Here’s the current status of the children still held by Trump administration kidnappers:
BREAKING: Trump administration releases latest numbers on migrant kids it separated from parents.
This is most detailed data we've seen so far.
➡️ 2,654 total kids separated.
➡️ 565 *still* separated; 24 are 0-5 year olds.
➡️ Parents of 366 *already* deported; 6 are 0-5. pic.twitter.com/c3YAnJzk7R— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) August 16, 2018
The administration keeps trying to squirm out of its responsibility for this atrocity, at one point suggesting that it’s on the ACLU to go find the parents our government dumped in their countries of origin without their children. The judge wasn’t having that nonsense, but the fact remains, the court is dealing with a group of recalcitrant shit-goblins who aren’t interested in reuniting these families.
If it were up to me, the court would commandeer the White House as headquarters for the family reunification effort and designate Air Force One as the transport plane. Maybe that would get the lead out of their asses.
But it’s good that the court has ordered ongoing updates of the government’s progress. Everyone should know how many children are effectively orphaned by the Trump administration. It was done in our name and will be a stain on our country long after the current set of criminals is driven from power.
Mnemosyne
I still suspect that they’re lying about the numbers and only providing those for the kids who were separated after the policy was made official, not the ones who were separated by the “pilot program.” ?
I was reminded today how comforting it is to live in a solid blue area, where local restaurants make their free WiFi passwords things like “orange racist.” Folks like Midnight Lurker should come visit places like Southern California and see how many people nationwide really, really hate Trump with all their being.
germy
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I think you’re right about them lying about the numbers, and there is a block of children that have been set aside for adoption, seemingly regardless of their parents’ “worthiness”. Those kids are not enumerated here, at least not in a transparent way.
waspuppet
I’d be cool with jailing Trump, Azar and Nielsen until all the kids are back. And then maybe for another couple of weeks just to teach them a lesson. Seeing as how we’re all about deterrence these days.
David Evans
I think it may be time to remove the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. Or rewrite it. I can start it off with “Give me your white, your rich” but then it gets harder.
schrodingers_cat
Our MSM is bored with this story and they have dropped it after the president signed that useless executive order.
Major Major Major Major
So 366 orphans so far then.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: I am pretty sure that’s an under estimate.
rikyrah
Sir Baba Adeptus Oracle of Civility (@brill_inst) Tweeted:
This woman commented on Aretha Franklin’s ample bosom?
All I can think of is she’s the Auntie that could reach in there and pull out the rest of your rent money a bible or a .45 she ain’t afraid to use it depending on what you need baby. https://twitter.com/brill_inst/status/1030472296639516672?s=17
retiredeng
With all the (too many to mention) disgusting actions, this is the one that makes my blood boil the most. FFS, little kids ripped from their parents with no warning and now they don’t give a damn about them at all. We have two new additions to our large extended family (great grandkids age 1 and almost 2). If that happened to them I’d be on a serious warpath!
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Weren’t they saying a couple of weeks ago that they needed to make sure the children were returned to “good” parents?
montanareddog
@germy: I read the Twitter thread: an immigrant threatened with deportation sued ICE; ICE’s lawyer submitted a document purportedly signed by the plaintiff in 2000 with a DHS header when DHS was founded in the aftermath of 9/11; the forgery was spotted, the lawyer got 30 days jail and disbarred for 10 years.
This happened in 2009 under the Obama administration which shows that ICE has been dysfunctional since long before Lord Hell Toupée started squatting the West Wing. But we cannot put the blame for this on him.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: sure, but as the official number.
kindness
After the Civil War, our fore-fathers thought it would be a good idea to commandeer the family estate of Robert E Lee and make it a national military graveyard. We should start thinking about which Trump property needs to commandeered to pay back America for what the current treasonous bastard has done to us. It doesn’t have to be a graveyard, think positive thoughts.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Was that in reference to the letter Aretha wrote to Liz Smith after the gossip columnist wrote something snide about her bosom? Because that letter was LIT!
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b75a015e4b02b415d76a5a3
Calouste
@David Evans: When that inscription was put on the Statue of Liberty, the Chinese Exclusion Act was already in effect. And immigration laws only went downhill for the 60 years after that. Q
mad citizen
@kindness: An awesome idea–how about a nice park with multiple ethnic festivals throughout the year celebrating the breadth of nations where americans originate from, and of course any native american tribes too.
Hungry Joe
What’s so staggering — and so hard to get one’s mind around — is that the Trump gang simply doesn’t care about those children, those parents, those families, and what they’re going through. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass. Try to imagine them lying their beds at night, unable to sleep because somewhere confused, terrified children are in a cage because of what they’ve done … but you can’t. They sleep like babies who HAVEN’T been taken from their moms.
My god, but these are horrible people.
