Security Theatre

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!

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Today In America’s Concentration Camps for ChildrenPost + Comments (54)