jjhunsecker said:

DiminutiveRocker said:

Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’

On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.

I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/laura-bush-separating-children-from-their-parents-at-the-border-breaks-my-heart/2018/06/17/f2df517a-7287-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.92c8bf55e282



WE HAVE THE SICKEST ADMINISTRATION IN RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY.

But you'll have idiots saying "Thank God Hillary didn't win ...her emails...Benghazi ...Monica..."

You mean "Shillary".

deebee said:

It's good that people are going after the administration on this policy and trying to force change. I do, however, feel obliged to note that, like prisons, the aggressive policies of immigration detention and deportation have been very much a bipartisan affair. Trump's cranking the gears up, but previous administrations built the machine. It would have been better if Hillary had won, no doubt, but I'd say that that's because there's more scope to pressure a Democrat President for changes to existing policy in this area; and because, by contrast, there's little such scope with Trump, as his base laps this stuff up. But it does still seem like one of those areas where there's substantial convergence on the reality of the policy, if not the public rhetoric.

Thank Obama for Trump’s Child Detentions, Immigrant Advocates Say

“There’s very little difference between President Trump and President Obama with respect to the jailing of refugee children in deportation internment camps,” said Matt Kolken, a lawyer who also represents children seeking asylum in the U.S. “There’s been a systemic assault on the rights of immigrants by both President Obama and President Trump with respect to them using a detained setting as a way to dissuade people from coming to the United States.” [...]

“Like so much else in immigration, this administration has taken weapons that Obama’s folks loaded and left on the table on the way out and then they picked these weapons up and started firing, and that’s what’s happened here,” Free continued. “The previous administration created and stood up this infrastructure and refused to demand accountability from the people that were responsible for running it, and now you have its predictable consequence in the hands of this administration.”

https://www.thedailybeast...ocates-say

That's fine. No doubt attorneys are/have been on the front lines. But the danger here is trying the Obama admin for what the Trump administration is doing. I disagree that HRC would have done what Trump did and would only be more easily deterred because there is more scope to pressure a Democrat. The immigration "problem" was heightened and ramped up by Trump. No one else but Trump. He did it to stroke white Americans who are worried about losing their "status".

All the armchair parsing of who did what is losing sight of what is being done right now, a real danger here. Part of this is the insane racist reaction to Obama ever being elected in the first place. He actually tried to work with the opposing party.

To date, there is no separation law anyway. Trump could stop it with a phone call. Detaining children with their parents is better than detaining them separately. They had 4 social workers for 1200+ detainees yesterday, 4.

[Edited 6/18/18 9:08am]

poppys said:

deebee said:

It's good that people are going after the administration on this policy and trying to force change. I do, however, feel obliged to note that, like prisons, the aggressive policies of immigration detention and deportation have been very much a bipartisan affair. Trump's cranking the gears up, but previous administrations built the machine. It would have been better if Hillary had won, no doubt, but I'd say that that's because there's more scope to pressure a Democrat President for changes to existing policy in this area; and because, by contrast, there's little such scope with Trump, as his base laps this stuff up. But it does still seem like one of those areas where there's substantial convergence on the reality of the policy, if not the public rhetoric.

Thank Obama for Trump’s Child Detentions, Immigrant Advocates Say

“There’s very little difference between President Trump and President Obama with respect to the jailing of refugee children in deportation internment camps,” said Matt Kolken, a lawyer who also represents children seeking asylum in the U.S. “There’s been a systemic assault on the rights of immigrants by both President Obama and President Trump with respect to them using a detained setting as a way to dissuade people from coming to the United States.” [...]

“Like so much else in immigration, this administration has taken weapons that Obama’s folks loaded and left on the table on the way out and then they picked these weapons up and started firing, and that’s what’s happened here,” Free continued. “The previous administration created and stood up this infrastructure and refused to demand accountability from the people that were responsible for running it, and now you have its predictable consequence in the hands of this administration.”

https://www.thedailybeast...ocates-say

That's fine. No doubt attorneys are/have been on the front lines. But the danger here is trying the Obama admin for what the Trump administration is doing. I disagree that HRC would have done what Trump did and would only be more easily deterred because there is more scope to pressure a Democrat. The immigration "problem" was heightened and ramped up by Trump. No one else but Trump. He did it to stroke white Americans who are worried about losing their "status".

All the armchair parsing of who did what is losing sight of what is being done right now, a real danger here. Part of this is the insane racist reaction to Obama ever being elected in the first place. He actually tried to work with the opposing party.

