Children should spend no more than a few hours in short-term border jails and US-law limits their detention under typical circumstances to 72 hours, but many of the children we interviewed at Clint had been there for three or four weeks.
— Clara Long (@clarychka) June 20, 2019
Based on our interviews, officials seem to be making no effort to release children to caregivers – and many have parents in the US – rather than holding them for weeks in overcrowded cells sometimes sleeping on hard floors.
— Clara Long (@clarychka) June 20, 2019
The US government argued in court on Tuesday that its obligation to provide “safe and sanitary” conditions does not require it to provide kids with hygiene items such as soap or toothbrushes. https://t.co/YPYELuWMRI
— Clara Long (@clarychka) June 20, 2019
Congress should urgently investigate and take action to stop these unconscionable abuses, such as requiring immigration agencies to release these children as soon as possible to their family members.
— Clara Long (@clarychka) June 20, 2019
I want to refocus a bit on this:
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.
All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.
U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government’s interpretation of the settlement agreement.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
The settlement at issue came out of Jenny Lisette Flores v. Edwin Meese, filed in 1985 on behalf of a class of unaccompanied minors fleeing torture and abuse in Central America.
Finally agreed upon in 1997, the settlement established guidelines for the humane detention, treatment and release of minors taken into federal immigration custody. The guidelines include the right to a bond hearing and requirements that immigration authorities timely release children to parents or guardians and place those not released in facilities that meet certain standards. The facilities are supposed to be “safe and sanitary.”
I spent about 45 minutes this afternoon looking for a picture of me, from August or September 2008, handing out toothpaste, tooth brushes, floss, soap, shampoo, other sundries, and toys to Iraqi children during a Humanitarian Assistance (HA) operation with the Command Sergeant Major* of the 4th Battalion/27th Field Artillery Regiment – Iron Thunder.** The Command Sergeant Major was handing out small, portable water purifiers, and dry consumables like bags of legumes that wouldn’t spoil, to the women in the village we were visiting. I’ll never forget watching and hearing a 6’6 inch tall, African American Command Sergeant Major, bend over and tell little old Iraqi women through his interpreter: “Mother, I know things aren’t great right now and I’m sorry about that. But on behalf of my battalion commander, my brigade commander, the Soldiers of the US Army, and the American people may I give you some things to try to make your life a little easier?” You can’t teach or train that. He didn’t just give them something. He didn’t hand it to them and walk away. He asked them. He gave them some of their dignity back by making them subjects to be interacted with, not objects to be manipulated. He got it without having to even be taught, not by sitting through hours of cultural engagement classes.
The reason for this reminiscence is that we CANNOT EVEN BE BOTHERED TO DO THE SAME THING FOR CHILDREN WHO WE HAVE SEPARATED FROM THEIR PARENTS AND REFUSE TO RELEASE TO THERE PARENTS !!!!!!! Not in some foreign country, not some place where everyone has to actually go around armed for their own safety, but here in the US!
They’re concentration camps. Their purpose is to concentrate these children, and in other cases adults, in miserable conditions in the perverse belief that word of the immiseration will get back to others in Central America, which will stop those considering fleeing to the US to seek asylum. It won’t. It is also a violation of US Federal law and Senate ratified US treaty obligations that have the force of US Federal law. It is immoral. It is unethical. And anyone who claims to be a devout, believing, and practicing member of any religion that supports this is a fraud, a liar, and a hypocrite!
Home of the brave my ass!
Open thread!
* I’ll find the picture as soon as I hit post, because that’s how the universe works.
