HUFFPOST: UNDER TRUMP & SESSIONS, ICE ASSISTS DOMESTIC ABUSERS!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ice-domestic-violence-abuse_us_5b561740e4b0b15aba914404

Melissa Jeltsen reports for HuffPost:

Domestic abusers are known to be crafty, finding inventive ways to exert power and control over their victims. They use smart home gadgets to spy on their partners. They post revenge porn online. They rack up debt in their victims’ names. And as a recent incident in North Carolina demonstrates, abusers now have another powerful tool in their arsenal: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

On July 9, ICE agents arrested an undocumented woman and her 16-year-old son at a courthouse in Charlotte after they appeared at a domestic violence hearing.

The woman, who is being identified only as Maria, is living in a domestic violence shelter and has a protective order against her ex. But that morning, she was in court as a defendant, facing what her lawyer described as “bogus” retaliatory charges brought by her ex after she left him.

Those charges have since been thrown out, but they put Maria in ICE’s crosshairs. Now, she faces possible deportation.

Advocates say her case sends a chilling message to undocumented victims that abusers can essentially wield the immigration system as a weapon against them, and that ICE will be more than willing to help.

“ICE is effectively partnering with abusers to keep their victims from seeking help from law enforcement and the judicial system,” said Kim Gandy, president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Maria’s arrest comes during a period of heightened immigration enforcement that has undocumented victims of domestic violence laying low. As deportations ramp up across the country, victims are trapped in a Catch-22: Ask for help and risk deportation, or stay with a violent partner and risk their lives. Many are afraid to contact police, pursue civil or criminal cases, or go to court for any reason. Advocates say abusers use this to their advantage, threatening to turn victims over to immigration officials and filing frivolous complaints to get them in trouble.

Maria, who is originally from Colombia, legally entered the U.S. in August 2016 but overstayed her visa.

In January of this year, Maria made the difficult decision to call police for help, her public defender, Herman Little, told HuffPost. According to Little, Maria’s ex-fiancé had beaten her, and when her son, then 15, had stepped in to stop him, the ex beat him too, injuring his arms and face.

“He was a brave young man to try to protect his mom from a grown man,” Little said.

Maria’s ex was arrested and charged with assault on the teenager. Maria fled to a domestic violence shelter with her children.

Nine days later, she was due in court to get a temporary protective order against her ex. That same day, her ex told authorities he wanted to press charges against Maria for allegedly assaulting him. Experts in domestic violence say it’s a common tactic for abusers to bring charges against victims. He later brought more charges, claiming that Maria had stolen items from his house. According to Little, the “stolen” items were personal belongings that she took when she fled to the shelter, like the baby’s crib.

“He used the criminal justice system as his bully pulpit,” Little said. The charges against Maria were dismissed by the district attorney’s office on Tuesday, he added. An attorney for the ex-fiancé did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On July 9, Maria and her son appeared at the Mecklenburg County courthouse to attend two hearings ― one for the charges against Maria and one for the charges against her ex involving her son. But inside the courthouse, plainclothes ICE agents arrested the mother and son and whisked them off to an ICE office, leaving behind Maria’s 2-year-old child, who was being looked after at the court day care.

It is unclear how ICE knew Maria was undocumented and would be in court on July 9, but Little recalls seeing her ex talking on the phone before the agents showed up. He suspects her ex called them.

At a rally on Friday in Charlotte, Maria described the arrest as “one of the most humiliating and embarrassing experiences I’ve ever endured” and said she was terrified about being separated from her 2-year-old.

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In an email to HuffPost, a spokesman for ICE, Bryan Cox, defended the decision to arrest Maria, saying the criminal charges against her prompted ICE’s actions.

“This person was in court as the defendant facing criminal charges themselves, not as a plaintiff,” Cox wrote. “You’ll have to ask local authorities why those charges were filed as ICE cannot speak to charges filed by another entity, but this fact is not in dispute.”

He did not explain why Maria’s son, who was in court as a victim in a pending domestic violence case against her ex-partner, was also arrested.

Archi Pyati, chief of policy at the Tahirih Justice Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit that works with immigrant women and girls who have survived gender-based violence, said ICE’s actions demonstrate “this administration’s willful blindness towards the realities of domestic violence and how they play out.”

Pyati noted this is not the first instance of ICE agents targeting domestic violence victims at court appearances. In February 2017, an undocumented woman was arrested while seeking a domestic violence protective order against her boyfriend.

In another case, ICE agents allegedly threatened to deport a domestic violence victim with an open U visa application ― which is intended to protect victims of crime from deportation after they come forward to work with law enforcement ― unless her estranged husband turned himself over to federal immigration agents. The woman has lived in Wisconsin for 20 years and does not know where her estranged husband is, according to a statement from Voces de la Frontera, a Milwaukee immigration rights organization.

Wilmarie Santos, a bilingual advocate who takes calls for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, said a growing number of callers are reporting that their abusers are using their immigration status as a way to control and psychologically torment them. She described one caller who said her abuser threatened to hurt himself and tell authorities that she did it, and another who said her abuser threatened to falsely claim she’d kidnapped the children so she would be arrested.

“They basically comply with whatever is demanded of them,” Santos said. “Right now, contacting the police or getting help is not really an option for women [who are undocumented]. It’s terrifying actually ― their options are very limited and trust is a big deal for any victim of abuse, and on top of this you have this extra barrier.”

“The degree of fear and anxiety is at a level I’ve never experienced before,” said Monica Trejo, the director of phone service at the hotline, where she has worked for 12 years. “There’s definitely an increase in hopelessness.”

Maria is now in deportation proceedings, which her immigration lawyer, Lisa Diefenderfer, said they will fight.

“Had ICE done any minimal investigating they would have quickly discovered that the charges against her were retaliatory and going to be dismissed. She is not a danger to our community, she is a victim of domestic violence,” Diefenderfer said. “This completely changes her life.”

This story has been updated to reflect that the charges brought against Maria by her ex were later dismissed.

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Sure, I know, Sessions technically isn’t in charge of ICE. But, let’s be honest about it: Kirstjen Nielsen is a lightweight sycophant appointed solely because she wasn’t going to resist or get in the way of the White Nationalist, racist immigration agenda of Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and Trump. And, she certainly hasn’t disappointed, demonstrating intellectual vapidity, moral cowardice, ignorance, and sycophancy in every possible way.

Sessions is a well-known unapologetic racist, xenophobe, and misogynist who has demonstrated his hatred and contempt for migrants, Hispanics, women, refugees, asylum seekers, and domestic violence survivors in every possible way. Apparently not satisfied with just abusing children, returning Latina refugees to harm’s way, and torturing individuals in the “New American Gulag,” he has now targeted domestic violence victims in the United States for abusive retaliation.

Behind the fake “law and order” facade, Sessions continues to be one of the greatest enablers, encouragers, and abettors of serious criminal conduct in modern American history! We can only hope that someday he will be held accountable for his actions.