To date, there is no separation law anyway. Trump could stop it with a phone call. Detaining children with their parents is better than detaining them separately. They had 4 social workers for 1200+ detainees yesterday, 4.

[Edited 6/18/18 9:08am]

I'm not looking to try past administrations; just to highlight the continuities in policy that go beyond the scope of the two-party split as it's currently configured. The extent to which this has been made a 'flagship' policy by Trump and aggressively pursued with hostile rhetoric certainly does bring its own effects, I agree, and stoking nativist resentments is always a very dangerous line that shouldn't be underestimated. But if there's a danger of losing sight of what's being done right now, there's also a danger of only seeing the right now, and not the historical tendencies that it's part of - because how we understand the situation and how it came about bears on our understanding of how it can be opposed. Democrat administrations have carried on the business of detention and deportation with much less bluster, but they have still carried it on. The stats in this clip are eyewatering.

Nonetheless, it's a very good thing if people are mobilising around the issue and taking the fight to the Trump administration, because everything has to start somewhere and that can also snowball. I'm just saying that, like prisons, we shouldn't underestimate how embedded detention and deportation policies are in states' strategies for managing global capitalism at the present time, and how it will take more than what the two-party split is offering to tackle that, in my opinion. I borrowed the point about how mass pressure needs to be applied in addition to electoral means, and the disappointments that tend to follow the failure to do that bit, from arguments Angela Davis was making ahead of the 2012 election, which seem to me to be borne out by bitter experience.

[Edited 6/18/18 10:02am]

deebee said:

poppys said:

That's fine. No doubt attorneys are/have been on the front lines. But the danger here is trying the Obama admin for what the Trump administration is doing. I disagree that HRC would have done what Trump did and would only be more easily deterred because there is more scope to pressure a Democrat. The immigration "problem" was heightened and ramped up by Trump. No one else but Trump. He did it to stroke white Americans who are worried about losing their "status".

All the armchair parsing of who did what is losing sight of what is being done right now, a real danger here. Part of this is the insane racist reaction to Obama ever being elected in the first place. He actually tried to work with the opposing party.

To date, there is no separation law anyway. Trump could stop it with a phone call. Detaining children with their parents is better than detaining them separately. They had 4 social workers for 1200+ detainees yesterday, 4.

I'm not looking to try past administrations; just to highlight the continuities in policy that go beyond the scope of the two-party split as it's currently configured. The extent to which this has been made a 'flagship' policy by Trump and aggressively pursued with hostile rhetoric certainly does bring its own effects, I agree, and stoking nativist resentments is always a very dangerous line that shouldn't be underestimated. But if there's a danger of losing sight of what's being done right now, there's also a danger of only seeing the right now, and not the historical tendencies that it's part of - because how we understand the situation and how it came about bears on our understanding of how it can be opposed. Democrat administrations have carried on the business of detention and deportation with much less bluster, but they have still carried it on. The stats in this clip are eyewatering.

Nonetheless, it's a very good thing if people are mobilising around the issue and taking the fight to the Trump administration, because everything has to start somewhere and that can also snowball. I'm just saying that, like prisons, we shouldn't underestimate how embedded detention and deportation policies are in states' strategies for managing global capitalism at the present time, and how it will take more than what the two-party split is offering to tackle that, in my opinion. I borrowed the point about how mass pressure needs to be applied in addition to electoral means, and the disappointments that tend to follow the failure to do that bit, from arguments Angela Davis was making ahead of the 2012 election, which seem to me to be borne out by bitter experience.

Agree. However, we have to move on from Obama/Hillary blaming. Trump ramped up everything by saying Mexico would PAY for the wall too. Now it's the Dems fault we have no wall. Bait and switch. We do have walls right now, you can't build them over water. Many people living on the border do not think it is the solution anyway. Most people fly here and never go back.

Immigration is a massive dilemma and always has been. Here and worldwide. Did you see the story about the boats of Libyans that got turned away by Malta and Italy this weekend? Spain finally took them. They were running out of provisions.

https://www.theguardian.c...lian-port

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister, has declared victory after a standoff over the fate of 629 people on a humanitarian rescue boat prompted Spain to agree to accept them.

The impasse, after the populist and far-right government in Italy refused to allow the MS Aquarius to dock over the weekend, suggested that Europe could face a humanitarian crisis this summer as it comes to grips with the new Italian government’s hardline approach to refugees and migrants.

