More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Lord Jim
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More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

Post by Lord Jim »

Once again, the sadistic henchmen who devise the Trump asylum seeker policies woke up, twirled their mustaches, and asked themselves the question, "How can we be even bigger dicks today?":
Trump administration to migrant kids: No more art, soccer, lawyers or school for you

For the kids at the Homestead shelter for unaccompanied migrants, many of whom endured unimaginable hardships on their journey to the United States, life is about to get a lot more austere.

The Trump administration abruptly announced Wednesday it would dramatically cut aid to detention centers that house migrant children who arrive in the United States unaccompanied by their parents. Homestead is the largest of those facilities.

The budget cut means detainees will no longer get recess time, nor access to any sort of education. Going forward, they will no longer be assisted by attorneys, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Officially, children as young as 13 are detained at the center, although a recent court filing suggested kids as young as 8 were held there.

“We have sunken to a new low that I didn’t think was possible in this country,”[Yeah, well with this regime, just wait a little while...you'll see an even lower new low...] said Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade schools. “What next? Reduce food, water and air? I am bruised. I am hurt. I am angry.”

Evelyn Stauffer, spokeswoman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, confirmed the change, first reported by The Washington Post.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... rylink=cpy
Last edited by Lord Jim on Thu Jun 06, 2019 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

Post by Big RR »

There is absolutely no justification for this. As someone who has represented children before the courts (from infants to those just under 18), I can attest that, despite their bravado, most children are scared stiff and need someone to guide them through the system and represent their interests. To send a kid, especially one who knows little of the US or our legal system and is likely to fear law enforcement and judges is unconscionable, but par for the course in this administration. The US used to stand for something better--no more. Trump's policies regarding the undocumented immigrant children make me ashamed to be an American.

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Donald Trump's new selection to take charge of border enforcement:

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

Post by Econoline »

...and still more senseless cruelty....
  • "I'm an American": Man adopted by U.S. parents deported to Brazil

    Niteroi, Brazil — Paul Fernando Schreiner paces around a sparsely furnished room, swatting mosquitoes from his arms and neck as he wonders if today will be any different from all the others.

    The heavy, dense air of this city across the bay from Rio de Janeiro feels insufferable, nothing like the dry heat of Phoenix, where the 36-year-old had been living when he was deported by the U.S. last year.

    Conversations are rare for Schreiner as he speaks no Portuguese and few people here speak anything but Portuguese. But language is only one issue: The food and even the sports Brazilians follow — Schreiner likes American football more than soccer — don't feel right. Inside his head, every day is a fight against boredom, loneliness and desperation.

    "I am anything but Brazilian," said Schreiner, who was adopted from Brazil by a U.S. family three decades ago. "I am an American."

    The U.S. government disagrees, underscoring the increasingly hard line the Trump administration is taking with legal residents deemed deportable.

    U.S. immigration authorities went to such lengths to remove Schreiner that they may have broken Brazilian law and have made it virtually impossible for him to exercise his supposed Brazilian citizenship.

    For adoption groups in the U.S., forcibly removing people like Schreiner violates basic human rights and amounts to triple jeopardy: Adoptees were abandoned as children in their home countries, are abandoned a second time by their adopted country and then are sent to a place where they have no family, don't speak the language and have few skills to survive.

    "He shouldn't have to suffer a second time," his mother, Rosanna Schreiner, said through tears from her home outside Seward, Nebraska.

    Schreiner was never naturalized a U.S. citizen but lived as an American for 30 years. He was legally adopted at age 5, had a Nebraska birth certificate, a Social Security number and paid taxes.

    U.S. adoption groups estimate that between 35,000 and 75,000 adoptees in the United States could be in such a situation today, many incorrectly believing they are already citizens. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000, signed by President Bill Clinton, aimed at streamlining the process by making citizenship automatic for children adopted from overseas. But there was an exception: For children already in America, only those under 18 when the law went into effect qualified. Six weeks too old, the law didn't apply to Schreiner.