Calouste
@kindness: Which property? All of them, Katie?
I suggest we use them to host asylum seekers.
Aleta
We could use a TV judge show who would listen to the deceptions and crimes of this administration and announce punishments. A way to speak to the reality show gang.
Brachiator
The Trump administration is proud of what they have done and think it will help them in the midterms. From Politico.
Ian G.
With pancreatic cancer in the news due to the dearly departed Aretha, I’d like to note that I hope Stephen Miller ends up with that disease. I want to be able to enjoy his suffering the way he enjoys the suffering of children.
Ian G.
@kindness:
The Bank of Manhattan tower at 40 Wall St, a beautiful, iconic Art Deco skyscraper that Shitgibbon outright owns and (of course) has his name on at the entrance. I’ve been longing for the day those fucking 5 letters are torn down like I imagine people in communist Poland were waiting to tear down Stalin and Lenin statues.
T
@Ian G.:
Dude. No. Fuck off.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: It will, with his “base”. I have a few of them in my office and they think this is the greatest thing any president has done in American history. They are furious that the “unelected judges” stopped it.
Really not kidding, so wish I was.
p.a.
Raze them, turn them into treed parks for carbon sequestration, and have ethnic festivals on those now public properties 365 days/year.
Citizen Scientist
@Ian G.: Having just lost my MIL to pancreatic cancer, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, not even Stephen Miller. I do want him to get what karma hopefully has coming for him though. I have to imagine him having to work on programs designed to help immigrants and POC for the rest of his life would be his own personal hell.
MattF
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, they’re all liars. It’s irritating to have to keep reminding oneself of that, but that’s where we are.
piratedan
@kindness: perhaps the Trump Properties become the home for the expanded Federal Customs Department that oversees immigration and housing Federal Employees.
Patricia Kayden
I’m lost as to how separating these families who were lawfully in this country seeking asylum is not a crime. We are too passive about the mistreatment of children of color.
My fear is that if Republicans maintain both chambers after November, the Trump regime will feel free to sink even lower in how it treats people whom Trump and his imps despise. It can get much worse.
zhena gogolia
@Ian G.:
Feels like that for sure. But we won’t bother to make any “sculpture parks” for them.
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
This is not just your fear. It is reality. The Trump administration has not backed down on any of its immigration policies. Nor has GOP leadership tried to restrain or moderate any Trump policy.
We need midterm victories to help halt this evil.
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
It is a crime. Maybe not one on the books as such because no one suspected that anyone before this would do it. Almost all laws are written after someone has done something that wasn’t illegal at one time. And even then you have assholes such as the ones now who don’t care because they think they control the power to find and fix issues that they create. shitgibbon thinks he can do this with a wave of his pudgy little hand. And at this point he almost can.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve watched one particular clip probably 12-15 times over the past 24 hours. It’s the one everybody knows, from the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, where the beautiful, BOSOMY, MAGNIFICENT Aretha sat down at the piano and performed “Natural Woman,” to the incoherent rapture of honoree Carole King and the tears of The Best President. And then she dropped her fur coat on the floor, just shrugged it off like it was a terrycloth bathrobe. BOOM. I never tire of it.
Ruckus
It strikes me that we should list the positive accomplishments of the shitgibbon, as long as we are going to list the negative.
1.
OK that about wraps it up.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ruckus:
Elaborate?
The Dangerman
Nah, give him real inspiration – commandeer Mar a Lago.
Better yet, Trump can’t go golfing until it’s done. That should get results.
Ruckus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
You haven’t been paying attention?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Ruckus:
I have. He’s not that powerful. He’s still being constrained by the system. He’ll be reined in even further hopefully when the Dems retake the House at the least. Power of the purse and all that.
patrick II
I hope whomever the new democratic president will be has the estrogen to charge these people with criminal kidnapping. There is no law saying we can abduct children from their parents on the whim of a mad hatter.
scav
@Hungry Joe: The party and tribe of “Family Values” and “Think of the CHILDrrren!” has never been about other people’s families or children: only their own. Cozy Nepotism and religiously gilded (with a swag of red-white-n-blue bunting) misanthropy.
Brachiator
Trump administration tries to accelerate its evil immigration policies. From Reuters.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Like James Brown and his cape!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@kindness:
Obama Library New York branch.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Meanwhile, about 150 miles north of you, the WiFi password at the coffee place where I had breakfast was “OrangeRacist.”
You’re in a weird little enclave compared to the rest of So Cal.
debbie
Ah, Andy, don’t ever stop:
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: Fucker wrecks everything. We actually really needed (and still do) a serious discussion and select tariff response to Chinese dumping practices in targeted American markets. For example, when Obama took the presidency, there were a number of American manufacturers of solar panels. Today I think there are two left. The Chinese grossly underpriced their panels, deliberately took a loss for years on them, until the American companies went under, at which point they then raised prices to be profitable. And they own that market in the US now. We’re a bit player in a market we created and invented.