Mediterranean rescue vessel crew keep migrants calm during standoff

Salvini blocked the ship from Italian ports and said it should go to Malta instead. Malta refused, saying it had nothing to do with a rescue mission overseen by the Italian coastguard in waters off Libya.

“We have opened a front in Brussels,” said Salvini, who became interior minister last week. “We are contacting the European commission so that it can fulfil its duties towards Italy that have never been respected.”

[Edited 6/18/18 11:33am]

Sessions was here today. Defending the Law speech redux. There were protestors and 5 people got arrested.

https://www.nola.com/national_politics/2018/06/immigration_protest_new_orlean.html

Protesters criticizing immigration policies gather outside Jeff Sessions' speech in New Orleans

[Edited 6/19/18 9:32am]

poppys said:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/wo...-1.4711267

KellyAnne was on CNN tonight. I wish networks would just ban her all together. She spews nothing but shit and lies.

PennyPurple said:

KellyAnne was on CNN tonight. I wish networks would just ban her all together. She spews nothing but shit and lies.

She is nothing but putrid garbage. What a horrible, horrible woman.

13cjk13 said:

PennyPurple said:

KellyAnne was on CNN tonight. I wish networks would just ban her all together. She spews nothing but shit and lies.

She is nothing but putrid garbage. What a horrible, horrible woman.

They need to stop giving her airtime.

This is not America? Oh, yes, it is: Neil Macdonald

Trump has sensed that his voters want ruthlessness, and he's delivering

https://www.cbc.ca/news/o...-1.4711365

What is so hard to understand about the word ILLEGAL?

Should the US or the EU just open their doors to anybody, without any constraints?

TweetyV6 said:

What is so hard to understand about the word ILLEGAL?

Should the US or the EU just open their doors to anybody, without any constraints?

what is so hard to understand about the word CHILDREN?

it's not fucking relevant if it is illegal or not

Trump is torturing children as a deterrent, to threaten parents and potential migrants.

so it's safe to say he's a terrorist and a stinking piece of shit. [Snip - luv4u]


[Excuse snip - luv4u]

deebee said:

It's good that people are going after the administration on this policy and trying to force change. I do, however, feel obliged to note that, like prisons, the aggressive policies of immigration detention and deportation have been very much a bipartisan affair. Trump's cranking the gears up, but previous administrations built the machine. It would have been better if Hillary had won, no doubt, but I'd say that that's because there's more scope to pressure a Democrat President for changes to existing policy in this area; and because, by contrast, there's little such scope with Trump, as his base laps this stuff up. But it does still seem like one of those areas where there's substantial convergence on the reality of the policy, if not the public rhetoric.

Thank Obama for Trump’s Child Detentions, Immigrant Advocates Say

“There’s very little difference between President Trump and President Obama with respect to the jailing of refugee children in deportation internment camps,” said Matt Kolken, a lawyer who also represents children seeking asylum in the U.S. “There’s been a systemic assault on the rights of immigrants by both President Obama and President Trump with respect to them using a detained setting as a way to dissuade people from coming to the United States.” [...]

“Like so much else in immigration, this administration has taken weapons that Obama’s folks loaded and left on the table on the way out and then they picked these weapons up and started firing, and that’s what’s happened here,” Free continued. “The previous administration created and stood up this infrastructure and refused to demand accountability from the people that were responsible for running it, and now you have its predictable consequence in the hands of this administration.”

https://www.thedailybeast...ocates-say

The reporter leans conservative so of course she is going to compare Trump and Obama in this fashion so I am wary of her opinion being injected in this piece.

I am well aware that Obama deporting many people, but reporters who have been covering this issue at the borders have said that conditions of these holding facilities are far worse now and there is no doubt the Trump adminstration has a clear hand in that - hence, the story.

[Edited 6/19/18 5:57am]

TweetyV6 said:

What is so hard to understand about the word ILLEGAL?

Should the US or the EU just open their doors to anybody, without any constraints?

We are punishing people trying to keep their children from being drafted at gunpoint into drug cartels. Do more to stop that, not punish the victims of that horror.

Last night NBC report - we now have 12,000 unaccompanied minors in custody in the US. The detention centers the older ones are in are like prisons and are privately run for profit facilities. They wake them up at midnight for headcounts.

The little ones they are taking now are not allowed to be touched or picked up, consoled or comforted by their 'caregivers'. A pediatrician, Dr. Colleen Kraft, that has been in there told Lester Holt that child abuse is not too strong a word. Government sanctioned child abuse.

Detained then Violated.
https://theintercept.com/...e-ice-dhs/

NOT SAFE FOR WORK


This soooooo disgusting.

