding.

The number of children being taken is so large that the administration, using the fear these children must feel as a means of deterring undocumented immigration, is apparently building “tent cities” around military bases to house them.

Given their support of the administration, and an unwillingness to speak critically about immigration policy, “pro-life, pro-family” organizations now risk being tied to these and other horrific practices.

Some church groups and leaders have followed their broad pro-life commitments in condemning these practices. Evangelical leaders like Russell Moore and Samuel Rodriguez have signed a public letter of protest to the administration. “The traumatic effects of this separation on these young children, which could be devastating and long-lasting, are of utmost concern,” they wrote.

On Wednesday, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, denounced the Trump administration’s immigration policy. “We urge courts and policymakers to respect and enhance, not erode, the potential of our asylum system to preserve and protect the right to life,” he said.

Catholic bishops in border states and cities have been particularly scathing. “Separating immigrant parents and children as a supposed deterrent to immigration is a cruel and reprehensible policy,” Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Tex., recently wrote.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, I spoke with Bishop Flores about mass deportation. He called the policies intrinsically evil. Because it regularly forces children into places where their lives are under threat, Bishop Flores argued, it is “not unlike driving someone to an abortion clinic.”

So why can’t the biggest pro-life organizations join these religious leaders in condemning the administration’s treatment of children?

Where is National Right to Life? Where is the Susan B. Anthony List?

The leadership of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the most powerful pro-life groups in the country, originally had harsh things to say about Donald Trump as a candidate. They were “disgusted” by the way he treated people, and “women, in particular.” It was “anyone but Donald Trump.”

But after his nomination, the group promoted him as someone its supporters should vote for. Going well beyond “the lesser of two evils” language, it even made Mr. Trump the keynote speaker at its annual gala last month.

It is true that the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, seems likely to be anti-abortion, as do several federal judges who have been confirmed under Mr. Trump. His appointments and policies with respect to the Department of Health and Human Services have been similarly anti-abortion.

But this is nothing like a turning point for the movement. People opposed to abortion got some short-term gains, all of which could be easily reversed by the next administration, and some judges about whom they must wait and see.

And these modest gains have cost the movement greatly.

In standing by President Trump and his administration — and, indeed, in now honoring him as their standard-bearer — traditional pro-life leaders have put short-term and uncertain political gain ahead of consistent moral principle.

Because of their support of the president and general silence on his administration’s actions, the major players in the pro-life movement are now tethered to his horrific border policies. This presents a real threat to the broader movement’s capacity to be taken seriously by young people and people of color.

The silence on the border policies is not a simple question of groups keeping a focus solely on abortion. Many pro-life organizations also do extensive work opposing euthanasia. There is nothing in principle compelling such organizations to ignore anti-life and anti-family border policies.

If the traditional pro-life movement is to regain credibility as something other than a tool of the Trump administration, it must speak out clearly and forcefully against harming innocent children as a means of deterring undocumented immigration.

These groups have extraordinary access and influence in the White House. They have to use it.

The groups in question are only pro-life for white people and unborn baybeez. Brown children who have already been born don't matter to those groups.

[ADoyle90815]

It shows they only care about the fetus, since they don't care about those already born, especially if they have brown skin and come from non-English speaking countries.

[47of74]

The USCCB had started their annual meeting and immigration was high on the agenda.

Quote

The bishops discussed several ways to address President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy, including sending a delegate of bishops to inspect detention facilities "as a sign of our pastoral concern and protest against this hardening of the American heart," as Newark's Cardinal Joseph Tobin said, or directly lobbying conservative lawmakers.

Bishop Edward Weisenburger of Tucson, a canon lawyer, suggested "canonical penalties" for Catholics "who are involved" in the separation of families. Canonical penalties, which can range from denying sacraments to excommunication, "are there in place to heal," Weisenburger said. "And therefore, for the salvation of these people's souls, maybe it's time for us to look at canonical penalties." Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, suggested pastoral outreach for border agents struggling with their consciences.

Yeah.  I'll believe that when I see it.

All fuck face and his groupies have to do is make the correct noises about abortion and gay marriage and these Bishops will fold like yesterday's laundry. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[fraurosena]

If you can, please go. And ask about the girls. Where are they? 

 

[samira_catlover]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

If you can, please go. And ask about the girls. Where are they? 

 

fraurosena:  females are worth caring about?  Get a clue!---we're working on creating the Republic of Gilead down here! 

I'm having night- and day-mares about non-English-speaking kids under the age of, oh 8 or so, separated from familiar adults, dumped off into pods of 3-4 other strange kids (hello?!?---possible areas for violence or sexual abuse, from roomies OR caregivers?).  They've traveled *how* far, in what kind of ghastly conditions---and *then* they get yanked away from their parents/caregivers/elder travel companions, tossed into a mass holding area, and this is RIGHT and consonant, because we are supposed to uphold GOVERNMENTAL RULES?  Bleep me sideways and f--- all hellfire, but I don't think "well, we just followed the laws!"  (paging Godwin) is gonna get us off the hook, morally or ethically. 

All kind deities have mercy on my poor nation, and forgive us for complicity or silence in these sins.