    Applying for citizenship based on eligibility as a green-card holder was also out: When he was 21, Schreiner was convicted of statutory rape for having sex with a 14-year-old.

    After spending nearly eight years in prison in Nebraska, Schreiner got his life together. He moved to Arizona, started pool-cleaning and carpenter businesses and developed a close relationship with Jason Young, a pastor at Heritage Baptist Church in Goodyear, a Phoenix suburb.

    "He was working, getting acclimated to life after prison. Then I get a call one day that he was in prison again, this time through ICE," said Young, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'"


    Immigrant detention

    When agents surrounded his truck at 5 a.m. as he left for work on Oct. 23, 2017, Schreiner wasn't totally surprised. Soon after his legal troubles began, in 2004 he was notified by ICE that there was a deportation order against him. But a removal order did not always lead to deportation during the administrations of Presidents George Bush and Barack Obama.

    Schreiner also had the backing of Brazil.

    "The official position of the Brazilian Government — stated in the Brazilian Law of the Child and Adolescent — is that adoption is an irrevocable act, which confers to the adopted child the same rights as those living with his or her biological parents," Alexandre Addor Neto, Brazil's then-consul general in Chicago, wrote to Homeland Security in 2004 in response to a U.S. request that Brazil issue travel documents for Schreiner's deportation.

    "The Brazilian government does not issue travel documents for the purpose of deportation of a Brazilian national in this situation, unless that person freely manifests his or her clear and unequivocal wish to return to Brazil, which was not the case of Mr. Schreiner," the letter said.

    After Schreiner's 2017 detention, Brazilian authorities again denied the U.S. government's request for documents to deport him.

    Weeks turned into eight months in an immigration detention facility in Florence, Arizona. According to Schreiner and his father, Roger Schreiner, Brazilian consular officials in Los Angeles, which has jurisdiction over Arizona, told him that he could refuse to get on a plane.


    Handcuffed and deported

    Then, on June 12, 2018, Schreiner was awakened and told he was being deported.

    "Brazil is a corrupt government and will let you in," Schreiner said an ICE agent told him about the fact that he didn't have a passport.

    Schreiner said he was told that if he made a fuss, he would be put in a "burrito bag," a type of straight jacket used for resisting arrestees.

    In a statement, ICE said only that Schreiner had been deported and declined to comment further.

    In handcuffs and accompanied by two agents, Schreiner said he was flown on a commercial flight from Phoenix to New York. However, in New York, American Airlines officials didn't want to let Schreiner on the flight to Rio de Janeiro.

    The only documentation ICE agents had for Schreiner was a "certificate of nationality" that the consulate in Los Angeles, caving into U.S. pressure, had issued. It listed a single name, "Fernando," and the arbitrary birth date Schreiner was given when he was adopted.

    "He is a wanted felon in Brazil," Schreiner said the agents told airline officials, who relented and let him on the flight.

    Once in Rio de Janeiro, there were more questions.

    For several hours, Schreiner said U.S. agents and Brazilian federal police argued about whether to let him in. After a series of phone calls and heated conversations, Schreiner was taken through the gift shop to the front of the airport. He was uncuffed and the agents left.

    The Brazilian federal police did not respond to multiple requests from The Associated Press seeking comment. In a statement, Brazil's foreign ministry said the consulate in Los Angeles was "instructed to formally confirm, before U.S. authorities, the Brazilian nationality of Mr. Schreiner, who had a final deportation order against him."

    "I don't understand how somebody who had been living in the U.S. can be abandoned like this," said Segisfredo Silva Vanderlai, a 68-year-old pastor with whom Schreiner has been living. "He was thrown out like human garbage."


    Memories and regrets

    Schreiner doesn't remember much about his early years. His parents adopted him from an orphanage in Nova Iguaçu, a Rio municipality interspersed with slums controlled by heavily armed drug traffickers and paramilitary groups.