Sexual assaults. smh

I just don't understand how Trump's administration can get away with all of this so easily. And why on earth isn't the UN intervening immediately??? What kind of world do we live in...

poppys said:

We are punishing people trying to keep their children from being drafted at gunpoint into drug cartels. Do more to stop that, not punish the victims of that horror.

Last night NBC report - we now have 12,000 unaccompanied minors in custody in the US. The detention centers the older ones are in are like prisons and are privately run for profit facilities. They wake them up at midnight for headcounts.

The little ones they are taking now are not allowed to be touched or picked up, consoled or comforted by their 'caregivers'. A pediatrician, Dr. Colleen Kraft, that has been in there told Lester Holt that child abuse is not too strong a word. Government sanctioned child abuse.

did you see the floor mats and mylar blankets these children have to sleep? They have no toys nothing to play with, no windows in those holding cells and have no idea when they wil be reunited with their parents.

Sessions has the audacity to say the separation policy is a deterrent. He has a track record of RACISM and evokes bible passages to support his twisted view. They are trying to persuade their base that all these people are criminals because they are fleeing horrific conditions in their countries of origin.

luv4u said:

Detained then Violated.
https://theintercept.com/...e-ice-dhs/

NOT SAFE FOR WORK


This soooooo disgusting.

Sexual assaults. smh

Horrifying.

Children's distress may help Trump bargain for his border wall

http://www.cbc.ca/news/wo...-1.4711582

Oh I see..........use the detainees and children as leverage for that stupid wall.

luv4u said:

Children's distress may help Trump bargain for his border wall

http://www.cbc.ca/news/wo...-1.4711582

Oh I see..........use the detainees and children as leverage for that stupid wall.

^ *THAT* is what he is doing. Saying it is a law from Democrats is UNTRUE. TRUMP IS LYING.

FIRST: these are not asylum seekers. why is this lie being told over and over?


But I agree it is not being handled well. I assume, like it was when it happened a few years ago, that there is some reason they can not just send them back.


Also, ANY of them from south of Mexico...if they were truly seeking asylum they would have done so in Mexico.


But yes this is bad... I think families should be kept together--to SOME extent. But they also need to be sent home...

CherryMoon57 said:

I just don't understand how Trump's administration can get away with all of this so easily. And why on earth isn't the UN intervening immediately??? What kind of world do we live in...

Agreed - this is a human rights and a health issue for these people. It is disgusting.

CherryMoon57 said:

I just don't understand how Trump's administration can get away with all of this so easily. And why on earth isn't the UN intervening immediately??? What kind of world do we live in...

The UN has no power to intervene. Human rights, though they are supposed to be granted to all human beings regardless of nationality or citizenship, are nonetheless the responsibility of sovereign states to guarantee. The UN can offer guidance, such as this UNHCR global strategy encouraging members to end child detention and minimise immigration detention, but the organisation can't send a crack team to bust the kids out or something like that. With any other state, they could remind them of their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the US is the only one of the world's nations not to have ratified that.

I agree it's a terrible reflection on the character of the world we live in, though.

[Edited 6/19/18 8:14am]

OnlyNDaUsa said:

FIRST: these are not asylum seekers. why is this lie being told over and over?


But I agree it is not being handled well. I assume, like it was when it happened a few years ago, that there is some reason they can not just send them back.


Also, ANY of them from south of Mexico...if they were truly seeking asylum they would have done so in Mexico.


But yes this is bad... I think families should be kept together--to SOME extent. But they also need to be sent home...

Then turn them away and send them back home. Why seperate them?

PennyPurple said:

OnlyNDaUsa said:

FIRST: these are not asylum seekers. why is this lie being told over and over?


But I agree it is not being handled well. I assume, like it was when it happened a few years ago, that there is some reason they can not just send them back.


Also, ANY of them from south of Mexico...if they were truly seeking asylum they would have done so in Mexico.


But yes this is bad... I think families should be kept together--to SOME extent. But they also need to be sent home...

Then turn them away and send them back home. Why seperate them?

I mentioned that... see the yellow. Some of the issues may be lack of a place to send them. Lack of ID? I do not know.

Why did they do this a few years ago? Why again?

PennyPurple said:

13cjk13 said:

She is nothing but putrid garbage. What a horrible, horrible woman.

They need to stop giving her airtime.

Which was exactly what Michelle Wolf said. Anytime you see Kellyanne on TV, you can guarentee at least 90% of what she says is a lie