Trump's concentration camps are breeding grounds for diseases

 

More Melania phone leaks

Another case the government will likely take to the Supreme Court

A federal judge in the United States has ordered the release of children held with their parents in US immigration jails and denounced the Trump administration’s prolonged detention of families during the coronavirus pandemic.

US district judge Dolly Gee’s order on Friday applies to children held for more than 20 days at three family detention centre’s in Texas and Pennsylvania operated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some have been detained since last year.

  Guardian

How about the parents? They can just bloody well die in detention?

Citing the recent spread of the virus in two of the three facilities, Gee set a deadline of 17 July for children to either be released with their parents or sent to family sponsors.

We know which choice ICE will make.

Gees’s order said ICE can decline to release a child if there is not a suitable sponsor, the child’s parent waives rights under the Flores agreement, or if there is a prior unexplained failure to appear at a scheduled hearing.

[...]

Gee’s order said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was detaining 124 children in its centres, which are separate from US Department of Health and Human Services facilities for unaccompanied children that were holding around 1,000 children in early June.

The numbers in both systems have fallen significantly since earlier in the Trump administration because the US is expelling most people trying to cross the border or requiring them to wait for their immigration cases in Mexico.

Need any more proof that the cruelty is the point?

Inadvertently admitting they're here because where they're from is untenable.  And that's LEGAL entry - asylum applicants are legal entrants.

BTW, why weren't the immigration laws fixed when the Republicans held both houses in 2016 & '17?

Yes, they're concentration camps

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that border crisis bill

While the Democratic Party's presidential candidates were teeing it up here, the Democratic Party in Congress was falling apart. This has caused, in no particular order, splits between the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats, between progressive Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats, between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the progressive members of her caucus, and between Pelosi and members of her own leadership team. The immediate casus belli was a bill designed to deal with the humanitarian crisis at the southern border and its victims, some of whom are very young. The House passed a bill. The Senate passed its own bill. The differences in the bills respective priorities can be fairly summed up by the phrase, "Goddamn Mitch McConnell."

[...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, said shortly before the vote that her colleagues were giving up their fight for now over changes to the measure, which had already passed the Senate. “At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available,” she said in a statement. “In order to get resources to the children fastest, we will reluctantly pass the Senate bill.” The House vote was 305 to 102, with 71 out of 235 House Democrats voting against the Senate bill.

[...]

The uproar was loud and immediate. A lot of the animosity probably was anger at McConnell's apparent willingness to use sick and hungry children sleeping in their own filth as political hostages in service of the president* whose policies created this situation in the first place. In point of fact, the Senate Democrats under Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cut the legs out from under their House colleagues and thereby made McConnell's revolting threat a reality for people voting in the lower House. And while it's true that the Blue Dogs, as well as the remarkably constituent-free members of the Problem Solvers caucus, threatened to tank the bill if it included the proposed cuts to ICE that were in the original House bill, the progressive rage at Pelosi is more properly aimed at Schumer, whose failure as a Senate Minority Leader is now complete. It's time for him to go.

  Charles P Pierce

I'm willing to let Chuck and Nancy share the blame equally, and it's time for her to go, too.

Close the Camps

If you rush them, they will fall in line

Mitch McConnell knows his compatriots.





My guess: there's some of each.



America is failing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Trump admin solution: just move the kids - Update

The acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, John Sanders, announced his resignation amid growing outcry over reports that more than 300 children were held in a remote Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, with insufficient food and water, and were left to try to care for one another.

[...]

Sanders’ departure from the agency charged with overseeing ports of entry, temporary processing of migrants and the Border Patrol prompted another shuffling of top Homeland Security officials. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Mark Morgan has moved over to Customs and Border Protection, and acting Deputy Director Matt Albence will move up to lead ICE, a Homeland Security official confirmed.

[...]

Tuesday, a Customs and Border Protection official confirmed that 127 of the migrant children transferred from the Clint station were subsequently moved back.

[...]

Although it's unclear where all the children held at Clint had been moved, Escobar said some were sent to another facility on the north side of El Paso called Border Patrol Station 1.

[...]

When asked why the children had been returned, the official said it was "because the numbers have been reduced,” and the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement “was able to take a number of them."