PWS

07-26-18

HON. NANCY GERTNER: CAN THE LOWER ARTICLE III COURTS SAVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY FROM TRUMP, SESSIONS, AND THE SPINELESS SUPREMES’ MAJORITY? — “Then there is the even more absurd claim that family separation deters asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. Asylum-seekers will not be deterred by Trump’s cruelty; they have already decided to risk a dangerous trek from Central America to the U.S. because they believe their families will be killed if they stay.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-gertner-judiciary-trump_us_5b50d5a0e4b0b15aba8cc82b

Retired U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner writes in HuffPost:

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final writing as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, his concurrence in the travel ban case, was a cri de coeur. It simply, even pathetically, lamented the court’s limited role in controlling a lawless executive.

Throwing up his hands, he wrote that the acts of government officials often are not subject to judicial scrutiny, while adding that this “does not mean those officials are free to disregard the Constitution and the rights it protects. The oath is not restricted to the actions that the Judiciary can correct.”

Wrong message, Mr. Justice.

Even though the travel ban the court upheld is not related to the asylum crisis — the travel prohibition is about immigrants coming here for all sorts of reasons, not asylum seekers fleeing violence in their country — to President Donald Trump, it does not matter. The high court’s decision is perceived as a vindication of all of his immigration policies, no matter how lawless, cruel and dysfunctional. And with Kennedy’s concurrence, it risks signaling that the judiciary will abdicate its own obligations to uphold our country’s laws and ideals.

Take “zero tolerance.” When asylum-seekers so much as step across the border, they are violating the law, according to this administration, even if they immediately present claims to an immigration official. The rule of law, the president insists, requires the prosecution of all crimes, no matter how trivial. This from the same man who pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio after he was found guilty of flouting a court order to stop racial profiling.

Then there is the even more absurd claim that family separation deters asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. Asylum-seekers will not be deterred by Trump’s cruelty; they have already decided to risk a dangerous trek from Central America to the U.S. because they believe their families will be killed if they stay. In fact, the number of asylum requests has increased notwithstanding Trump’s policies; its driving force is violence in asylum-seekers’ home countries, not U.S. immigration policy.

Nor are these asylum-seekers miscreants intent on defrauding the U.S. or committing crimes. This year, fewer than 1 percent of those apprehended have presented claims found to be false. Studies show that in general, undocumented immigrants — of whom asylum-seekers are a part — commit fewer crimes than those born in this country.

Worse, Trump now wants to deport asylum-seekers without any review. We don’t need more judges, he says, just more border cops. Where is the rule of law here?

HANDOUT . / REUTERS

A view of inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility in Rio Grande City, Texas, last month.

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The Constitution’s due process requirement applies to anyone physically in the U.S., whether they have arrived legally or not. Likewise, international law requires us to review whether asylum-seekers’ claims of violence are credible, and if they qualify, let them in. And obviously, this government should not threaten to take children from their parents unless the families agree to voluntary deportation. That’s not just the absence of due process; it’s the presence of extortion.

If Kennedy signaled his belief that the court has very limited power to control an errant president, his putative replacement, federal Circuit Coury Judge Brett Kavanaugh, may well be worse. He does not just lament court’s limited power to control a president, he embraces it.

Kavanaugh has a particularly robust view of presidential power in certain areas — significantly, national security or immigration. In Klayman v. Obama, the D.C. Circuit ruled against a challenge to the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program on technical grounds, in a per curiam decision ― meaning an opinion of the entire court and not any individual judge. Kavanaugh, however, felt the need to file a concurring opinion.

Rather than simply signing on the decision, he went out of his way to make the breadth of the president’s national security power clear: Even if the collection program were the functional equivalent of a search, the government did not need to seek a warrant from a judge because the president said the program was necessary to combat terrorism and that need outweighed any impact on privacy.

Echoing Kennedy’s lament in the travel ban case, Kavanaugh added that while the chief executive and Congress may want to limit the program, until they do the judiciary was literally without the power to control it. Not only was the door to a constitutional challenge was firmly shut; he wanted to make certain that everyone knew it.

But there are judges who are not simply wringing their hands about the limits of judicial review over immigration issues, like Kennedy did, or who are bent on deferring to the president whenever he intones a national security rationale, as Kavanaugh might well do. They are working each day to prevent this president from running roughshod over the Constitution ― not just in the executive orders that he promulgates but in the way his orders and policies are implemented on the ground, in the day-to-day encounters on our borders.

A federal judge in California, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a nationwide injunction temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border. Another in D.C. blocked the systematic detention of migrants who show credible evidence that they were fleeing persecution in their home countries, halting a practice that is an obvious and unlawful attempt to deter them and others from seeking refuge here.

There will surely be others, because these judges ― like the president ― also swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. But for them, unlike the president, it is not an empty promise.

Nancy Gertner served as a Massachusetts United States District Court judge from 1994 to 2011, when she retired to teach at Harvard Law School. Her first memoir, In Defense of Women, was published in 2011, and a judicial memoir, Incomplete Sentences, will be published in 2019.

***************************************

Almost everything that Trump and Sessions have said about asylum seekers and border policy is absurd — clearly refuted by the facts and by past failures.

Lies, racism, xenophobia, absurd positions, claims that are demonstrably false, just plain stupidity, fraud, waste, abuse, it’s all in a day’s work for Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and the other White Nationalists firmly committed to the downfall of American democracy.

And, as Judge Gertner points out, they are aided and abetted by a spineless “go along to get along” Supreme Court majority unwilling to uphold their oaths of office and defend the Constitution and our country against the outrageously unconstitutional, cruel, unjustified, and immoral actions of the Trump Administration.

Can the lower Article IIIs stem the tide long enough for us to get “regime change” at the ballot box and save America? The answer is a resounding “maybe.”

Better get out the vote in November to throw the White Nationalists/Putinists and their fellow travelers out of office. Otherwise, it might be too late for the world’s most successful democracy.

PWS

07-22-18

WE MUST STOP DETAINING AND ABUSING CHILDREN! — Government’s Own Doctors “Blow Whistle” On How We Are Permanently Damaging Kids! — “[T]heir report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/us/migrant-children-family-detention-doctors.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fmiriam-jordan&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

Miriam Jordan reports for the NY Times:

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration, faced with a public outcry over the separation of migrant families at the Southwest border, has said it is exploring a major expansion of family detention centers. But two of the government’s own medical consultants said this week that they had identified a “high risk of harm” to migrant children housed at such facilities.

A series of 10 investigations over the past four years, conducted during both the Obama and Trump administrations, “frequently revealed serious compliance issues resulting in harm to children,” the two physicians, Scott Allen and Pamela McPherson, said in a letter to the Senate’s Whistleblower Protection Caucus.

The doctors said they had “watched in horror” as migrant children were separated from their families over the past several months in a bid to deter illegal border crossers. But they cautioned that the Trump administration’s fallback position may not be much better.

“The likely alternative — detention of children with a parent — also poses high risk of harm to children and their families,” said the doctors, who currently serve as “subject-matter experts” for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “In our professional opinion, there is no amount of programming that can ameliorate the harms created by the very act of confining children to detention centers.”

The examinations described in their report uncovered problems including a child who lost a third of his body weight and an infant with bleeding of the brain that went undiagnosed for five days.

In a separate filing this week with a court in Los Angeles, lawyers who conducted more than 200 interviews with migrant parents and children said they had collected “shocking and atrocious” reports about conditions at various government-run detention centers, especially at the initial processing centers operated by Customs and Border Protection along the Southwest border.