** This particular Command Sergeant Major was great at this stuff. A great example for his Soldiers too. Even though he dropped a local political dispute onto my lap about 1/2 an hour later because I was “the cultural advisor” so…
Indulge me a minute while I tell you a story. One day this Command Sergeant Major and his convoy are out in a remote part of our Operational Environment. Depending on how you mapped it, our Operational Environment was around 3 times the size of the City of Baghdad, in which brigade combat teams had neighborhoods as the Operational Environments! So the one, non-modular combat brigade covering a ridiculous amount of real estate. Anyhow, the radios and repeaters didn’t always work properly that far out. All of a sudden his convoy shows up as stopped on the satellite tracker – the system that tracks where all of our mobile assets are within the theater of operations when they’re outside the wire. No big deal, stops are common. Until his convoy doesn’t start moving after several minutes. Which become more minutes. Now people in our Tactical Operations Center (TOC) are getting worried. Especially as it doesn’t appear he called in to say he was stopping to even his battalion TOC. So the officer in charge at that moment in the TOC gets on the radio and starts trying to make contact. “Thunder 7, Striker X-Ray, Thunder 7, Striker X-Ray, Over?” “Thunder 7, Striker X-Ray, Thunder 7, Striker X-Ray, Over?!?!” “Any Thunder element, Striker X-Ray, Any Thunder element, Striker X-Ray, Over?” “Striker X-Ray, Bear (if I’m recalling correctly this was Charlie Battery 4/27 – it’s been over a decade…) 3, Over.” Bear 3, Striker X-Ray: Be advised, Thunder 7 is stopped at coordinates (insert coordinates here) and not responding, proceed to coordinates immediately.” Striker X-Ray, Bear 3: Roger, Good Copy.” At that point Bear can be heard on the radio trying to raise their Command Sergeant Major and/or any of his Soldiers. No replies. Eventually Bear’s transmission’s change to: “Thunder 7, Bear 3, Thunder 7, Bear 3: Be advised we are on way to your last shown location, weapons free, take cover, take cover, TAKE COVER!!!” So they go screaming in, locked and loaded, prepared to find their Command Sergeant Major and fellow Soldiers under attack and prepared to kill whomever is attacking their comrades, and what do they find? Their Command Sergeant Major, the Soldiers of his personal security detail who hadn’t formed a security perimeter, and his convoy, away from their trucks playing an impromptu game of soccer with a bunch of Iraqi kids they’d just given a donation of balls to who were all hopped up on sugar as the Command Sergeant Major had liberated a case of honey buns from the Dining Facility that morning before he left on patrol. They were too far away from the trucks and having too much fun playing with the Iraqi kids who were running around and screaming at the top of their lungs to hear the hails. You can’t teach what he had! I’ve worked with some great senior NCOs, but Command Sergeant Major Clark is someone special!
MomSense
?????
Bravo, Adam.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: I’m not amused…
ArchTeryx
Alot of the Nazis were (publicly, at least) devout Christians who believed they were doing God’s work in wiping the Jews from the face of the Earth. Just sayin’…
Adam L Silverman
@ArchTeryx: I am aware.
debbie
Stephen Miller’s ass needs to be hauled into court NOW.
(That’s a great story!)
Citizen Alan
I don’t consider Trump supporters to be functionally human. There, I said it. I honestly don’t think they have souls.
Jeffro
Let’s never be afraid to swing the sharp sword of righteous fury whenever and wherever the opportunity arises, never ever ever. It’s past time to rip these clowns at every possible opportunity. I mean EVERY
Jeffro
Like, “oh what do you think about the latest gaffe by X or circular firing squad on the part of the Dems?”
SHUT THE F UP CHUCK TODD THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF HUMAN BEINGS IN CAGES IN OUT COUNTRY RIGHT NOW, ALL BECAUSE A) CRUELTY IS THE POINT AND B) YOU KEEP DOING YOUR ‘BOTH SIDES’ BULLSHIT!!
Wag
I’m saddened every day by Trump and his allies in the RWNJ Christianist universe.
Fuck ‘em.
But hey, maybe war in Iran will distract us from concentration camps at home…
ArchPundit
The third judge was Wallace Tashima who as a boy was interned during WWII at Poston. So a guy who was put in a concentration camp is ruling on what sanitary is in a concentration camp just to bring home how we don’t learn.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: He’s interviewing the President this Sunday on Meet the Press. He’s going to get steamrolled.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
? It means it’s really good.
Another Scott
Horrible.
And utterly unsurprising that Donnie continues to destroy our government and everything he touches this way. The courts need to slap him down.
Also on the Twitter machine [ via LOLGOP ]:
It’s a mystery… :-/
It’s almost as if everything a RWNJ economist says about taxes is exactly backward.
Or maybe not almost.
Grrr…
Rest easy, everyone. We need to continue the fight tomorrow.
Cheers,
Scott.
BlueDWarrior
For a lot of people, they can only recognize something as inhumane when there are body bags piled so high they can no longer look away. So long as most of the kids in these camps are still alive, they would use every bullshit excuse they can to ignore the full implications.
It’s only when there are a like of body bags, or open corpses, that people will finally ‘get it’.
And the dark part of it is, they still don’t care about the kids in cages for what they are, actual breathing human beings. They are just props to for the drama being acted out in thier heads.
And unfortunately, 30+% of the population have de-humanized these people out of thier tribe to where the horror we’ve visited upon them are just lies from liberals to make them feel sympathy for ‘criminal scum’.
That is what we are truly fighting.