There was no word on whether improvements had been made to the facility in response to the reported conditions.

[...]

On Sunday, volunteers in El Paso tried to deliver diapers, soap, sleeping bags and stuffed animals to the Clint facility, according to Abigail Seldin, a Washington-based entrepreneur who purchased the items to be delivered and described herself as a “concerned mom.”

[...]

The donations were rejected, she said.

  LA Times

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Double down

Trump admin solution: just move the kids

The U.S. government has removed most children from a remote Border Patrol station in Texas near the border with Mexico following reports that more than 300 children were detained there and caring for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

Only about 30 children remained at the station outside El Paso on Monday, Rep. Veronica Escobar said after her office was briefed on the situation by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official.

Most of the infants, toddlers and teens who were held at the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, were scheduled to be transferred by Tuesday to shelters and other facilities run by a separate federal agency, the Office of Refugee Resettlement said.

[...]

Although it’s unclear where all the children held at Clint were moved, Escobar said some were sent to another facility on the north side of El Paso called Border Patrol Station 1. Escobar said it’s a temporary site with roll-out mattresses, showers, medical facilities and air conditioning.

But Clara Long, an attorney who interviewed children at Border Patrol Station 1 last week, said conditions were not necessarily better there.

“One boy I spoke with said his family didn’t get mattresses or blankets for the first two nights, and he and his mom came down with a fever,” said Long, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “He said there were no toothbrushes, and it was very, very cold.”

[...]

″(Unaccompanied children) are waiting too long in CBP facilities that are not designed to care for children,” ORR spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said. “These children should now all be in HHS care as of Tuesday.”

  AP

How long before they're spirited away to detention in another country?

The Trump administration wants more money to build more child detention centers to hold even more children, citing these relatively higher numbers of border arrivals. It is urging Congress' swift approval of the Department of Homeland Security's supplemental budget request for this purpose.

But that ask glosses over the fact that more children are in immigration custody because over the last several years the government has slowed down the rate at which children are reunified with their families. The government has sought to use children in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facilities as bait to arrest and deport the family members who come forward to care for them, according to a report by advocacy groups The Women's Refugee Commission and the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Based on our interviews, officials at the border seem to be making no effort to release children to caregivers-- many have parents in the US -- rather than holding them for weeks in overcrowded cells at the border, incommunicado from their desperate loved ones.

[...]

A second-grader we interviewed entered the room silently but burst into tears when we asked who she traveled with to the US. "My aunt," she said, with a keening cry. A bracelet on her wrist had the words "US parent" and a phone number written in permanent marker. We called the number on the spot and found out that no one had informed her desperate parents where she was being held. Some of the most emotional moments of our visit came witnessing children speak for the first time with their parents on an attorney's phone.

[...]

Congress should take action -- not by approving more money for detention -- but by requiring immigration agencies to cease separating children from family members unless that's in the interest of the child, release and reunify children as soon as possible and cease using them as bait to arrest family members.

These unconscionable abuses against children are not what America should stand for.

  CNN

Welcome to America.

UPDATE:

Yes, they're concentration camps

Sad isn't the right word.  Try enraging, inhumane, unconscionable, hideous, horrendous, indefensible, ....

The victims

Read the whole thread.

Yes, they're concentration camps

Just a reminder:  ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE NOT ILLEGALS.

Parents and other adults in detention aren't faring any better. In one processing center in El Paso, a cell designed for 12 people was crammed with 76, causing migrants to stand on the toilets for breathing space. Up to 900 migrants were held at another facility designed for 125. In another case, a teenage mother holding a sick and dirty premature baby spent 9 days detained without access to medical care for her newborn. They "wouldn't give her any water to wash [the baby]."

[...]

Here are 3 concrete things you can do to help with the humanitarian crisis created by Trump's inhumane immigration policies:

(1) Contribute to the Project Corazon Travel Fund so we can send more lawyers (particularly Spanish-speaking immigration lawyers) to the detention centers and refugee camps where help is desperately needed. We've already sent 37 and we can send dozens - even hundreds - more with your support. Click here to learn more & donate.

