“BABY JAILS” — Georgetown Law Professor Phil Schrag Releases New Book Taking You Inside America’s “Kiddie Gulags” & The Continuing Fight To End The U.S. Government’s Official Policies of Inflicting Child Abuse On The Most Vulnerable Among Us!

Here’s a great “mini review” of Phil’s new book from Professor Kit Johnson on ImmigrationProf Blog:

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Thoughts on Baby Jails by Philip G. Schrag

By Immigration Prof

 

Kevin has already posted about Baby Jails, the new book from immprof Philip G. Schrag (Georgetown) that explores the detention of migrant children.

I write today as someone who recently devoured this book. Let me start by telling you two things about myself: I hate flying and I am not much of a fan of nonfiction books. Combining these two things, I tend to read a riveting YA novel while flying in an effort to distract myself from how many feet I am unnaturally suspended above the earth’s surface. Yet I recently read Schrag’s book over the course of 3 flights. It was utterly engrossing.

The book is jam-packed with law and yet manages to read like a narrative. You get a feel for characters (Jenny Flores, certain attorneys and judges) and find yourself rooting from the sidelines even as you know victories will frequently fail to live up to their promise.

The book included numerous vignettes and insights that were entirely new to me. For example, did you know Ed Asner was responsible for Flores’ legal representation? Yes, the grumpy old man from Pixar’s Up set out to help his housekeeper’s daughter who was housed with Flores and connected the young women with Peter Schey, founder of the National Center for Immigrants’ Rights (now the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law).

Here’s another one: Leon Fresco represented the government in a 2015 lawsuit brought by Schey to enforce the Flores settlement — arguing that the settlement didn’t apply to children traveling with parents and that the agreement was “no longer equitable.” Leon Fresco! I wrote about him a few years back — he was a key player in the failed 2013 comprehensive immigration reform led by the Gang of Eight.

I’m also impressed by how comprehensive the book is. I recently spoke to a friend who is on the cusp of publishing a book and we talked about how, at some point in the writing process, the publisher will charge by the word for additions of any kind. Yet Schrag’s book must have been edited and added upon right up until the last moment of publication. There is nothing of current import that is left behind (remain in Mexico, asylum cooperation agreements, third country transit).

This book is marvelous. A tour de force. I recommend it to everyone — even terrified flyers. Instead of gasping at every bump in the jet stream you’ll be scribbling away in the margins, furious at what our nation has done to children in the name of immigration enforcement.

-KitJ

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Thanks, Phil & KitJ, my friends and colleagues. Both of you are amazing inspirations to all of us in the “New Due Process Army.”

The Trump regime seeks to take child abuse many steps further to effectively “repeal by administrative fiat” all asylum protection laws, to insure that as many families and children as possible suffer, die. or are forced to remain in life-threatening conditions outside the U.S., and to abandon any effective cooperative efforts to improve conditions in “refugee sending” countries. 

Meanwhile, many complicit Article III Judges (U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee being a notable exception) simply “look the other way” — not THIER kids and families being tortured and killed, so who cares what happens to them — and a depressing segment of the U.S. public just doesn’t care that the Trump regime is putting America among the most notable international human rights abusers. After all, THEY have jobs, THEIR kids aren’t the Trump regime’s targets (yet), and the stock market is going up. So, who cares what dehumanization, intentional human rights abuses, and violations of legal norms are taking place in their name?

Still, I think that Phil, Kit, the Round Table, and many other members of our “New Due Process Army” are clearly “on the right side of history” here. It’s just tragic that so many innocent folks, many of them children, will have to die or be irreparably harmed before America finally comes to its senses and restores morality and human values to our government.

We’ve got a chance to “right the ship” this November. Don’t blow it!

Due Process Forever; Government Child Abusers & Their Enablers Never!

PWS

02-25 -20