    "I remember my older sister reaching into garbage cans too tall for me, and finding bananas and other foods to eat," Schreiner said. "I remember fear, running and hiding from older kids with guns."

    At one point, Schreiner and his sister ended up in a house. It was there that his sister was taken away by people Schreiner just remembers as "bad men," and never heard from again. Schreiner said he ended up in an orphanage where he was repeatedly sexually molested, trauma that led to bed-wetting until he was a teenager.

    Life on a farm in Nebraska with four other adopted siblings was happy, though Schreiner struggled with identity. Because of that, his parents said they put off his becoming a U.S. citizen until he was older and able to fully participate in the decision.

    "It was a big miscalculation on our part," Roger Schreiner said. "It never occurred to us that any of our children could go to prison."


    Uncertain future

    Nearly a year since being deported, Schreiner is still in limbo.

    He has been unable to get a Brazilian birth certificate, an identification card or a tax ID number needed to work.

    Coming into the country through the backdoor with a certificate of citizenship referring to him only as "Fernando" has been one obstacle with civil registry officials. Another is that there is no original record of his birth, a common situation of adoptees and other poor people in Brazil.

    Vanderlai and others have been trying to help Schreiner navigate the bureaucracy. His best hope, if he can ever get a Brazilian passport, is to try to immigrate to Canada, where he speaks the language and would be closer to family.

    "Deportation is for illegal immigrants," Schreiner said. "I didn't request to come to the U.S., and I didn't cross a border."
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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Botched family reunifications left migrant children waiting in vans overnight

LOS ANGELES — Under the blistering Texas sun last July, 37 migrant children boarded vans for what was supposed to be a 30-minute ride. At the end of the road from Harlingen to Los Fresnos lay the promise of hugs, kisses and long overdue reunification with their parents, from whom they were taken when the Trump administration began systematically separating migrant families who crossed the border illegally.

But when the children, all between 5 and 12 years old, arrived at Immigration and Customs Enforcement's adults-only Port Isabel Detention Center, rather than seeing their parents, they saw a parking lot full of vans just like theirs, with children from other facilities who, just like them, were waiting to be processed and reunified with their parents.

It was 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 15, 2018.

Not until 39 hours later — after two nights in a van — did the last child step out of a van to be reunited. Most spent at least 23 hours in the vehicles.

After NBC News published its report on the children Monday night, Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued a statement calling the children's situation "completely unacceptable" and said he expected a "prompt explanation" from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

"To now learn that children as young as five years old were left in vans for more than 24 hours is simply indefensible," said Walden. "I support enforcement of our nation's borders, but ... I strongly believe that children should not be separated from their parents. Period. And those separated should be cared for as if they were our own children until they are reunified with their parents. This is not who we are as Americans."

It is one of the little-known stories of the chaotic efforts to reunify children following the end of President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. NBC News has obtained emails sent between employees of BCFS Heath and Human Services, the government contractor and nonprofit organization responsible for transporting the children, who were frustrated by the lack of preparation by ICE, and senior leadership at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

At 10:30 p.m. local time Sunday, July 15, 2018, Andrew Carter, the BCFS regional director responsible for the children, e-mailed Kevin Dinnin, the company's president and CEO, to alert him to the fact that the 37 children had been waiting for eight hours and not a single one had been processed for reunification.

Click here to see the emails.

"The children were initially taken into the facility, but were then returned to the van as the facility was still working on paperwork," explained Carter. "The children were brought back in later in the evening, but returned to the vans because it was too cold in the facility and they were still not ready to be processed in."

"There has to be a better process. I hope as we move forward there can be adjustments so that we don't put tender age kids in this position," he wrote, referring to children between 5 and 12 years old.

His e-mails set off a chain of correspondence that led to top officials from HHS making phone calls to ICE officials in the middle of the night to try and resolve the situation, according to a BCFS official and a former HHS official with knowledge of the incident.

"DHS [the parent agency of ICE] was clearly not ready to deal with the separations and did not take steps necessary to ensure a speedy reunification with their parents," the former HHS official told NBC News. "Had DHS acted differently, the process would have been much smoother and the impact on the kids would have been much less."

