US lost track of 1,500 immigrant children, but says it's not 'legally responsible' US lost track of 1,500 undocumented children, but says it's not 'legally responsible' - CNNPolitics Isnt this one of the absolute worst stories you could hear about a government! How is this being reported in the US??
People are upset, but I don't think it's being framed as ethnic cleansing which... yeah it pretty much is. I think it's one of those things that my grandkids will ask "how could you guys?" and I won't really have an answer. Trump has framed it as a democrat issue, which isn't true. We've got John Kelly saying that this represents a good deterrence for illegal immigrants, and Trump saying that they're criminals, drafting up legislation to separate children from their parents and hold them in warehouses. All of this is occurring with dog whistle racism humming at full bore in the background - I'm not really sure where we go from here, but my guess is somewhere absolutely horrific.
You can only get away with this kind of thing once you have dehumanised a section of the population as "animals". The president has said that these are not people, those are his actual words, so you can absolve yourself of responsibility when you treat them like animals. Increasingly, I'm seeing the argument from the right against criticism of the US administration being framed as dangerous to the stability of the country. That calling Republicans dangerous could lead to violence against them and disruption of the workings of the state. I see this as a sign that the policies are becoming much harder to defend on principle, so pragmatic arguments must be used to dissuade resistance and sedition.
That's a ray of hope. I saw the same sorts of defenses being used for W. Bush's policies, and well... he's treated like an embarrassing afterthought. I'm hoping that the same thing happens with Trump and his policies. We'll still have the people who voted for him and supported him to deal with. I'm not sure what the political landscape will look like in the coming years, but I'm hoping that it gradually stabilizes and we stop victimizing people like this. These policies look like smokescreens to disguise Trump's blatant piracy, and I'm left wondering which Americans will tire of first. The dehumanization is all too evident. The bigotry that's just so blatantly clear is covered up by a fig leaf of 'well, they're criminals, aren't they?' to the point where Trump is telling us that children aren't innocent of their parents crimes. I don't think Trump is brave enough, motivated enough, or intelligent enough to go for a full genocide or fascistic government, but he's certainly outlined a gameplan for someone who is.
Hell, we had people on this website, in this forum, defending the proposed measures saying "Well, it is the law right, and the law is meant to be enforced," because policy in the US (I'm not sure how it is abroad) has become so divorced from consequence.
I was heartened by the public reaction to the Windrush scandal over here. The Conservative Party grossly overestimated the racism of the British public. I don't know if the reaction would have been the same if it was about Eastern Europeans or Somalis, but at least the Government will have to rethink their approach somewhat. Akala spoke well about the Windrush scandal on Frankie Boyle's New World Order S02 E02. I can't link it here because it isn't family friendly, but it is available on youtube. Akala appears 7 minutes in.
...although on the flip side, speaking to your point about divorcing policy from consequence, the disadvantaged and disabled in the UK are still facing the literally deadly consequences of punishing welfare recipients for the excesses of the captains of finance.
The kids who were trafficked to an egg farm...that's horrific and inexcusable. The people responsible should face criminal charges on my opinion. With the 1,500 number, though, it's important to know that situation is not representative. The Washington Post (which is very anti-Trump) is reporting that the vast majority of the "sponsors" are family members, and notes that teenagers and their relatives may intentionally choose to get the teenagers off the grid to avoid the potential of deportation. - The Washington Post I'm not saying that to defend Trump or how things are right now, just as a point of technical clarification. As one of the minorities that the "very fine people" with tiki torches hate...things are scary and surreal over here right now.
Yeah, I didn't think that was the point. I thought the fact that 1500 kids cannot be accounted for was the bad part, and the egg farm was the really terrible part.
- The Washington Post Here's a good overview, it looks like it's massively increased now, they're now regularly separating children and babies from their families, of the 1500 number, 85% went to close family, so that's 225 from that number potential at risk/not with close family.
Wierdly your link isn't opening for me, but I assume it's the link I just reposted up! Sorry for the repost!
One child would be too many. Madeline Mccan went missing we all lost out minds. Loads of kids god missing, nothing. Like that old saying, a murder is a tragedy but a genocide is just a statistic. (Paraphrasing)
Ivanka Trump photo with son sparks backlash over border separations Reporting from the UK on the subject.
" Previously, families suspected of crossing the border illegally were allowed to stay together until their cases were resolved. In early May, attorney general Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration. Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters: “Those apprehended will be sent directly to federal court under the custody of the US Marshals Service, and their children will be transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.” On Friday Laura St John of the Florence Project, an Arizona nonprofit that provides legal services to migrant families, told Chris Hayes of MSNBC the policy had been in effect for months, directing border agents to separate children as young as one year old from their parents. In April, a New York Times reportconcluded that “more than 700 children have been taken from adults claiming to be their parents since October, including more than 100 children under the age of four”. The Times also reported that the Department of Health and Human services had lost track of almost 1,500 migrant children placed with US sponsors after showing up at the border alone. In a tweet on Saturday, Donald Trump, who as president guides the application of immigration laws, blamed Democrats for the separation policy. “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the US,” he wrote. The reasoning by which the president held Democrats responsible for a policy announced and followed by his own administration was unclear." Is this a correct overview of the policy history?
Kill one man your a murderer, but kill many and your a conquerer. See Palastine, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc
Well the mistakes the 1500 kids made were not being white, not being a citizen, and not having middle class parents with large access to the media. Although related to the murder point, it might be something to do with scale. People don't react to numbers, they react to humanisation. Maddy was a big deal not just because of the cynical points above, but because her face was plastered everywhere. Everyone knows what she looked like, everyone knew that that specific girl had gone missing. Generic "a child has gone missing" doesn't trigger much, and a number like 1500 is too many to sink in for people unless you really think about it. Same stuff as saying how many people in Aleppo were being killed and no one cared, but a picture of one dead kid got shared and people did care for a couple days. Also, in terms of fallout from this, I would agree this is probably the biggest deal that's happened under Trump, but I haven't seen anything about this other than this thread. It doesn't seem to be being treated like a big deal at all.
IMHO Maddy was a big deal because the parents made such a monumental error of neglect as parents that most people couldn't believe what they'd done and, not so secretly in many cases, held them responsible. There was an innocent victim AND a target for vitriol all at once.
Immigration lawyer and immigrant right's advocate Josie Duffy Rice makes some arguments about how this is actually being misinterpreted, how immigration advocates actually don't want the Office of Refugee Resettlement being responsible for tracking minors after placement with sponsors, and how the outrage over ORR is actually fueling a move to allow ORR to collaborate more with ICE, which is the last thing that undocumented immigrants and their supporters want. In her opinion, the biggest issue right now is that for undocumented families who arrive together, the US government is now separating children from their parents at the border, something we never used to do. Not that ORR is failing to keep current contact info on minors who showed up unaccompanied at the border after they're placed with sponsors. She actually agrees it's not the ORR's job to track children who arrived unaccompanied after they're placed, and she wants it that way. An excerpt (but you should read the whole thing): josie duffy rice on Twitter As for the roughly dozen kids who were trafficked to an egg farm--that sort of thing happened during the Obama administration too (six children from Guatemala ended up, in all places, at another egg farm). Focusing on that aspect of the story, instead of Trump's new policy of separating parents and kids--is actually going to make it easier for Trump supporters to claim the furor is "fake news." U.S. Placed Immigrant Children With Traffickers, Report Says