(2) Pledge your frequent flier miles to help get more lawyers to the border. If you have unused airline miles, you can pledge your airline miles to help the cause thanks to L4GG's partnership with Lawyer Moms of America. We use these miles to help cover travel costs for pro bono attorneys. Click here to pledge your airline miles to the travel fund.

(3) Volunteer your time and expertise. Below are a few ways you can do that. [Click here]

[...]

If you're unable to offer money, miles, time, or expertise right now, you can still help by sharing this post with your friends, family, and contacts via email, Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks. Please help us get the word out.

  Lawyers for Good Government

Yes, they're concentration camps

Immigration attorneys said four toddlers, all under the age of 3, were hospitalized last week after spending time at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas.

Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney, told HuffPost on Friday that the children, who have teenage parents or guardians, were feverish, coughing, vomiting and had diarrhea.

One 2-year-old’s eyes reportedly rolled to the back of her head and she was “completely unresponsive,” according to Gialluca.

[...]

The HuffPost report comes after a Justice Department lawyer suggested at a recent hearing that a toothbrush and soap were not necessarily required to fulfill sanitary conditions for detained migrant children laid out in a years-old agreement.

The Associated Press reported that Sarah Fabian, a senior litigation counsel for the department, made the suggestion while discussing a 1997 settlement agreement that requires certain sanitary and safety standards be met for detained persons during a recent hearing at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

  The Hill

Her cell in Hell is being prepared.

This situation is state sponsored child abuse pure and simple.  It's criminal.

UPDATE:



UPDATE:

The fault lies not with any one administration or politician, but with the culture: the ICE and CBP culture that encourages the abuse, the culture of the legal apologists who defend it, and our culture—a largely indifferent America that hasn’t done a damn thing about it. This stain on America’s soul will not wash out with an election cycle. It will only change when Americans demand that the government treat the least of us as both the law and our values require—and firmly maintain that demand no matter how we feel about the party in power.

  Ken White @ The Atlantic

UPDATE 8/15/19:

And he's at a D-Day celebration

Celebrating victory over Nazis.



From the woman who wrote "A global history of concentration camps":

America is seriously failing

Border Patrol still holding children beyond legal time limit

Many of the nearly 2,000 unaccompanied migrant children being held in overcrowded U.S. Border Patrol facilities have been there beyond legally allowed time limits, including some who are 12 or younger, according to new government data obtained by The Washington Post.

Federal law and court orders require that children in Border Patrol custody be transferred to more-hospitable shelters no longer than 72 hours after they are apprehended. But some unaccompanied children are spending longer than a week in Border Patrol stations and processing centers, according to two Customs and Border Protection officials and two other government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unreleased data. One government official said about half of the children in custody — 1,000 — have been with the Border Patrol for longer than 72 hours, and another official said that more than 250 children 12 or younger have been in custody for an average of six days.

[...]

“I don’t have any beds, because we’re meant to be short-term processing — not even holding,” one CBP official said of the agency’s facilities here in the Rio Grande Valley, at which some children are sleeping on mats on the floor. “I have stools and benches, but I have no beds. . . . Our facilities are not built for long-term holding, and they’re certainly not built to house children for very long at all.”

[...]

The Washington Post this week made a rare visit inside the [McAllen (Texas) Border Patrol station], where adults and their toddler children were packed into concrete holding cells, many of them sleeping head-to-foot on the floor and along the wall-length benches, as they awaited processing at a sparsely staffed circle of computers known as “the bubble.” Hallways and offices previously designated for photocopying and other tasks now held crates and boxes of bread, juice, animal crackers, baby formula and diapers. One cell held adolescent boys, many of whom stood in the small space, peering out through a glass wall. One stood urinating behind the low wall that obscured the toilet in back. In the adjacent cell, several boys who appeared to be of elementary school age slept curled up on concrete benches, a few clutching Mylar emergency blankets. Outside in the parking lot, a chain-link fence enclosure held dozens of women and children, many of them eschewing the air-conditioned tents to lie on the pavement.

[...]

Border officials said the immigration system is so overwhelmed that the normal conduits meant to funnel children out of Border Patrol custody and into Department of Health and Human Services shelters have broken down. Migrants are arriving faster than Customs and Border Protection can process them.

[...]