The processing was important, the official said, to ensure each child was properly matched with their rightful parent.

Emails previously obtained by NBC News show the Trump administration had no way to link separated children to their parents.

Despite two notifications from HHS that the children would be arriving, ICE officers kept to their regular schedule, clocking out for the day while the parking lot filled with children eager to see their parents again. There was no one present to greet the arriving children and they were not equipped to process them in a parking lot, the BCFS official told NBC News, describing the scene as "hurried disarray."

As day turned to night, BCFS staff quickly realized the vans would not provide adequate shelter for children staying overnight. Additional vans were called in to allow children room to sleep as were blankets and food collected from the HHS facility in Harlingen where the children had previously stayed. ICE told BCFS staff that if the children returned to Harlingen, they would be further delayed in seeing their parents. The children began to sleep in the vans.

At 1:30 a.m. Sunday, 11 hours after arrival, the first child was reunified. By 6:30 a.m. Monday, just minutes before the sun rose, 17 children had been reunified. By 1:30 p.m. Monday, nearly 24 hours after they first pulled into the parking lot, 32 children were reunified. Not until 5:50 a.m. on Tuesday was the final child reunified.

BCFS told NBC News other facilities were also not always prepared to take in children last summer, immediately following a court order to reunify the separated children. As a direct result of this incident, BCFS parked coach buses equipped with a bathroom, TV and air conditioning in the parking lot while reunifying children at Port Isabel, prepared for the worst.

An ICE spokesman called the incident "unusual," telling NBC News "[f]ollowing processing delays on July 15-16, which resulted in some children staying overnight in [Port Isabel], DHS took immediate action to resolve the situation and the delays were resolved. These children have all been reunited with their parents and since then, no child has spent more than a few hours waiting to be reunited with their parents."

By 11 p.m. Sunday night, Carter's initial e-mail had been forwarded by Dinnin to BCFS' executive vice president and chief operating officer, who 10 minutes later passed it along to Jonathan White, who had been selected to oversee HHS's court-ordered reunification of all separated children in custody.

White replied early the following morning, en route to a federal courtroom in San Diego for a status hearing with Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered family reunifications, about the status of the reunifications.

"You did the right thing," White wrote to BCFS.

At that status hearing, the 37 children in the parking lot of Port Isabel never came up.

On Morning Joe on Tuesday, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said he was "appalled" to learn of the children being kept in the van for hours, but was not surprised. "Let's try to demonstrate some sensitivity and some flexibility in how we implement this process," he said, "and these rules because the world is watching and making judgments about DHS, about ICE, about CBP and about our country."
I'm sure that wes will be along to explain why abusing children in such a manner is actually a good thing...
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Lord Jim
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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Econoline--that is a horrendous situation; I was involved with a similar case in the 90s where the adoptive parents did not naturalize their child as a US citizen; when he was a teenager he was caught in a minor criminal situation (joyriding as I recall) and was subject to deportation (even th e prosector was willing to dismiss the case when he found that out, but it was too late). The others got a slap on the wrist, but it cost his parents thousands (we got a big law firm involved) to keep him here. I don't think the same result would have been obtained

The requirement to naturalize adopted foreign children ended in the late 80s; when I adopted my daughters they were entitled to derivative citizenship as children of US parents, but it had to be applied for. I made an effort to do it right away after I got their birth certificates (and told a lot of others to do the same), but the process wasn't easy, and I think a lot may have given up. Happily the 2000 act probably covers most of them, but having to apply for a certificate of citizenship is just unnecessary red tape for children adopted by US parents and granted entry into the US, which is why the act was enacted. Sadly, Trump and his minions would love this.

Scooter--and yet another example of the cruelty. These are children; but sadly the current authorities don't give a damn about them--their position is that they shouldn't be there and are getting more "kindness" and "humane" treatment than they deserve. After all, they lived in shithole before, so a van has to be better than what they are used to. Paraphrasing Dickens, we shouldn't treat them above their station or let them get used to humane treatment.