The interviews in that case were conducted over the past two months, although similar reports of unpleasant and even dangerous conditions in border processing facilities had emerged even before President Trump took office and imposed the current crackdown on the border.

In the latest interviews, migrants reported freezing conditions, filthy toilets, inadequate water and food that alternately was frozen or made them vomit. “The burritos were spoiled,” one wrote. “The ham looked green,” said another.

One woman, identified in the court filing as Lidia, said she and her 4-year-old son had to wait eight hours for water when they arrived at the processing center and were given only frozen sandwiches that could not be eaten. “My son was crying from hunger,” she said.

. . . .

**********************************

Read the rest of Mariam’s article about the shocking degradation of human rights, human dignity, common sense, and moral values being carried out by this Administration, outrageously (and falsely) in the “name of the people.”

We need to both remove unsuitable individuals like Trump, Sessions, and Nielsen from office, and hold them fully accountable for the abuses they are committing! There is nothing that folks like Trump and Sessions fear more than being held accountable for their intentional misconduct! Like all child abusers, they think they can “get away with it.”

PWS

07-21-18

FRAUD, WASTE, & ABUSE: INFANTS ORDERED TO APPEAR IN U.S. IMMIGRATION COURTS UNDER TRUMP & SESSIONS! – Shocking Stupidity, Inhumanity, & Waste Of Taxpayer Dollars!

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/18/immigrant-separated-families-infant-court-defend-donald-trump-zero-tol/

CHRISTINA JEWETT AND SHEFALI LUTHRA, REPORT FOR KAISER HEALTH NEWS IN THE TEXAS TRIBUNE:

The Trump administration has summoned at least 70 infants to immigration court for their own deportation proceedings since Oct. 1, according to Justice Department data provided to Kaiser Health News.

These are children who need frequent touching and bonding with a parent and naps every few hours, and some were of breastfeeding age, medical experts say. They’re unable to speak and still learning when it’s day versus night.

“For babies, the basics are really important. It’s the holding, the proper feeding, proper nurturing,” said Shadi Houshyar, who directs early childhood and child welfare initiatives at the advocacy group Families USA.

The number of infants under age 1 involved has been rising — up threefold from 24 infants in the fiscal year that ended last Sept. 30, and 46 infants the year before.

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The Justice Department data show that a total of 1,500 “unaccompanied” children, from newborns to age 3, have been called in to immigration court since Oct. 1, 2015.

Roughly three-fourths of the children involved are represented by a lawyer and they have to make their case that they should stay in the United States.

Officials who review such deportation cases say most children under 1 cross the border with a parent and their deportation cases proceed together.

But some of the infants were deemed “unaccompanied” only after law enforcement separated them from their parents during the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. The children were sent to facilities across the U.S. under the supervision of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“This is to some extent a … crisis of the creation of the government,” said Robert Carey, who previously headed the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of unaccompanied minors. “It’s a tragic and ironic turn of events.”

Younger children are also considered unaccompanied if they enter the United States with an older family member who is not yet 18. The data do not clarify which children arrived that way or which were separated from their parents.

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The Justice Department did not respond to a request for further data about where the children are housed. They could be in a foster care home, in a group home, with a relative or sponsor, or reunited with a parent. HHS, which operates the refugee resettlement office, did not provide comment by publication time.

In previous statements, the government has argued that separation — and its consequences — are unfortunate but unavoidable under the law.

“There is a surefire way to avoid separation from your children. Present yourself legally … or stay back at your home country, and go through the process others do,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on a media call earlier this month. “None of us want children separated from their parents. I want no children in our care and custody.”

The number of unaccompanied children called in to court since Oct. 1, 2015, swells to 2,900 if kids up to 5 are included. The total will rise between now and Sept. 30, when the fiscal year ends, noted Susan Long, a statistician at Syracuse University and director of TRAC, a repository of immigration and federal court data. There’s also an ongoing backlog in entering the data.

In June, a district judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunify families within a month, specifically directing them to unite children younger than 5 with parents by July 10.

HHS reunited about half of those children by July 12 — 57 out of 103. Others, the government said, could not be placed with a parent, citing in some cases “serious criminal history” or parents currently being in jail.

In 12 cases, those children’s parents had already been deported. In another, the government had failed to figure out where the child’s parent was located, and in another, the parent had a “communicable disease,” HHS said.

The Department of Homeland Security, which issues the court orders, also did not respond to a request for comment.

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In the removal cases, children have no right to an appointed lawyer, but rather to a list of legal aid attorneys that the child’s current caregiver can contact.

And young children rarely know the details of why they fled their home country, especially without a parent present, noted Eileen Blessinger, a Virginia-based immigration lawyer who has been aiding parents she was connected with through advocates on the Texas-Mexico border.

“Think about it as a parent. You’re not going to tell your child they might be killed, right?” she said. “A lot of the kids don’t know.”

Immigration court, which is an administrative unit of the Department of Justice, is different from typical courts. It handles “respondents” who may be too young to speak, but has no social workers or legal remedies focused on the best interest of a child.

Lenni Benson, a New York Law School professor and founder of the Safe Passage Project, which provides legal services to migrant youth, said she was recently at a large family detention center in Dilley talking to families. She said it’s rare for the families fleeing violence in Central America to bring infants, given the dangers of the journey, which include risks of abduction and a lack of clean water.

“There are people who do that because they are terrified for their child” in the home country, she said.

Benson recounted being in immigration court in 2014 when a judge asked for a crying baby to be removed from the courtroom. She said she paused to inform the judge that the baby was the next respondent on the docket — and asked that the child’s grandmother stand in.

The stakes for the babies, and any migrant fleeing violence, are high, said Paul Wickham Schmidt, a former immigration judge who retired in 2016 after 13 years on the bench in Arlington, Va.

“Final orders of deportation have consequences,” he said. “For something that has a very serious result, this system has been described as death penalty cases in traffic court.”

Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges and a judge specializing in juvenile cases in Los Angeles, acknowledged that the Trump administration narrowed a directive on how much judges can assist juveniles in court. Still, she said, judges do their best to ensure that young children get a fair hearing.

Justice Department data show that asylum denials are at a nearly 10-year high at 42 percent, and the Associated Press reported that the administration has raised the bar for making a successful case.

At the same time, children can be strapped for resources, Blessinger said.

She described one client whose 7-year-old daughter received legal support from a New York-based charity. Even in that case, she said, the organization acted simply as a “friend of the court” — rather than a full-fledged attorney — requesting delays in proceedings until the child and mother could be reunited. That finally happened Tuesday night, she said.

“It’s the saddest experience. These people are not going to be recovering anytime soon,” she said. “The parents are crying even after they’re reunited.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

KHN’s coverage of children’s health care issues is supported in part by a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

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Stupid policies driven by biased White Nationalist restrictionists squander judicial time, waste resources, make America look dumb!

Contrary to what HHS Secretary Alex Azar says, presenting oneself at a Port of Entry and applying for asylum has been a guarantee neither of prompt and professional processing of asylum applications nor that there will be no family separation. Indeed, the “credible fear” process has now been “gamed” by Sessions and USCIS so that many legitimate asylum applications are summarily denied and the individuals subjected to expedited removal without appeals. And, to date, several “real” Article III Courts (in particular, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals) have “twiddled their thumbs” and failed to intervene to prevent the gross abuses of Due Process and our international obligations being carried out on a daily basis by this Administration.

