Anne Frank didn’t die in one of the Zyklon B gas chambers. She died from typhus contracted from the unsanitary conditions in Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp she was interned in waiting for execution. She contracted typhus in that camp because her father’s attempt to get a refugee visa for the Franks to come to safety in the US was denied. The reason we have the immigration rules we have now, no matter how in need of updating and revision they are (like too much else in the US), is because of how the Franks, the refugees on The St. Louis, and others trying to flee NAZI tyranny and the Holocaust were treated in the run up to and during World War II. The stories brought back by American Soldiers of what they’d seen in the liberation of the camps and the historical documents found, utilized, and archived by both Civil Affairs personnel and US civilian personnel for the Nuremberg Trials shamed the US into making the changes. It are these changes, changes to prevent the US from ever again being a passive party to the death and destruction of tyranny, state terror, and genocide, that the President, Stephen Miller, former AG Sessions, Senator Cotton, Congressman King, the President’s base of supporters, the base of the GOP and the conservative movement now seek to overturn in an attempt to return to the Immigration Act of 1924.
The children that are dying in the concentration camps that the Trump administration have established on or near the southern border are dying from disease contracted from unsanitary conditions or worsened by them. And they are in those camps because instead of processing their initial asylum requests and releasing them along with their parent or parents, they are being separated and detained in the hope that news of this will somehow get to desperate people in villages in Central American and that will deter them from trying to seek asylum in the US.
Here are the faces and the names of the children who have died in US custody or because they were in US custody* so far.
2/ Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin liked to climb trees. She jumped when her dad told her she could come with him to the U.S. She thought she might get her first toy; she'd just got her first pair of shoes.
She died on December 8 in our government’s custody. She was 7. pic.twitter.com/4mxs5aBkKo
— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019
4/ Juan de León Gutierréz was shy, a good student. When he missed class to help his dad harvest coffee, he'd run to catch his teacher after school to explain his absence.
He died on April 30 in our government’s custody. He was 16. pic.twitter.com/Ic2Gv22p3W
— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019
6/ Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez loved playing the piano and the bass. His family called him Goyito. He had 8 brothers and sisters. One of them, Edgar, had special needs. Carlos came to the U.S. to help support Edgar.
He died on May 20 in our government’s custody. He was 16. pic.twitter.com/Oyxu8kDzyx
— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019
Here is the Google Docs document that has been created to record these crimes against humanity.
8/ This Google Doc has the names, faces, and stories of each of the 6 migrant children who died in our government's custody.
Post them where powerful people might see them. Make them think about what our country has come to. https://t.co/Aiw8iU5rVR
— Alvaro Bedoya (@alvarombedoya) June 21, 2019
We will need a Truth & Reconciliation Committee to come through this. And it will not only need to have the authority to refer prosecutions, the legislation establishing the Truth & Reconciliation Committee will need to include language establishing a crimes against humanity tribunal for the people who conceived of this policy and strategy, who ordered it, who carried it out, and who have tried to cover it up.
Look at their faces! Learn their names! Never forget them and what is being done to others like them in the name of the United States.
Open thread!
* US personnel have, apparently, been transferring seriously ill detainees from custody to hospitals so that they technically do not die in one of these camps or other Customs & Border Patrol or Health & Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities.
schrodingers_cat
The counter has gone up to 9 now. I believe. One girl died of thirst in the desert and they found two more bodies this morning of children.
There have been adult deaths too, close to twenty since T took office.
*24 according to NBC.
Gex
I think the killing is the point. How is word supposed to get back to their countries of origin if they are also working very hard to not let anyone know what conditions are like?
ETA: That and the profit.
trollhattan
What you said.
Jeffro
@trollhattan: if the last part is a long way to say “modern-day Nuremberg Trials”, sign me up.
Time for a general strike, march on Washington, march on these concentration camps, anything. I know it’s America and we all have Summer Brain until Labor Day, but come on Dems. Call for it. Let’s go
Gretchen
Didn’t the Germans tell the people going into the gas chambers that it was a shower or for delousing?
schrodingers_cat
People on hunger strike are being force fed. ICE and CBP abuse tracker
hells littlest angel
White Americans have been murdering other-skinned peoples from the moment we stepped onto this country’s shores. I want to believe that in this case justice will be done, but that would be unprecedented. I think a Warren-Harris administration would really try to do the right thing, but I would expect them to be thwarted by The Deep White State.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: There is a difference between those who die during the crossing and those who die in US custody. They are equally preventable. They are equally unacceptable. But they are not the same thing.
TenguPhule
Today those same stories give white republicans really big stiffies. Shame is for other people made into human pyramids.
Yes, I’m bitter.
Adam L Silverman
@Gretchen: Yes. Yes they did.
Bullet-headed saxon mother's son
Republicans are found (nay, gleeful) of saying the there must be some punishment for illegal entry. OK, apparently the punishment is torture and death. Remind us all again — what is the crime that these children committed?