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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A few excerpts from a long, infuriating article. (Link to the full article in the headline.)
  • Border Patrol is confiscating migrant kids' medicine, U.S. doctors say

    [...]
    Yahoo News spoke to five doctors, including Russell and Griffin, who volunteer at shelters and clinics on the border and each confirmed that they regularly see migrants with chronic conditions like diabetes, asthma, seizures and high blood pressure, for which they claim to have had medication that was confiscated while they were in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and neither returned nor replaced. It happens more frequently to adults, who are more likely to be on such medications in the first place, but doctors said they’ve been hearing similar reports from increasing numbers of children or their parents.

    For these doctors, all of whom are pediatricians, the seizing of medications heightens concerns about the medical care provided to the record numbers of children held at processing centers and short-term holding facilities along the southwest border.

    [...]
    For Russell, a pediatric emergency medicine physician, the patient who stood out the most during that visit was a boy of 8 or 9 with a history of seizures. According to his mother, the child had been on a long-term seizure medicine in their home country, but the medication had been taken from him upon entering the Border Patrol custody in McAllen and never returned.

    “The mom came to the clinic because she was concerned that he was going to have a seizure,” said Russell. He wasn’t sure exactly how long they’d been in custody — “usually it's a matter of days,” he said, “but with seizure medicines, that’s enough.”

    Fortunately, by the time they made contact with Russell, the boy had not yet had a seizure. But like most asylum-seeking families who pass through the respite center and other shelters like it along the border, McAllen was not their final destination but a stop along the journey — usually by bus — to join relatives or other sponsors elsewhere in the country.

    “My concern is, what’s going to happen if you put a 9-year-old child who has a history of seizures, without any seizure medicine on a bus for 3 days ... is that he’s going to have a seizure,” Russell said.

    [...]
    Gutierrez is an El Paso, Texas-based pediatrician who provides regular volunteer medical care to asylum seekers at various shelters throughout the Texas border city.

    “You can ask providers who care for them day in and day out,” he continued. “We know that the medicines are taken away.”

    A few weeks ago, for example, Gutierrez said that he treated a girl, approximately age 10, who had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a genetic disorder that interferes with the body’s ability to naturally produce steroid hormones necessary “to be able to deal with stressful situations, like infections or stressful activities.”

    Patients with this diagnosis “have to be put on steroids every day for the rest of life,” Gutierrez said. When this girl entered Border Patrol custody, he was told, her steroids were taken away as well as a couple of other medications she needed.

    “This was a little walking time bomb,” said Gutierrez, estimating that the girl had been in custody for about a week before he saw her. He was able to provide her with enough of her steroid medication to last a week.

    “That could've been a potentially deadly situation, taking away stuff like that from a child,” he said. “They can get by OK,” as long as they’re healthy. “But any infection or cold, it’ll kill them.”

    “Fortunately, she was well, but if she had picked up strep or pneumonia without meds, she probably would’ve died en route,” he said — not an improbable scenario given how common such illnesses are among those Gutierrez sees after they’re released from custody.
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More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Trump Administration to Migrant Kids: No Soap for You!

The government is not required to provide migrant children in custody on the border with soap, toothbrushes, or adequate bedding, a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department insisted in court Tuesday. A consent decree guaranteeing “safe and sanitary” conditions, the government argued, is too vague to be enforceable. The assertions left a panel of three judges for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals incredulous, with one stating plainly: “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that.”

The case before the court stems from the Flores settlement — a consent decree signed by the government in 1997 that guarantees basic rights for children detained at the border. The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to undermine the two-decade-old agreement, in particular as it pursued its policy of family separation. Currently the administration is appealing a 2017 district court ruling that found the feds had violated Flores by not providing children access to basic toiletries and adequate sleeping conditions at temporary detention facilities operated by the Border Patrol.