Infants in court, real substantive asylum claims rejected without hearings — no wonder the U.S. Immigration Court system is broken and there is no time for “real”cases. The long-term solution might well involve more Immigration Judges and staff. But, at this point, that would be “throwing good money after bad.”

Before there can be expansion, the U.S. Immigration Court system needs to be fixed and returned to its original Due Process focus with Immigration Judges in change and empowered to remove cases like this from the active docket and to sanction Government Attorneys (as well as private attorneys) who waste valuable court time with frivolous litigation. Indeed, Congress did provide Immigration Judges with authority to hold attorneys from both sides in contempt. However, the DOJ has thumbed its nose at that statutory authorization over several Administrations and has never implemented the statute. (This is a good example of what the “rule of law” really means in the USDOJ!)

Removing the Immigration Court system from the Executive Branch is a necessary first step in reforming it to serve its original (and only) purpose: guaranteeing Due Process and fairness for all!

Meanwhile, as pointed out by Christina and Shefali, the damage to the health and welfare children and families might be irreparable.

PWS

07-19-18

GONZO’S WORLD: REPORTS OF TORTURE & ABUSE OF KIDS IN SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG!” – “Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/migrant-children-detail-experiences-border-patrol-stations-detention-centers_us_5b4d13ffe4b0de86f485ade8

Angelina Chapin reports for HuffPost:

Over the course of four days in June, Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence. She was separated from her mother, who had been held at gunpoint three times in Honduras, after they crossed the U.S. border.

According to a court filing, Keylin says the female guards also made girls “strip naked” in front of them before taking a shower, so they could leer at their bodies (her mother, Daise, corroborated her daughter’s account in a statement she gave to a lawyer). She adds that guards called the group of migrants “filthy” and “made fun of us.”

Keylin barely ate because she says the food was frozen, and she wasn’t given a toothbrush or toothpaste. Though she says the cells were so cold that she shivered and developed pain in her leg, the teen kept quiet. The guards said that anyone with an injury would be detained longer, and she couldn’t take that chance.

“I was very frightened and depressed the entire time,” Keylin told a lawyer on June 29, after she had been transferred to a family detention center and reunited with her mother. “I am still depressed. I also have nightmares and a lot of anxiety because of the separation.” At the time of their June 29 declaration, there was no plan for Keylin and her mother’s release.

HuffPost learned that the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law filed a report in a federal court in Los Angeles on Monday with more than 200 accounts from migrant children and their parents, detailing the horrific conditions they face in Border Patrol stations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities and detention centers. The allegations, which HuffPost reviewed, include physical and verbal assault, untenable sleeping conditions and unsanitary drinking water.

JOHN MOORE VIA GETTY IMAGES

A girl from Central America rests on thermal blankets at a detention facility run by the U.S. Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2014, in McAllen, Texas.

Peter Schey, the executive director of the law center’s foundation, wrote in the case filing that roughly 90 percent of the testimony he and a team of about 100 lawyers collected is “shocking and atrocious” and that the children they’ve spoken to were “crying, trembling, hungry, thirsty, sleepless, sick, and terrified.”

“The treatment of these children amounts to torture,” Schey told HuffPost, adding that the situation has become worse under the Trump administration. “We see a policy of enforced hunger, enforced dehydration and enforced sleeplessness coupled with routine insults and physical assaults.”

ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment.

Over the past two months, Schey and other lawyers have conducted interviews with migrant parents and children, some of whom were separated from one another under Trump’s zero tolerance policy, which stepped up the use of criminal prosecutions. The court filing does not include the current status of each child, and most said they were not told of their legal rights, including the right to be speedily released to a legal guardian or relative.

On July 27, the attorney will argue in federal court that the stations and facilities housing children are failing to meet the basic standards for hygiene, food, sleeping conditions and medical care, which are outlined in a 1997 court case called the Flores settlement.

Once migrants cross the border, they are put in short-term Border Patrol stations for a few days before being transferred to detention centers or shelters. While some kids have reported good conditions in longer-term shelters ― friendly staff, movie nights and field trips ― advocates and immigration experts have long considered Border Patrol facilities to be inhumane.

In May, Dixiana, whose last name is edited out along with those of all the other migrants interviewed in the court filing, says she was separated from her mother and taken to a Border Patrol station known as a “hielera” ― Spanish for “ice box” in reference to the cold temperature. The 10-year-old from Honduras told a lawyer her cell was so crowded that she and other girls had to sleep on the floor or while sitting up under bright lights.

She cried at the thought of never seeing her mother again, as did others in her cell.

For breakfast, Dixiana says a guard gave her a frozen ham sandwich but failed to bring her and her cellmates water. “The ham was black,” she told a lawyer. “I took one bite, but did not eat the rest because of the taste.” (One mother from Honduras said, “You could feel the ice when you bit into the sandwich.”)

After 12 hours, Dixiana was transferred to what she calls the “perrera”―Spanish for “dog house,” a reference to the chain-link fencing ― where she could see her mom in another cell. At one point when she was half asleep, Dixiana says a male officer kicked her awake while looking for a girl with a similar name to hers. Over the course of the next few days, she sat in a windowless cell with no idea if it was day or night, crying because she missed her mother.

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The statements collected by lawyers clearly show that Border Patrol stations are no place for children. One mother, Floridalma, described how she and her 3-year-old were put in a 10-by-10-foot room with three other mothers and their children. Since they had only two mattresses, the group slept with their heads on the padding and their bodies on the cement floor.

U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION VIA REUTERS

Children at Customs and Border Protection’s Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, on June 17.

Ruth, the mother of a 7-year-old boy, says the Border Patrol station was so cold that children were crying and getting sick. While she was separated from her son, she watched other women’s children get fevers, vomit and cough, while the guards refused to provide medicine.

The Border Patrol stations also fail to meet basic hygiene standards, according to the court filing. Many of the children describe the guards giving them water that tasted like chlorine. “I only drank it twice because I didn’t trust it,” said Justin, a 13-year-old from El Salvador. “It made me feel funny in my stomach the times I drank it.“ One mother, named Yojana, said, “We had to drink water from the toilet to keep hydrated.”

Children described going more than five days without bathing and having limited access to soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste. Fatima says that her 8-year-old daughter had to wear soiled underwear for two days because the guards wouldn’t allow her to use the shower.

Children also spoke to lawyers about issues in family detention centers and Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, where they are detained for longer periods of time. Since June 8, 15-year-old Elmer has been staying in Casa Padre, America’s largest migrant children’s shelter, which MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff described as resembling a “prison or jail.”

Elmer says that he is always hungry because there’s not enough food and that he wasn’t allowed to see a doctor when he felt sick. The 16-year-old says he told a lawyer that, although the boys, ages 10 to 17, are allowed outside for two hours a day, it is “unbearable” because there is nothing to protect them from the scorching sun. Elmer says that the guards don’t allow him to go to church and that he is rarely given any alone time in his room to process his feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

In addition to the horrible conditions within stations and shelters, children complained about the staff. The case filing contains multiple accounts of kids who say they were kicked by guards while sleeping, as well as instances of verbal abuse. Sixteen-year-old Erick says the guards in a California Border Patrol station call him and the other Guatemalan boys “burros,” the Spanish word for “donkey” or “stupid.” Another youth, whose name was completely blacked out in the court filing, said to a lawyer: “When I told the CPB officer that my mother was killed they made fun of me and said that I was ‘weak.’ I did not feel comfortable after that sharing my fear.”