We all know what Trump did. Picked one of the few industries that his idiot brigade understood (one in which we have not been able to compete for decades) and instead of leveling tariffs on the folks doing actual unfair trade practices, went and punished all our allies for doing business with us. So now our economy gets fucked, our allies’ economies get fucked, and the actual problem will now continue and won’t be able to be discussed rationally by anyone because it’s been reduced to:
pro-tariff: pro-Trump
anti-tariff: anti-God-fearin’ Murican workers
THE FUCKER RUINS EVERYTHING HE TOUCHES.
sukabi
@waspuppet: weeks? That’s hardly justified.
Kidnapping, transporting across state lines, abusing, drugging, ECT. usually that combination of crimes against ONE CHILD would warrant 20+ years in jail. Multiply it by thousands. Fuckers responsible should be licked away for life.
sukabi
@sukabi: dann autocorrect…Should be locked away for life.
Gelfling 545
@Hungry Joe: I doubt Trump would have cared much if his own babies were locked in cages. And we may get to see his reaction irl if Jr. gets indicted. I predict “ tsk, tsk, so sad” reaction.
MagdaInBlack
@SiubhanDuinne:
THAT is my favorite clip. It had me all weepy last night: not sure if it was Aretha or Carole King who got me going, but it was magnificent !
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: He is not much liked here, either.
OT 1. Tomorrow we have been invited by one of our neighbors to meet a candidate for the state senate. Has anyone else been to one of these things? Does one ask questions? How do these things go, generally?
2. My friend became a citizen yesterday. She applied last December.
Immanentize
@sukabi:
You can turn auto correct off, you know…. Lock it away yourself, as it were.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Yay your friend! We need more good citizens like you (and soon Ruemara).
sukabi
@Immanentize: that’s the fun part, I’ve turned it off numerous times, have not turned it back on, keep getting autocorrected.?
Martin
@David Evans: This seems to work:
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Yay for your friend! I’ve never been to one of the “meet the candidate” things, but I think it’s mostly for him or her to meet potential constituents and see what their concerns are. So if it’s for a local or state office, you tell them about local stuff that’s annoying you, and if it’s for the House, you tell them which aspects of the Trump horrorshow you’d like them to concentrate on.
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
It may be your browser’s autocorrect rather than the one on your phone, if that helps. Sometimes they’re separate options.
Mike in NC
I downloaded an excerpt from Rick Wilson’s “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and plan to read it before whipping up a batch of crab cakes this afternoon.
cmorenc
@schrodingers_cat:
Not so much bored with the separated kids as overwhelmed by the constant proliferation of other outrageously evil shiny objects. Such as the Helsinki summit fiasco. Cutting off security clearances of former intelligence officials critical of Trump….I could go on and on listing the blindingly bright evil shiny objects the Trump Admin has spun up since the kid separation, and that’s in addition to other outrages such as the honeypot Russian spy in the NRA and among RNC officials etc…but these examples will do to make the point. How is the media to keep up?
The big danger is the creeping normalization of all this through flooding us into a state of exhausted outrage fatigue. How exactly do we maintain engagement with any one of the unacceptably evil outrages when new compelling evil outrages get spun off every week? And there’s the distraction of Omorosa trolling Trump and his reactions trying to distract us from Omorosa by creating counter-distractions (which are evil outrages in their own right).
This Administration is trying to distract and exhaust Trump’s detractors and enemies into submission.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
QFT
That’s not a positive thing. I listed all the positive things. Here’s another list.
None. Zip. Nada. Nothing even close. ничего. näischt.
burnspbesq
@David Evans:
Rewriting the inscription on the Statue of Liberty? Already been done.
https://youtu.be/ZH96BsL1R3U
sukabi
@Mike in NC: do it after the crab cakes…wouldn’t want any residual trump effect to affect your cakes.
laura
Ive again sent a begging email to congresswoman Doris Matsui to speak out about this policy. She’s got first hand family experience of internment. To date, she’s only tweeted and faceberg’d to a closed audience of followers. What even the F!?! I’m sickened by this. The blowback is going to bring holy hell on us all.
Also, to Schrodingers_cat -yes, do ask questions to a candidate. Turns out, they’re people and they must be made aware of issues of concern and you CAN make a difference in informing them and establishing an expectation. Consider it a job interview-they want you to hire/elect them. Please report out after -you, your newly minted american friend, and Ruemara fill me with gratitude and optimism for your willingness to show up and stand up for the American Ideal.
Aleta
@cmorenc: blindingly bright evil shiny objects
good name for it. Their campaign strategy was the similar–roll ones with sqeakers in them across the floor. The press would bark, Oh this will be the end of him, and wrestle them for 3-5 days. Each one mattered but they just kept rolling them to control where our attention focused.