As attorney Sarah Fabian of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation haltingly attempted to make the Trump administration’s case in a San Francisco courtroom, she was hit with disbelieving questions from the three judges on the bench, Wallace Tashima, William Fletcher and Marsha Berzon.

Judge Berzon zeroed in on the sleep question, citing findings that the Border Patrol made children spend days in facilities with 24/7 artificial light, no beds, cold cement floors, and only an aluminum blanket for insulation. “You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of ‘safe and sanitary’ conditions?” Berzon asked. “You’re not really going to say that, right?”

Fabian, the Justice Department lawyer, managed a halting, sputtering response before Berzon broke in again to insist sleep is covered by the language of the consent decree. “You can’t be sanitary or safe as a human being if you can’t sleep,” she said.

Fabian suggested that sleep is not guaranteed because it is not spelled out in the language of the Flores agreement. “One has to assume it was … not enumerated by the parties because either the parties couldn’t reach agreement on how to enumerate that or it was left to the agencies to determine,” she said. Judge Fletcher cut in, insisting it is “obvious enough that if you’re putting people into a crowded room to sleep on a concrete floor with an aluminum blanket on top of them, that that doesn’t comply with the agreement.”

Fabian conceded she was on shaky ground when it came to depriving migrant children of a right to rest: “I will acknowledge that sleep is at the more difficult edge of what I’m arguing.” Judge Berzon noted: “We have a Supreme Court decision saying it’s unconstitutional to make homeless people not sleep.” The Justice Department lawyer countered: “We’re not talking about the constitutional standard here.”

The exchange continued:

Fletcher: Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you do something other than what I described: Cold all night long. Lights on all night long. Sleep on the concrete floor and you get an aluminum blanket?”

Berzon: And too crowded to lie down?

Fletcher: Are you saying that that’s OK? I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is “safe and sanitary.”

Fabian: Again, as I said, think sleep is clearly at one end of findings.

The proceedings then turned to hygiene items. Judge Fletcher took issue with the government’s claim that the consent decree didn’t guarantee any specific items. “It was soap!” said Judge Fletcher. “That sounds like part of ‘safe and sanitary.’ Do you disagree with that?”

Judge Tashima cut in: “Granted that the decree doesn’t have a list of items that has to be supplied in order to be ‘sanitary.’” But he insisted: “It’s within everybody’s common understanding. If you don’t have a toothbrush if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, it’s not ‘safe and sanitary.’ Wouldn’t everybody agree to that? Do you agree to that?

Fabian responded: “Well— I think it’s— I think those are— there’s fair reason to find that those things may be part of ‘safe and sanitary.’”

“Not ‘may be.’ Are a part,” Tashima cut in. “Why do you say ‘may be’? You mean there are circumstances where a person doesn’t need to have a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap? For days?”

When Fabian deflected, Tashima redirected his questioning trying to draw an argument out of the government’s lawyer. “You’re saying maybe the agreement is so vague as to be unenforceable?” Tashima asked. “That’s really your argument isn’t it?”

“To some extent. Yes, your honor,” Fabian replied. “If the term in the agreement requires an after-agreement interpretation by the district court then, yes, that does constitute a vague term that the parties didn’t sufficiently clarify in reaching agreement.”

Watch the contentious exchange beginning at minute 24 in the video below.

The court gave no indication when it will rule in the case.
Remind me again how these conditions do not meet the definition of a concentration camp?
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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Chronic sleep deprivation causes psychosis and a whole host of stress related illnesses, and weakens the immune system profoundly.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Scooter wrote:Trump Administration to Migrant Kids: No Soap for You!
Wow! The Soap Nazi... who knew?

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Re: More Gratuitous Immigration Cruelty...

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Migrant children describe neglect at Texas border facility

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station.

The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government.

Data obtained by The Associated Press showed that on Wednesday there were three infants in the station, all with their teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old. There are dozens more under 12. Fifteen have the flu, and 10 more are quarantined.