Border Patrol has apprehended nearly 45,000 unaccompanied children since October, according to government data. A spokesman for HHS, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement is tasked with providing longer-term shelters for those children, said border authorities had referred approximately 40,800 unaccompanied children to its custody as of the end of April. That marked a 57 percent increase from the previous year, and HHS said it is on pace to care for the largest number of unaccompanied minors in the program’s history this fiscal year.

[...]

Border Patrol officials say there are 6,400 people in custody in the Rio Grande Valley, including 931 unaccompanied children. The facilities are so overcrowded that officials say roughly 40 percent of the sector’s 3,100 Border Patrol agents are working on processing new migrant detainees at any given time.

That has left fewer agents out in the vast and wild tangle of brush that stretches for hundreds of miles along the twisting Rio Grande.

[...]

“It’s a daily battle,” said one agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly about the work at the border. “You catch a thousand people a day, and then you can only process 750 a day. The agents are working their tails off trying to get this squared away, but it’s a daily struggle with the amount of people we’re encountering.”

  WaPo

Perhaps we need more processing personnel on the job?

HHS officials said that the agency is aware that 2,000 children are detained and awaiting transfer and that it has space for them — but they said the agency’s responsibility for the minors begins only once they are delivered to the department’s custody. DHS officials at multiple agencies said HHS is not placing children in shelters fast enough.

Or finger-pointing. Finger-pointing usually gets things done, right?

Six children — five from Guatemala and one from El Salvador — have died after being taken into federal custody at the border since September. A teenager who had contracted the flu died last week in the Rio Grande Valley while in Border Patrol custody, leading agents to identify a small-scale flu outbreak.

UPDATE:

Another death in Border Patrol custody

The United States government said that a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala died Monday at a Border Patrol station in southern Texas, becoming the fifth death of a migrant child since December.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement that Border Patrol apprehended the teenager in the Rio Grande Valley on May 13. The agency says the teenager was found unresponsive this morning during a welfare check.

The agency did not say why the teenager had been detained for a week, but said he was "due for placement" in a facility for youth operated by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The death comes less than a week after a two-year-old child died after he and his mother were detained by the Border Patrol.

[...]

All five children who have died after being apprehended by the Border Patrol were from Guatemala, which is ravaged by violence, poverty, and drought. All of those who have been identified were from the country's indigenous communities.

[...]

In early December, seven-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin died of a bacterial infection.

Eight-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo died on Christmas Eve of a flu infection.

[...]

Juan de Leon Gutierrez, 16, died on April 30 after officials noticed he was sick at a youth detention facility operated by US Department of Health and Human Services. The medical examiner in Corpus Christi, Texas, said Juan had been diagnosed with a rare condition known as Pott's puffy tumour, which can be caused by a severe sinus infection or head trauma.
  alJazeera

UPDATE:

Nielsen on the hot seat again

And apparently no better informed than the last time.  Aaron Rupar has a thread with clips of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen giving testimony at an Immigration and Border Security hearing.

It contains doozies like:

Under questioning from @RepUnderwood, Nielsen admits she was broadly unfamiliar with research indicating kids are traumatized by being separated from their parents before DHS implemented its "zero tolerance" policy

NIELSEN on what she did when she saw "pictures of babies in cages": "I spent a tremendous amount of time working with the northern triangle in Mexico to stop the phenomena closer to the source, to help stabilize those areas so that the children & families are not traveling here."

NIELSEN: "Sir, they're not cages!" THOMPSON: "What are they?" NIELSEN: "They are areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they're being processed."

.@RepBonnie: What is a chainlink fence enclosed into a chamber on a concrete floor? A cage? @SecNielsen: It's a detention space, mam REP BONNIE: Is it different from what you put dogs in? NIELSEN: Yes REP BONNIE: In what sense? NIELSEN: It's larger B: Sounds like a dog cage

BARRAGAN: "You said you waited to give direction on how to implement the zero tolerance policy, because you wanted to do it with compassion. Do you know how outrageous that sounds? You wanted to separate children and families and you wanted to do it with compassion?!"

NIELSEN says that "so far this year" three children have died in CBP custody. She says she hasn't spoken with the affected families.

Click here for the video clips.

These cabinet members of Trump's are as infuriatingly ignorant as they are disgusting.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.