TenguPhule
@Gex:
The same way it always does.
TenguPhule
Which makes their defense of the denial of soap and toothpaste all the more horrible. They’re turning the concentration camps into death camps the worst way possible, via neglect.
And I’m certain they’re betting on escaping the consequences by using “it wasn’t my responsibility” as the excuse. A perfect circle of finger pointing sufficient to make conviction under the current courts unlikely.
Kent
As Americans we used to make heroes of, and create Academy Award-winning musicals about families who illegally crossed borders on foot to request asylum. In fact, I’d venture to guess that everyone here knows these lyrics: https://youtu.be/AeOMwXeMYwE
What has changed today? I just can’t put my finger on it.
Brachiator
Thanks for this post.
Trump is trying to use hard ball tactics to scare people from even attempting to enter the country.
Worse, as president, he is encouraging people to be cruel and callous. I hear people say that the terrible conditions and mistreatment are the fault of immigrants. If they would just stay in their own country, none of this would be necessary. It also says much that the GOP leadership almost universally backs Trump on this. Have any conservative pundits condemned Trump?
There is something wrong with Trump. He lacks any moral core. He understands hurt and resentment applied to himself, and his family, but he has no consideration for the Other. That he is incapable of admitting fault or apologizing is an odd emotional emptiness. The result is that he encourages the worst in the people who work for him and in his supporters. He may be one of the most recent incarnations of the banality of evil.
Sadly, this means that we will see more horror from Trump.
I am skeptical that a Truth and Reconciliation commission would ever be possible. Too many Americans are convinced that we are the most moral nation that ever existed, and that we can never do wrong because our hearts are always in the right place. Even if we fail, we will do better next time.
Ella in New Mexico
Getting the faces and stories of these and all the children in US Custody needs to be a top priority. We need this movement to be so loud and so ubiquitous that it penetrates even the Fox News Iron Dome. So they know what Trump has really done. No euphemisms like “family separation”, no lies he’s keeping the families together, no pretending this is because “The Democrats” won’t fund this or that.”
Just unequivocal evidence that Trump and the Republicans are committing human rights crimes. Because I really believe a majority of his supporters have been so poorly informed they have no idea how horrible this is. Or cant believe it could be true.
And call me crazy but I still have hope a chunk of them will be disgusted and angry and reject him and finally give up on this regime.
Seeing as so many of these detention centers are in Texas and nearby southwestern states, this would be the perfect job for Beto O’Rourke to use to quit hiss stupid Presidential campaign and use his strengths again, and get some more developmental time in the trenches, per my post down below.
Renie
NY Times had a good editorial today on this issue. NYT editorial Politicians are wasting energy on what term to use to call these camps rather than doing anything about the conditions. I hope there are some consequences for someone for this but I doubt there will be
TenguPhule
And of course none of that is going to happen as long as Republicans in Congress draw breath. They will fight this using every rule and procedure in the House and Senate they willfully ignored before and I am cynical enough to doubt how much political capital our elected representatives are willing to spend on this given all the other 101 emergencies that also demand their attention.
The courts ruled on Trump’s child abductions last year.
And yet here we are, with things increasingly getting worse.
TenguPhule
@Ella in New Mexico:
I’m sorry to have to tell you this.
Most of them don’t care. The rest think its great.
waspuppet
@Brachiator: I’ve seen this kind of sociopathy for decades. It predates Trump, or at least his entry into politics. I went to school with so many proto-Stephen Millers who had so many clever ideas. Most of them grew out of it by turning the ripe, mature age of 16, but …
Anne.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Worse, his is inverted. Like his genitals.
Ella in New Mexico
@TenguPhule: we don’t need all of them…maybe just 20% of them, dropping his approvals down to the solid low 30’s.
Jay
Thank you, Adam.
debbie
Someone needs to get face to face with Trump, Pence, and Miller and ask about Anne Frank and whether they think those unsanitary conditions were acceptable. Also that bitch attorney.
A very powerful post, Adam.
Ohio Mom
This makes me sick to my stomach.
On a related note, I see there is an Ohio Lights for Liberty Virgil planned for Friday, July 12 at the Morris County jail from 8-11pm. It’s in Mt. Gilead, which is an hour away from Columbus
I get that this site was chosen because it is an ICE detention facility. But there are a lot of logistical issues with me getting there, it’s three hours away for starters.
I’m not going to be the only one who can’t get there. I hope additional virgils in more accessible locations are added.
debbie
The noted germophobe should also be asked how he’d fare in those circumstances.
Brachiator
@Kent:
The Grapes of Wrath was inspired in part on how cruel we were to our fellow citizens in need. In this case, it was poor Okies during the Depression.