NY Robbin
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
As someone who works across the street from the (back of) Trump Tower, I love this.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah….now get her registered to vote
jacy
@schrodingers_cat:
I usually have the news on in the background, and I hear about it every hour. On MSNBC, at least, they interview the parents every day.
Vhh
@Citizen Scientist: Ruining 500+ kids’ lives is industrial scale child abuse. Miller, however, won’t get jailed, and so deserves pancreatic cancer. Or a near deadly beating by neo Nazis on a an anti Jewish rampage.
Greg
One way to get things moving is to grant those children immediate citizenship. And then allow them to sponsor their entire family.
schrodingers_cat
@Greg: You have to be an adult to sponsor your parents (not sure if its 18 or 21).
Sab
My granddaughter turned eighteen this week. Gave her a necklace, a cake and a voter registration card for her birthday. She seemed most excited about the voter registration card. Purge season is done, so we are taking it downtown to the Board of Elections.
gvg
The border patrol agents need to be arrested for kidnapping.
child welfare gets involved after the children are removed. They start with children and no records. They can’t remove children except for cause which would involve specific reports if child abuse. Border patrol is violating the law.
One of the problems child protection agencies have is they can’t really remove a child unless they have a space to put them. When the recession happened, they had more cases but fewer spaces as some foster families had financial problems and dropped out. Financial problems stress families so abuse reports go up. The welfare agents became reluctant to remove kids unless it was really obviously needed because they had no where to put them. They have specialists who do nothing but call all foster parents to see if they have any room. In tight times they will tell you they can waive the cap on your license (how many kids you are set up to care for). The kids sit in the office till the counselor finds a placement for them. When they can’t find a local place, they start calling the next county overs families. I got calls from a county an hour away from me a few times. Also late late at night, they were still in the office calling around because they couldn’t go home, they had to find an emergency placement.
So these extra immigrant kids that have families are being put into a system that I already know is short of resources. It likely means some American kids get beat up on by their families for a while longer. and the immigrant families are fine families. I really hate these bigots.
Calouste
Just reading in the Guardian that the Foreign Minister of Austria had invited Putin over for her wedding this Saturday, and he will attend.
Remember when Vienna was the best city in the world to live 3 days ago?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator: Easy there this is Donald “Alternative Facts” Trump, what ever the result will be in November Trump will view it as a mandate. GOP rout will mearly be because they didn’t embrace Trump enough.
Brachiator
@Calouste: Not surprisingly, the Austrian Foreign Minister is anti-EU and anti-immigrant, which seems the standard ideology of Putin lovers.
Jeffro
(waiting for a new thread to discuss Adam’s post last night and related – unprecedented that the IC and military have come this close to open revolt against Orangemandias, but hey, you wanna ignore the guardrails there Donnie, you land where you land)
Dems would be smart to point at all these professionals and mobilize voters in every district, but particularly any district within 20 points of striking distance, to demand that the GOP incumbent or candidate side with our nation’s military and intelligence professionals against this kind of nonsense.
unrelatedwaffle
@Vhh: Whoa, uh, as a Jew, gonna be a solid “no” on the acceptance of Nazi violence against Jews we don’t like. Let’s not lose our heads here.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Holy cow. Threats against the Manafort judge and jurors?
Doug R
@Brachiator: Wouldn’t be the first Austrian that didn’t like “ethnics”.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I hope they follow up and name names. Russians or Trumpies?
Aleta
There’s a story out about police officers in Georgia who’ve tased an older non-English speaking Syrian woman, 87, who was cutting dandelions with a knife. She ‘didn’t follow orders.’ Seems like she was arrested too. Sorry I don’t have a link. People are contacting the PD there to protest. I have a close relative w/ Syrian parents and name, who won’t even get on a plane any more or travel more than one state away.
Quinerly
@Aleta: “Think Progress” had a piece up mid-day.
JAFD
@Citizen Scientist: “Some things I wouldn’t wish on anyone” Quite laudable position. Myself, having endured a few attacks of gout, sometime think ‘twould be suitable divine recompense…
Or mayhaps, myself having a bottle of ‘painkiller’ pills, “just in case you ever _really_ need them” around, wonder if our overlords could resist such temptation…
WaterGirl
@debbie:
At this point, I’m not sure we can tell the difference.
bluefoot
@Vhh: It’s more than industrial-scale child abuse; it’s state-sponsored terrorism. Kidnapping, abuse/torture, child endangerment by the government for the purposes of intimidating or coercing members of a group (in this case, refugees, asylum-seekers, and non-white immigrants – documents or no). It’s insane. And the Republican Congress just sits by while we commit crimes against humanity.