While pediatricians and counselors have spoken about the long-term trauma that will result from family separation, children say in the court filing that their guards are less sympathetic.

Since Sergio was separated from his father and taken to Casa Padre in early June, he’s become so consumed with worry he can’t sleep. The 16-year-old has only been able to speak with his dad for 20 minutes in the last 45 days, and he told a lawyer that his father is getting deported. When a guard found him crying in the bathroom one night, Sergio said the man accused him of being a “crybaby,” an insult he followed with an English phrase that another boy translated as “swear words.” “The way I have been treated makes me feel like I don’t matter,” he said, “like I am trash.”

Schey, who conducted interviews with children in Casa Padre last week, said the separated kids he spoke with are “traumatized.” “They are not getting mental health services. They are experiencing depression and anxiety… and nightmares and sleeplessness.”

The law center’s court filing, which is more than 1,500 pages long, paints a dark picture of the cruel conditions many migrant children suffer through. On July 27, Schey will present their declarations in federal court and ask U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to appoint an independent monitor who has the power to make sure facilities are meeting the standards outlined in the Flores settlement.

“This story is more than just separating children from their parents,” he told HuffPost. “The bigger picture is forced starvation and sleeplessness and terrorizing these children.”

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What kind of country puts innocent kids in abusive prisons while letting their abusers hold public office?

PW*

07-19-18

LISTEN TO TAL KOPAN AND CATHERINE SHOICHET OF CNN DISCUSS SEPARATION OF MIGRANT FAMILIES ON THIS PODCAST!

Here are Tal and Catherine for your listening pleasure:

http://podcasts.cnn.net/embed/single/skin/xqwdnq/the-latest-in-immigration.html

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My takeaways:

No immigration crisis here; this is a humanitarian crisis created solely by the cruel and perverted actions of this Administration;
Good Government solves problems; the Trump Administration creates problems that it has neither plans nor the ability to solve = Bad Government;
It’s always easier to create a mess than to clean it up;
Each individual lawsuit against the Trump Administration is an important step in upholding American democracy;
Only the Article III Courts have the ability to get some truth out of an inherently dishonest and disingenuous Administration;
The free press is playing a critical role in exposing the intentional cruelty, incompetence, and fundamental dishonesty of the Trump Administration;
Messing with kids is always stupid as well as inhumane;
Under the GOP, Congress has abdicated its role, basically leaving the Executive and the Judiciary to govern;
Right now, Trump has the upper hand with the GOP Congress stuffing the Courts with “go along to get along” appointees who won’t stand up for our country or to Trump & Sessions!

CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

PWS

07-18-18

GONZO’S WORLD: AS SESSIONS RAMPS UP THE “NEW AMERICAN GULAG,” RAMPANT SEXUAL ABUSE OF FEMALE DETAINEES CERTAIN TO INCREASE! – AG’S Child Abuse Also Makes Him Complicit In Sexual Abuse! – See The Short Video By Emily Kassie Here!

Here’s Emily Kassie’s short documentary containing actual descriptions from victims and their abusers. Also starring refugee advocates Michele Brane of the Women Refugee Commisson, Barbara Hines, Esq., and others who “blow the whistle” on Sessions’s depraved policies and the unnecessary pain and suffering they are causing!

I Just Simply Did What He Wanted’: Sexual Abuse Inside Immigrant Detention Facilities – Video – NYTimes.com

By Emily Kassie

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005559121/sexual-abuse-inside-ice-detention-facilities.html

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So, get this! Gonzo, for no particular reason, reverses a well-established, working precedent — agreed upon by all parties, sponsored by DHS, and the product of 15 years of painstaking work by attorneys on both sides — that protected abused women under our refugee laws. This precedent, Matter of A-R-C-G-, actually saved lives and helped some of the most deserving and long-suffering refugees I dealt with in my decades long career enter and contribute to U.S. society. It was a perfect example of how asylum law could and should work to protect the most vulnerable! A “win – win” for the refugees and for our country!

Then, Sessions intentionally creates a system where these already abused refugees are detained and further abused and persecuted in the United States. Then, he returns them (without fair consideration of their claims for protection) to the countries in which they were persecuted to face further abuse, torture, or death.

The problems faced by women in detention were well-known in the Obama Administration. In fact, the Trump Administration immediately abolished the office within DHS that had been established to deal with allegations of sexual abuse. So, this isn’t “mere negligence.” It’s knowing and intentional misconduct! Usually, that results in criminal prosecution or civil liability!

How perverse is Sessions? I’ll go back to Eugene Robinson’s question from a recent blog posted on “courtside:” Why aren’t kidnappers, child abusers, and promoters of sexual abuse like Sessions and his White Nationalist cronies in jail rather than holding high office? https://wp.me/p8eeJm-2O8

WE ARE DIMINISHING OURSELVES AS A NATION, BUT, THAT WON’T STOP HUMAN MIGRATION!

PWS

07-17-18

INSIDE SESSIONS’S “NEW AMERICAN GULAG” – DESPERATE PLEAS FOR HELP FROM REFUGEE PARENTS IN THE GULAG! – “We feel like there is no way out of this nightmare because the asylum officials and the judges are against us. Please help us and bring justice to Texas!”

http://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/separated-parents-open-letter-to-us/index.html

CNN REPORTS:

‘Each day is more painful than the last’: Parents separated from kids beg US public for help

A section of the letter to the US people from parents at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center.

(CNN)In an act of sheer desperation, dozens of migrant parents separated from their children wrote an open letter to the US public, hoping someone — anyone — can help get them out of this “nightmare.”

The joint letter, from 54 detainees at the Port Isabel Service Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, said the parents came to save the lives of their children. That their children don’t recognize their voices anymore. That they never expected the trauma they’re enduring.

Here’s the text of the parents’ letter, translated from Spanish:

July 15, 2018

To the United States public:

Please help us. We are desperate parents.

We are not criminals, but we need your help.

We came to this country to save our lives and the lives of our children. We were not prepared for the nightmare that we faced here. The United States government, kidnapped our children with tricks and didn’t give us the opportunity to say goodbye.

It’s been more than a month and we haven’t been told much about our children. They are living in places with strangers. We’ve been told that some children are living with new families. Each day is more painful that the last.

Many of us have only spoken with our children once when we have the opportunity to speak with them (which is very difficult because the social worker never answers.) The children cry, they don’t recognize our voices and they feel abandoned and unloved. This makes us feel dead in life. Even with all this trauma, nightmares, anguish and pain that this government is imposing on us and our children, we still have to fight for our asylum cases. But the government doesn’t give us the opportunity to fight our cases and the judges don’t give us the opportunity to speak up.

The asylum official is denying nearly all cases and so are the judges. They don’t give us an opportunity to explain why we came here. We also feel pressured to sign for our deportation as a quick means to reunite with our children.