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK008
japa21
@Ohio Mom: @Ohio Mom: Just found out there is one in Crystal Lake, IL. Don’t know of a detention center there, although there is one in Woodstock, not too far away. When I had last checked there had not been too many, but there are a lot now.
https://www.lightsforliberty.org/
eemom
Hope there’s a God, if only to bless you for this post.
Aleta
For those who don’t want, or don’t like to sign in to, a google account, this is the full thread with the children’s photos from
Alvaro Bedoya @alvarombedoya, who will continue to post whenever deaths of children are made public. (We are not being told at the time.)
Mike in NC
It appears that the media just don’t care about these people being treated like dirt by the Trumpers. They’re juiced right now at the prospect of Pompeo and Bolton goading Fat Bastard into bombing brown people in Iran.
debbie
@Aleta:
Thank you. Posted to FB.
Aleta
Fo those who haven’t seen these articles yet: 1/2
1–From June 22, by By Isaac Chotiner in NYer . A Q. & A. with a lawyer on a team who visited a building in Clint, Texas last week to interview children and young mothers. (They were able to do that “in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement.”)
A few pieces from it:
worn
Thank you, thank you, thank you a million times for this, Adam!
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman:
24 adults have died in immigration detention since the current Republican President took office.
Also, people are crossing the border at points they didn’t use to before because CBP has closed many official ports of entry. So the official culpability in these deaths is not zero. Those deaths are close to 300 now.
Aleta
@Aleta: 2/2
2–From June 21 at NYRB. By Andrea Pitzer, the journalist who wrote One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017).
‘Some Suburb of Hell’: America’s New Concentration Camp System
3–June 22 at The Hill
4–On his twitter account, a journalist who was held captive by Somali pirates wrote: (paraphrase) “Somali pirates gave me soap and a toothbrush.”
debbie
@Aleta:
Let’s also not forget the hundreds of children who have little prospect of being reunited with their families.
Kent
@Brachiator: Thanks for the history lesson. I knew something of the Okie and dust bowl history. I didn’t know the states of CA and OR sent police to the border to turn away migrants. I clicked through and read the whole article. Powerful stuff.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: I’m not denying that. Nor was I intending to ignore the adults who have died in US custody. I’m just clarifying that adults or children dying in US custody is not the same thing as adults or children dying trying to make it to the US. They are equally bad. They are both preventable.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Repeated for truth.
Aleta
Last night the bodies of a young woman, two infants and a toddler were found in TX near the Rio Grande; suspected cause of death is dehydration.
IIRC, Journalists have made public documents indicating that US administration is turning away people who are legally applying for asylum — exposing the admin and Republican lie that if children are harmed, “it’s their fault for trying to bring their children here illegally.”
debbie
Where are all the fucking pro-lifers?
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: @Steeplejack: This may well be, but it doesn’t mean you don’t make the effort.
Vhh
It is a only a matter of time before a wave of disease hits these camps. Enough kids are not vaccinated that the std children’s like measles, mumps, chicken pox, 6th disease etc could infect hundreds at once. And there is that old concentration camp standby, typhus, which is spred by the lice now infesting everyone (the one lice comb per two kids policy will really speed that up). The press and public should force disclosure of what is going on. And then we will see the family values of all those pious evangelicals for what they are.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: They do not care about anyone other than themselves once someone is actually born.
Adam L Silverman
@Vhh: The only good news on this is that the vaccination rates in the countries these children and adults are coming from is much higher than in the US.
Vhh
I can’t wait to see whom Trump throws under the bus on this. Stefan Müller seems a good choice, and it goes well into the original German.
Betty Cracker
Thank you, Adam. I’ve wanted to post about this but keep ending up in the fetal position when I think about it.
Vhh
@Adam L Silverman: @Adam L Silverman: Doubt they are vaccinated against typhus. What I want is for disease to spread to the families`of the American Gestapo.
Kent
@Vhh: Luckily, vaccination rates in Central America are actually in many instances HIGHER than they are here in the US. Really. These are not ignorant people and they care about their children and they don’t have anti-vax idiocy to deal with: https://www.cato.org/blog/migrant-caravan-central-america-vaccination-rates
EDIT…yes, I see Adam beat me too it.
Adam L Silverman
@Vhh: Most likely not. But my understanding is that their vaccination rate for chicken pox, measles, mumps, and rubella, whopping cough, polio, and the other standards we vaccinate children for is much, much higher than the US’s right now. For all the problems they’re countries have, anti-vaxers are not one of them. Yet.