Adam L Silverman
I’m not sure Laura Ingraham knows who won the Civil War.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: I didn’t mean to confuse you. Yes, I understood your comment. Thank you.
CaseyL
How are these not crimes against humanity?
Granted, the Bush-Cheney Administration committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and never so much as had a subpoena issued against them. But that doesn’t change the fact that the crimes were committed.
Ditto Trump.
The debasement and horror the GOP has wrought upon the world in our name just guts me.
Adam L Silverman
@CaseyL: They are. The question is whether anyone, in a future administration, will have the courage to try to bring these men and women to justice. From the C&BP, ICE, USCIS, HHS, ORR officers to the political appointees at those agencies to the people in the White House who have come up with these policies and to the people at the DOJ who aren’t doing something about it and/or enabling it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the broad indifference of the public to the Russia investigation frustrates and baffles me.
the indifference to this story breaks my heart
Leto
During my Afghanistan deployment, we organized a children’s cold winter coat drive. This happened, roughly, January 2010. The Army guy leading this put out an email asking for help, and my team responded by asking all of our family back home if they could help. I tasked my parents church with “doing their Christian duty” of helping out. They responded my sending four very large boxes stuffed to the gills. I think, in total, we (big we) handed out 250+ children’s coats.
These people are arguing that we can’t even give children soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, basic items to help these children feel human/loved. This is what evil looks like. And this is only what we know about. I hate these people. I’m not going to try to understand them, I’m not going to work with them. “All enemies, foreign and domestic.“
Raoul Paste
Monsters
joel hanes
Be careful what you wish for.
One of the earlier bunches of children stolen from their asylum-seeking parents were sent right away to Bethany Christian Services, an infamous “Christian” outplacement agency associated with Betsy DeVos,
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2018/07/devos-linked-to-christian-adoption-agency-implicated-in-state-sponsored-kidnapping/
Stealing children from their parents and using them as goods to be distributed constitutes kidnapping and human trafficking.
B.B.A.
Fuck it. Open borders now.
Bill Arnold
@Citizen Alan:
He ate their souls. I mean, he ate the souls of those who still had them. It’s what he does, what he is.
(No idea why my fingers typed that but heh.)
Mike in NC
People need to keep in mind just what a sick, twisted fucker Trump is. He lives to degrade and humiliate his “enemies” (AKA anyone who won’t pucker up and kiss his fat ass). Recall when the devout Catholic Sean Spicer badly wanted to meet the pope, and Trump gloated about nixing that.
Cheryl Rofer
Thanks, Adam. We have to keep pounding on this, and sending money to those working to end it, and, if we have to, demonstrate in the streets.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: We were constantly handing out clothes, personal grooming supplies, food, water purifiers, toys, etc.
The problem is even if you got people to donate the things these kids and adults need, so it cost the government nothing, they still wouldn’t hand them out.
TaMara (HFG)
I’ve been devastated all day by the stories – that we all knew were happening – but worse than I could imagine.
It’s summer, my schedule is lighter, if someone has ideas of some physical action that can be taken, I’m happy to call the pet sitter and drive wherever to do something, anything at this point.
Mayur
@Citizen Alan: I don’t feel you even have to get to this point to feel that. The damage to our environment (and consequently the survival of The entire fucking human race, the health and welfare of poor people and the autonomy of women, and support for shameless hoovering up of the entire economy by the rich at the expense of everyone else should be enough to expose that soullessness. But, if you HAD to pick one thing out of all the atrocities, I agree that this, right here, is the one to pick.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
NotMax
Not going to track it down but distinctly remember a story about a unit (Marines, maybe?) tasked with handing out 300 soccer balls. All deflated, and no needles with which to inflate them nor a pump available or included.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
apparently, he said this to Telemundo
screenshots of transcript at the link, Diaz-Balart* can’t keep up with the firehose of bullshit
* Brother to one and I believe cousin to two former GOP MoCs, IIANM
debbie
Can’t someone throw the Geneva Convention at the Trump administration (figuratively speaking)?
Lyrebird
Preach, Adam, preach.
It’s an ongoing horror, but at least people like you and other front pagers and AOC and RAICES are keeping the truth being spoken…
May it bring an end to this cruelty sooner!
GregB
This is America.
Fucking monsters.
Adam L Silverman
Don’t mess with the Society!