We feel like there is no way out of this nightmare because the asylum officials and the judges are against us.

Please help us and bring justice to Texas!

Letter translated by CNN’s Rosa Flores.

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Each day, Jeff Sessions mocks our legal system, degrades America as a country, and each of us as human beings! As those he persecutes appear more human, we are dehumanized by allowing Sessions to continue his program of child abuse!

PWS

07-16-18

NEWS FROM JUST OUTSIDE SESSIONS’S “AMERICAN KIDDIE GULAG” – MOTHER & SON “CAMP OUT” NEARBY IN SEARCH OF TRUTH ABOUT OUR NATION’S OFFICIAL PROGRAM OF CHILD ABUSE! — “These children are victims of state-sanctioned violence — they are essentially experiencing child abuse — and the organizations claiming to serve children are wholly complicit in this abuse.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mom-camping-tender-age-shelter_us_5b476891e4b0e7c958f8cbd8

Ashley Casale writesin HuffPost:

In June, once school let out in rural Dutchess County, New York, I packed up my 7-year-old son and drove 2,054 miles to the Texas-Mexico border. I needed to see with my own eyes what is happening to migrant children separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration’s escalated “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

I told my son we were going, in person, to demand the reunion of children and parents. Gabe was up for the trip, no questions asked, as he always is when I tell him there is activism to be done. After two nights of sleeping in our car, three days of driving, and 1,764 inquiries of “are we there yet,” we arrived in Texas.

We visited six shelters in the border towns of Raymondville, Combes and Brownsville, and asked for tours. We were denied. Next, we asked to speak with representatives from BCFS or Southwest Key Programs, the organizations that operate these shelters. We were denied again. We were given business cards with the names of public relations officials to call, and repeatedly directed back to the Department of Health & Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families.

None of these contacts promptly returned my calls. So we pitched a tent outside Casa El Presidente, the “tender age” shelter operated by Southwest Key Programs in Brownsville, where children from the ages of 0 to 12 are being held, and we hunkered down for the night. Two weeks later, we are still here.

Our message is this: Reunite these small children with their detained parents now.

Every morning between 9 and 9:45 we can hear the sounds of children playing not far from our encampment. To get close enough to the opaque playground fence outside the shelter, we have to trespass in front of an abandoned building on the adjacent lot. From there, we can see the shapes of children running around — their little feet under the fence, the balls they are playing with flying up in the air. But we must make our glimpses stealthy and quick: Within 15 minutes, without fail, a police car arrives and circles the abandoned lot. Someone inside Southwest Key Programs has called the authorities because we have come too close to seeing the detained children.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

A photo Gabe took of kids playing in the back of Casa El Presidente. In the bottom left corner are freelancers for The New York Times.

We have become buddies with news crews who are covering what is happening at Casa El Presidente, exchanging Gatorade and bags of ice and tidbits of news as they wait patiently, sometimes all day, for an official rumored to be visiting the shelter to finally appear. On the Thursday of our first week here, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen supposedly visited, but this was not confirmed until long after her convoy of vehicles left. The members of the media here know as little about what’s going on as we do.

Last Saturday, we met a mother, Lesvia, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala with her son, Yudem, almost two months ago. She was taken into custody 56 days ago and finally released from the T. Don Hutto immigration detention center in Taylor, Texas, on Thursday. She was driven to Brownsville by representatives of the Austin-based organization Grassroots Leadership, who had advocated for her release, to have a one-hour visit with 10-year-old Yudem, who is being held at Casa El Presidente. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in over a month. She sobbed as she was led away from our tent while CNN’s news cameras surrounded her.

She deserved to leave with him, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Trump administration has created so much red tape for parents trying to get their children back that she left alone. Lesvia was told that although she showed documents proving her relationship to Yudem, she needed to be fingerprinted and submit to a background check, and may not see her son’s release for another 20 days. I hugged her, kissed her forehead and told her “I’m so sorry” and “We love you.” The Grassroots Leadership representatives translated my words, but they were just words. Her tears wouldn’t stop. There is no comfort. There is no consolation.

I’m camping here because I’m a mom of a tender age child. If it were my child being held captive, it would not be OK, so as far as I am concerned, it is not OK for any other mother or any other child.

While the Trump administration is flagrantly ignoring court-imposed deadlines and heartlessly taking its time reuniting children with their parents, each day that passes is agonizing and traumatic for the tender age children at Casa El Presidente.

I’m camping here because I’m a mom of a tender age child. If it were my child being held captive, it would not be OK, so as far as I am concerned, it is not OK for any other mother or any other child.

Every morning, Gabe reminds me that it’s time to walk a few yards over to the guards and ask for a tour. I get tired of hearing “No ma’am, we cannot let you inside” and “No ma’am, we cannot release that information” when I ask an employee about what is happening in the shelter.

But every day we still ask for a tour, and every day we call the PR spokesperson for Southwest Key Programs asking for answers.

And, without fail, each day we do not get a tour and we do not get any answers.

So we wait.

Beside our tent we paint signs that read “Complicit,” “All we’re asking for is a tour,” “Try transparency,” “We will go home when the children are reunited” and “How many separated kids do you have?” My son made a sign, not in the neatest handwriting, that simply says “Free The Kids.”

Gabe doesn’t understand why one sign says “Give Yudem to Lesvia.” Don’t we want all kids reunited? he asks. I explain that sometimes telling the story of just one family can be more powerful. I tell him it can humanize what is happening more than a sign that reads “Reunite Every Child” might.

We spent the first few days here chasing after our signs, until we finally got smart about the Texas wind and bought some twining.

NORMA HERRERA

The author holds a sign reading “Give Yudem To Lesvia.” The photo was taken by Norma Herrera from Grassroots Leadership through her car window as she was driving Lesvia away from Casa El Presidente.

Southwest Key Programs, though nominally a nonprofit, is explicitly benefiting from the separation of children and parents through hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts. The employees, security guards and constables I have met in the last two weeks are not just “doing their job” ― they’re complicit in a national atrocity.

But it’s unclear to me if they know that. One security guard, referring to a sign we’ve made that originally read “14 days is running out” and now reads “14 days is up,” asked me, “Ma’am, what does 14 days mean?”

How could he be standing out here for a 12-hour shift and not know about the now come-and-gone court-imposed deadline that required children ages 5 and under to be reunited with their parents within 14 days?

The Trump administration claimed on Thursday that all children 5 and under would be reunited by that morning “if they are eligible.” But who decides eligibility? The administration has said, rather vaguely, that factors like a criminal record, having already been deported, or being “otherwise unfit” would make parents trying to reunite with their children 5 and under ineligible. It was then decided that only 57 children were eligible for reunification, and 46 were not. When, if ever, will those 46 children under 5 be reunited? And what about the thousands of children over the age of 5 who are currently in shelters? When will they see their families again?

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I want my son to see that when there is injustice and we aren’t given answers, we can literally refuse to leave until we get them — even if it means pitching a tent and preparing to stay as long as it takes.

The U.S. government has created a dehumanizing frenzy surrounding the notion of “illegal immigration,” and convinced the president’s supporters that we need more hostility, more arrests, more detention centers, more Border Patrol agents, more border wall. What we really need now is an army of moms and dads patrolling the border, demanding the reunion of these children with their parents.