Three girls told attorneys they were trying to take care of the 2-year-old boy, who had wet his pants and no diaper and was wearing a mucus-smeared shirt when the legal team encountered him.

“A Border Patrol agent came in our room with a 2-year-old boy and asked us, ‘Who wants to take care of this little boy?’ Another girl said she would take care of him, but she lost interest after a few hours and so I started taking care of him yesterday,” one of the girls said in an interview with attorneys.

Law professor Warren Binford, who is helping interview the children, said she couldn’t learn anything about the toddler, not even where he’s from or who his family is. He is not speaking.

Binford described that during interviews with children in a conference room at the facility, “little kids are so tired they have been falling asleep on chairs and at the conference table.”

She said an 8-year-old taking care of a very small 4-year-old with matted hair couldn’t convince the little one to take a shower.

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, who co-directs University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic and represents detained youth.

The lawyers inspected the facilities because they are involved in the Flores settlement, a Clinton-era legal agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families. The lawyers negotiated access to the facility with officials, and say Border Patrol knew the dates of their visit three weeks in advance.

Many children interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some had been separated from their parents or other adult caregivers including aunts and uncles, the attorneys said.

Government rules call for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant youth in facilities around the country.

Government facilities are overcrowded and five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by Customs and Border Protection. A teenage mother with a premature baby was found last week in a Texas Border Patrol processing center after being held for nine days by the government.

In an interview this week with the AP, acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders acknowledged that children need better medical care and a place to recover from their illnesses. He urged Congress to pass a $4.6 billion emergency funding package includes nearly $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrant children.

He said that the Border Patrol is holding 15,000 people, and the agency considers 4,000 to be at capacity.

“The death of a child is always a terrible thing, but here is a situation where, because there is not enough funding ... they can’t move the people out of our custody,” Sanders said.

The arrival of thousands of families and children at the border each month has not only strained resources but thrust Border Patrol agents into the role of caregivers, especially for the many migrant youth who are coming without parents.

But children at the facility in Clint, which sits amid the desert scrubland some 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of El Paso, say they have had to pick up some of the duties in watching over the younger kids.

A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala said she had been holding two little girls in her lap.

“I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too,” she said.


Children told lawyers that they were fed oatmeal, a cookie and a sweetened drink in the morning, instant noodles for lunch and a burrito and cookie for dinner. There are no fruits or vegetables. They said they’d gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes.

A migrant father, speaking on condition of anonymity because of his immigration status, told AP Thursday that authorities separated his daughter from her aunt when they entered the country. The girl would be a second grader in a U.S. school.

He had no idea where she was until Monday, when one of the attorney team members visiting Clint found his phone number written in permanent marker on a bracelet she was wearing. It said “U.S. parent.”

“She’s suffering very much because she’s never been alone. She doesn’t know these other children,” said her father.

Republican Congressman Will Hurd, whose district includes Clint, said “tragic conditions” playing out on the southern border were pushing government agencies, nonprofits and Texas communities to the limit.

“This latest development just further demonstrates the immediate need to reform asylum laws and provide supplemental funding to address the humanitarian crisis at our border,” he said.

Dr. Julie Linton, who co-chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, said CBP stations are not an appropriate place to hold children.

“Those facilities are anything but child friendly,” said Dr. Julie Linton. “That type of environment is not only unhealthy for children but also unsafe.”

The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces criticism that it’s violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained.

San Francisco psychoanalyst Gilbert Kliman, who has evaluated about 50 children and parents seeking asylum, says the trauma is causing lasting damage.

“The care of children by children constitutes a betrayal of adult responsibility, governmental responsibility,” he said.
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From a Twitter feed by Andrew Lawrence:
Historians:  Concentration camps are actually what they are

Journos:  But it makes the right wing uncomfortable

Historians:  Yea, I mean...it should

Journos:  But it's a highly charged term

Historians:  Right, that's the point

Journos:  But it describes atrocities

Historians:  ...
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