Mart
@Adam L Silverman:
My still best friend’s parents were placed in Japanese concentration camps. When they were released and returned to their family produce farms in Washington State, the land was no longer theirs. The community was devastated. My friends parents moved to the Midwest to work in factories. His parents each received (I recall) $25K when we were in college. Peanuts for strawberry theft. Lot’s of folk resented the government “gift” to them. His parents were US born and loved their country. My friend is a Trumper, I doubt even this sick shit will change his mind.
BlueDWarrior
@GregB: and the thing that disturbs me the most is the fact that most of Trump’s supporters fully believe that these children in the camps aren’t deserving of basic human compassion and dignity.
No, they are “criminals”, and “criminals” should only recieve the most terrible of punishment.
Adam L Silverman
@Mart: People are weird.
Duane
@Mayur: Of all the evil, stupid and lawless things Trumpov has done, the treatment of immigrants is the worst.
I’ve never thought of our government as an enemy of the people but I’m beginning to wonder. May be they’ve declared war on us.
BlueDWarrior
@Duane: you have to remember, the government is representative of the voting public; and the conservative part of the voting public have long since declared war on the rest of us.
Some of us have tried to ignore the full implications of that. Conservatives are using the courts, the Senate, and the Presidency to destroy Liberal America and those who otherwise refuse to follow the One True Way.
worn
“It is immoral. It is unethical…”
Adam, I love what you do here, but this is weak sauce for a man so very skilled with words.
It is evil. We are actively engaging in evil as a nation.
A non insignicant percentage of these children will never recover from this trauma. They will not be able to form normal, loving relationships, they will not be able to avoid substance abuse problems, a fair number will be in and out of jail their whole lives, etcetera. And it is all on purpose.
Evil.
worn +4 in vermont & pissed the fuck off
Paul T
Sarah Fabian needs to have her face and name as exposed as Kirstjen Nielsen’s. She must discover that she will forever be the face of child concentration camps.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
If Ingraham believes the South is winning the Amercam Civil War, she might not be wrong.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
American, you knucklehead.
BlueDWarrior
@worn: I don’t think evil is even enough. The only thing we are doing that is different than some of the worst regimes we can think of is that we aren’t putting bullets in the back of thier heads.
That is why people are so upset about the concentration camp nomenclature – because we are behaving like Nazis in that respect. We’re dehumanizing people to a point to where a significant minority supports basically treating them like stray dogs. And some number of them are going to, even if they wouldn’t say it within camera shot, argue to treat them like we do/did strays once we ‘ran out space’.
Buckeye
@BlueDWarrior: The pushback on the nomenclature of concentration camps isn’t new either, there was a good article on that in WaPo yesterday. There is also the reality that concentration camps have been used by many others than just the Nazis. I find direct comparisons to the Nazis can be limiting. But as I discovered yesterday, pointing out there are probably more accurate comparisons to other atrocities gets me accused of supporting the camps.
J R in WV
@ArchTeryx:
Still are, right here in River City. Lots of devout fascists believing they are good Christians mistreating people they should be cherishing and helping. Being told to read the wrong parts of their good book in the wrong light.
Good to see you again, it’s been a while. Hope you[re doing at least OK. Tho you may not see this comment now, it’s 5 am and I’m going back to bed soon.
Take care, hang in there!
Mike Furlan
Promoting the Neo-Confederate Kook Larison again I see. He is very in your face celebrating treason in the defense of slavery.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/my-noxious-views/
Adam L Silverman
@Mike Furlan: What the hell are you talking about? There aren’t any links to Larison or any mention of him in this post or these comments.
Mjaum
How is it that your strange country does not have laws making this kind of thing illegal by definition? Why can the administration claim in court “nah, that’s not what ‘hygenic’ means” without having the court come down on them like a ton of bricks? Why do you seem to build your legal system one stupid, horrific mistake at a time?
Darkrose
I have to wonder what my Congressperson, who was born in the Poston War Relocation Center internment camp (Doris Matsui, CA-6), thinks of all this bullshit.
central texas
Thanks for the great story about members of the military who are a credit to our aspirations. And particular thanks for including a news story that actually gives the name of one of the miserable vermin who are representing us in the DOJ. I am so damned tired of reading news reports that treat the identification of these sorry sacks of shit as an anonymous and disembodied voice who cannot be responsible for their actions. The name of the idiot ass who kept OBJECTING during the House “testimony” of Hope Hicks should have been a clearly stated, given that our oh so fierce Democratic majority allow them to escape public testimony.
There is nothing we can do to change how this happens in the short term, but if every one of these be-suited and paid parasites got to have their name and face associated with their actions, we could remember them when they are through the revolving door and trying to run for office or appointment.
brantl
; their parents. Other than this typo, spot on.