Finding myself unexpectedly unemployed several months ago, I had the time, freedom and privilege to personally start this patrol. The idea of taking a 9-to-5 desk job and putting my son in day care all summer while children are in detention at the border and activists and lawyers are clamoring to get them released did not feel right, so I put my job search on hold. I needed to be on the ground, adding what I could to the work being done.

On the drive down, I briefed my son on what is happening at the border, and he talked about how he hoped to make friends with the kids in the shelters. We haven’t been able to get anywhere close to that. But at the very least, I hope he’s learning about the importance and power of direct action. This mother is fighting for other mothers. This mother is demanding answers. I want my son to see that when there is injustice and we aren’t given answers, we can literally refuse to leave until we get them ― even if it means pitching a tent and preparing to stay as long as it takes. When our tent is removed (this happened last week, while it was unattended for an hour), we get a new tent, move it even closer to the entrance and make our signs even bolder. We have it all set up before sunrise.

I also want my son to see that direct action works. When Lesvia arrived for her next one-hour visit with her son this past Thursday, one thing had changed: She had brought a tent with her. She planned to camp out with me and Gabe until Yudem was released, and she made this clear to Southwest Key Programs. Her story had gained press attention, and there were members of the media waiting outside while she visited with her son. Yudem was released to her shortly after 5 p.m. on Thursday, and she never had to pitch her tent.

Seeing Yudem come out of Casa El Presidente and tearfully walk over to our tent as Grassroots Leadership members translated our signs for him was magical. Seeing his face when he saw his name on a sign, as he realized complete strangers had been advocating for his release, was magical. And when Yudem cried as his mother kissed him, it was hard for anyone there ― including the reporters ― not to weep themselves. Still, as beautiful as this moment was, we cannot forget there remain dozens of tender age children just like Yudem inside Casa El Presidente waiting to be released.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

Lesvia kisses her son Yudem just moments after he was released from the Casa El Presidente shelter.

I finally spoke with Cindy Casares, a spokeswoman for Southwest Key Programs, after countless calls and a barrage of tweets from my handle, @BorderPatrolMom (and perhaps also after reports from inside Casa El Presidente that two people were camping outside). She wouldn’t confirm that where we’re camping is a tender age facility, although press has already confirmed this. She wouldn’t confirm how many children are inside. She wouldn’t discuss reunification plans.

The evasiveness and secrecy is all supposedly in the name of protecting confidentiality, but I believe this is about covering up the lies of the Trump administration and the brutality of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents. I believe Southwest Key Programs fully realizes that the American people would be outraged to know the truth about the suffering of the children inside, so everything is being kept under wraps. Rather than agitating for swifter reunions, they choose to play innocent and present themselves as a benevolent nonprofit simply complying with government orders. They could do more. They could do better. But it’s a good time to be in the business of immigration detention.

So, with no answers and very little having changed, we prepare for another night outside Casa El Presidente. I wouldn’t want my environmentalist friends back home to know I’m using bug spray with DEET, but we need it to ward off the Texas mosquitoes ― “little hummingbirds,” as my son calls them. We brush our teeth crouched by the front tire of our Prius, spitting toothpaste on the ground. We wash our hair using jugs of water left to heat up in the tent and shampoo ourselves in the middle of the street. It’s not exactly a glamorous life.

But every day, I’m reminded of our privilege. Every day I’m reminded that for my son, this is like a camping trip, an exciting adventure. We’re sleeping in a tent, eating food out of a cooler, tossing around a baseball with our gloves while we wait. He’ll assemble complicated Lego structures while I’m journaling or making phone calls or typing on my laptop: This is not all that different from being home. Every day I’m reminded that though it may be 100 degrees here and I may resort to dumping melted ice from the cooler over my head to cool down a bit, I have my son sitting out here with me, cuddling with me in the tent when the sun sets and waking me up when it rises. These parents and these children deserve the same.

COURTESY OF ASHLEY CASALE

Gabe sitting on our cooler.

Still, there’s more to think about, beyond and after the reunions finally happen. While most discussions about what is taking place at the border have centered on the need to reunite separated children with their parents, we should also be discussing the trauma that has been inflicted upon these tender age children, which includes having a conversation about reparations. Who will pay for the therapy they will need to begin to heal from this terrifying experience? These children are victims of state-sanctioned violence — they are essentially experiencing child abuse — and the organizations claiming to serve children are wholly complicit in this abuse.

My son and I want Southwest Key Programs to reveal the number of children inside Casa El Presidente. We want to know the ages of the children being held here. We want to know how the people running this shelter, and all the other shelters like it, plan to reunite these tender age children with their families. We want to know the timeline for making this happen. In the meantime, you can find us at our campsite, demanding answers and refusing to leave until we get them.

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As Ashley makes clear, the idea that anyone in the Trump Administration is acting for the welfare or in the best interests of these children is beyond preposterous!

Sessions plans to return all brown-skinned refugees to countries where they will be “sitting ducks” for gangs and domestic abusers and the governments will either join in or willfully ignore what’s happening. In other words, he intends to sentence them to lives of abuse or perhaps death without even fairly considering their claims for refuge. He just doesn’t care, because they aren’t white.

We all should be ashamed of what America has become under Trump & Sessions.

PWS

07-16-18

COURTS: TIMEOUT ON THE KILLING FLOOR! – JUDGE SABRAW TEMPORARILY HALTS DUE-PROCESS-LESS DEPORTATIONS OF REUNITED FAMILIES TO HARM’S WAY – Will Hear Arguments From Both Parties, As He Tries To Figure Out Just What Nefarious Plan Sessions Has Up His Sleeve Now!

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/family-separations-border-reunification/index.html

Tal Kopan and Laura Jarrett report for CNN:

(CNN)A federal judge on Monday ordered the US government to temporarily pause deportations of reunited families to allow attorneys time to debate whether he should more permanently extend that order.

San Diego-based US District Court Judge Dana Sabraw addressed the issue at the top of a status hearing in a continuing family separations case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sabraw ordered the pause to allow for a full written argument on the ACLU’s request to pause deportations of parents for a week after reunification.

The ACLU argued that the week would be necessary for parents to have time to fully consider the decision whether to have their children deported along with them.

The ACLU’s filing was made earlier Monday morning, and Sabraw gave the Department of Justice a week to respond.

But in the meantime, he ordered a “stay” of deportations until that issue can be litigated.

Lawyers for the ACLU said their motion was due to “the persistent and increasing rumors — which Defendants have refused to deny — that mass deportations may be carried out imminently and immediately upon reunification.” They argue this issue is “directly related to effectuating the Court’s ruling that parents make an informed, non-coerced decision if they are going to leave their children behind.”

“A one-week stay is a reasonable and appropriate remedy to ensure that the unimaginable trauma these families have suffered does not turn even worse because parents made an uninformed decision about the fate of their child,” the ACLU’s lawyers added.

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Sounds like in the end, the “No-Due-Process Deportation Machine” will be allowed to resume. But, at least this gives the Judge a little time to pin the Government down on exactly what they are doing and to see for himself how Due Process is being compromised on a large-scale basis. In the end, permanently halting the “Deportation Railroad” might be beyond the scope of this particular suit. Stay tuned for the result. However it comes out, it’s always good to make a complete record of the Government’s misconduct and revolting disrespect for laws, human life, fundamental fairness, and human dignity for the history books and future generations.