Adam L Silverman
@Kent: My post. My rules.//
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Adam, I really have to thank you for this post. The arguments I’ve been having with people around here over concentration camps have focused on fighting their insistence that it’s not a concentration camp if there aren’t gas chambers and crematoria. I wish I’d thought of your argument before seeing this.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: The NAZIs established about 40,000 concentration camps. Not all of them were death camps or extermination camps, though some became, as the allies closed in, the site of mass killings of the inmates. I watched part of, and have the rest recorded to watch tonight or tomorrow, a documentary on the Smithsonian channel last night titled Adolf Island. It is about a NAZI SS camp, including a concentration camp, established on the British island of Alderny in the English Channel. As the Allies closed in, the NAZIs killed everyone they had imprisoned there before fleeing the site.
Steeplejack
@Adam L Silverman:
I am not saying don’t make the effort. I am all in favor of a truth and
retributionreconciliation commission. But I believe Brachiator is right about the smug complacency of the vast majority of Americans.debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes, they were a thorough people. //
Adam L Silverman
@Steeplejack: I’m not arguing that point at all.
Omnes Omnibus
It also needs to be understood that these people are seeking asylum in the US. On a simple human lever, it doesn’t really matter; no one should be subject to this kind of treatment under any circumstances. Legally though, it make a huge difference. The US does not have an obligation to admit immigrants. (IMO immigration is a good thing and our country has benefited from it since its founding.) We, however, do have a legal obligation to admit refugees. This obligation comes from both treaties that have the force of law and laws passed by Congress and signed by presidents. When someone presents themselves at our border with a request for asylum, we have an obligation to hold a timely hearing to determine whether they do fit the definition of a refugee. The UNHCR thumbnails it as:
We aren’t determining their status and admitting the bona fide refugees. Just my guess, but I think that 99.9% of the people showing up right now are bona fide refugees – why the fuck else would they put themselves and their children through this otherwise? We are just warehousing them in horrible conditions. Everyone who is involved with this who isn’t screaming for things to be done right is guilty of crimes against humanity and is violating US and international law. This administration is run by ghouls.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie:
https://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/encyclopedia-camps-ghettos
J R in WV
Storm is nearly here, will drop off line in moments. Loud!!!
Wish us luck, all!!
ETA: So half an hour later, I was able to post this msg, because the front is past, and we’re back on line… Sat link is so weather dependent…
Kathleen
Thank you so much for this passionate, eloquent post, Adam. I consider warm hearts and compassionate souls some of our most powerful weapons. You come to the fight well armed!
Aleta
*
*
*
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks. I see I have my summer reading project.
TenguPhule
@Ella in New Mexico: If 5% break away, I’ll be surprised. This late in the game, its too late to back out.
Aleta
@debbie: “fighting their insistence that it’s not a concentration camp if there aren’t gas chambers and crematoria”
Another approach, which puts concentration camps into worldwide context, is in the NYRB article from Andrea Pitzer. Her 2017 book about the history of concentration camps goes into more detail than the NYRB article.
It’s an excellent article with a lot of history. I’ll put the link right below. And maybe some quotes from it in some other post since this one is over.
Aleta
@Aleta:
Link to (June 21) NYRB, ‘Some Suburb of Hell’: America’s New Concentration Camp System by Andrea Pitzer. She’s the journalist who wrote the book One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017).
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/06/21/some-suburb-of-hell-americas-new-concentration-camp-system/
J R in WV
The illegality of these people is unbeliveable — they care nothing for morality, religion, the law of the land, nothing but naked power and the pursuit of money. They defy court orders defining how children are to be treated.
I can’t really discuss this, it tears me up to much.
Adam, thanks for the history lessons from Europe. As a young person growing up, I knew that horror could never happen here. Then the first break in that was when Bush and Cheney decided torture wasn’t verboten for the good guys, we were still going to be good guys even if we tortured suspects.
Since then it’s been straight down whenever Republicans achieve any power over how ordinary things are to be done. They can twist the most normal process into a horror the likes of which we haven’t seen since Wounded Knee~!!~
I gotta stop now, read wild fiction with real heroes and alien bad guys.
debbie
@Aleta:
Thanks.
laura
Won’t somebody think of the private, for profit, prison industry? Soap, tooth brushes and paste, palatable food in sufficient amounts, medical care, clothing, bedding, education, recreation cut right into the bottom line.
Any/every fucker who’s played a role in this deserves the same treatment that they’ve dished out. Texas summer sun in a tent or a windowless warehouse seems right proper and fitting.
The blowback is going to be the death of us.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: There’s also one in Cleveland, but that’s even worse distance-wise, I assume.
3 weeks is pretty short to organize something like this. Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are absolutely correct. But Trump doesn’t care. He believes that he has an absolute right to determine who can enter this country, and that this should be limited to primarily white people with good resumes.
Trump doesn’t know law or treaties or precedent, and doesn’t much care. I doubt whether Trump even believes that he has a duty to uphold the Constitution. His base doesn’t much care either, apart from the Second Amendment.
EWM
Nazi Germany was a representative democracy. Almost all of the “refugees” are coming from a representative democracy. When are democracy lovers ever going to learn?