And, many thanks to Tal & Laura for being “on top” of his breaking story.

PWS

07-16-18

NYT: NO, THIS ISN’T OUT OF A CHARLES DICKENS NOVEL – IT’S ABOUT HOW KIDS ARE TREATED IN JEFF SESSIONS’S “AMERICAN KIDDIE GULAG” – “[T]he environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html?emc=edit_nn_20180715&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=7921388620180715&te=1

By Dan Barry, Miriam Jordan, Annie Correal and Manny Fernandez

July 14, 2018

Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

Image
Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

This is what a few of those children will remember.

No Touching, No Running

Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

. . . .

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Read the full story at the link.

This is America in the age of Trump & Sessions. A few of these kids might get to stay in the U.S. Most will be returned (with little or no Due Process) to countries will they will be targeted, harassed, brutalized, extorted, impressed, and/or perhaps killed by gangs that operate more or less with impunity from weak and corrupt police and governments. Indeed, contrary to the false blathering of Sessions & co., gangs and cartels are the “de facto government” in some areas of the Norther Triangle. Those kids that survive to adulthood will have these memories of the United States and how we treated them at their time of most need.

PWS

07-15-18

EUGENE ROBINSON @WASHPOST ASKS THE QUESTION ALL DECENT AMERICANS SHOULD BE ASKING: WhyAren’t Child Abuser/Kidnapper Jeff Sessions & His Equally Vile & Dishonest Cohorts In Jail? — “Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-kidnapped-children-someone-should-go-to-jail/2018/07/12/2128c51c-8605-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.d64b5c997413

The Trump administration kidnapped children. Someone should go to jail.

by Eugene Robinson

The Trump administration’s kidnapping — that’s the proper word — of the children of would-be migrants should be seen as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Somebody ought to go to jail.

Under a federal court order, all 103 children under the age of 5 who were taken from their families at the border were supposed to be returned by Tuesday. The government missed that deadline, and I wish U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who issued the order, had held somebody in contempt. One candidate would be Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who on Tuesday had the gall to describe the administration’s treatment of immigrant children as “one of the great acts of American generosity and charity.”

On Thursday, officials announced with fanfare that 57 of the kids — some still in diapers — had been returned to their parents. But 46 others were deemed “ineligible,” meaning they remain in government custody.

The reasons for failing to comply fully with Sabraw’s order sound reasonable, unless you take into account the bad faith with which the administration has conducted this whole sordid exercise. In 22 cases, officials had “safety concerns posed by the adults in question,” presumably the parents; in 12 cases, parents have already been deported; in 11 cases, parents are in federal or state custody; and in one case, an adult believed to be the child’s parent cannot be found.

In a joint statement, Azar, along with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, took credit for working “tirelessly” to reunite the children with their families — which is rich, given that the Trump administration deliberately and cynically created this crisis in the first place.

“Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally,” the statement said. Translation: Don’t come to the border seeking asylum because, when others did, we took away their kids.

Given that the intention from the beginning was clearly to frighten and intimidate would-be migrants from Central America, why should anyone believe that the administration is acting or speaking in good faith now? Why should we accept at face value that exactly 103 children under 5 were seized? How can we be sure there is only one case in which officials can’t find or identify the parents? Given that it has taken weeks to return just 57 children, what is the likelihood the government kept adequate records?

This is an administration, after all, that conducts immigration court proceedings, or travesties, in which children too young to know their ABCs are expected to represent themselves without the benefit of legal counsel. Imagine your 3-year-old child or grandchild in that situation. Now tell me how adopting child abuse as a policy is supposed to Make America Great Again.

And what about the children older than 5 who were taken from their families? Sabraw ordered that they be returned to their parents by July 26, but don’t hold your breath. We don’t even know how many there are, because the government doesn’t seem to know. Officials first gave the number as about 2,300, but the latest estimate is nearly 3,000. Why can’t they settle on a precise figure? What reason could there be for such vagueness, other than ignorance?

I don’t think they know how many kids they ripped away from their families, and I believe it is inevitable some children will never again see their parents. The fact that my government would commit such a crime weighs on my conscience as an American. President Trump and his accomplices, from all appearances, couldn’t be prouder.

“Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!” Trump tweeted Wednesday. As usual, he was ascribing his own base motives to others: He is the one who is “just using children.”

Remember what this is really about. The main flow of undocumented migrants consists of Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans seeking to escape rampant, deadly gang violence that their home governments cannot or will not check. The Trump administration issued new instructions on Wednesday to officers who interview asylum seekers at the border, telling them that fear of gang violence, no matter how well-founded, is no longer grounds for asylum. The same new guidance applies to immigration judges, who take their orders from Sessions.

Kidnapping children. Failing even to account for them. Sending families home to be killed. Give us your huddled masses, this administration seems to say, and let us kick them in their little faces.

**************************

Yup. Sessions and his group of fellow racists know very well that their actions violate the Constitution and the laws of our country governing both conditions for detention and reasons for detention. Yet, they walk free and smugly give press conferences at which they continue to lie about their actions. Their victims, on the other hand, largely languish in substandard prisons or are being removed to the dangerous situations they fled in their home countries without any pretense of Due Process or fundamental fairness.

PWS

07-14-18

ICE OFFICE OF PRINCIPAL LEGAL ADVISER (“OPLA”) HAS A MORE NUANCED TAKE ON SESSIONS/USCIS/ASYLUM OFFICE “SHOOT REFUGEES ON SIGHT” POLICY!

Here’s the OPLA analysis of “asylum law after Matter of A-B-:”

OPLA 7-11-18

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At least at first reading, the OPLA memo seems like a more neutral legal analysis than the USCIS “Sessions told us to shoot ’em all on sight” memo:
On its face it also seems like a much less biased analysis than the anti-asylum, anti-woman, anti-Hispanic screed that Sessions spewed forth in Matter of A-B-;
OPLA appears to be emphasizing that each claim must be individually evaluated and examined, rather than the idea promoted by Sessions and USCIS that all women from Central America and all Central Americans fleeing gang violence or domestic violence should be presumptively denied with only a few exceptions;
Does this mean that there is an internal split within DHS?
Interestingly, the OPLA memo specifically reserves judgement on “gender as a particular group” claims;
Of course, if Sessions and Cissna have their way nobody will ever get to Immigration Court to claim asylum, because nobody will get out of the now-gamed “credible fear” process, so perhaps OPLA’s views won’t have much effect.
How bad and biased are Sessions and Cissna? That ICE’s OPLA, the head of all the ICE prosecutors, sounds more reasonable should tell you all you need to know!
It’s also worth remembering that OPLA and the DHS General Counsel actually led the years-long effort to provide protection for victims of domestic violence that Sessions, without any reasonable explanation, reversed in Matter of A-B-.
Stay tuned!

MORE ON USCIS “DEATH SQUADS” FROM TAL@ CNN!

Trump administration to turn away far more asylum seekers at the border under new guidance

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The Trump administration is implementing a new asylum policy at the border that will result in potentially thousands of asylum seekers being turned away before they can plead their case in court.

The guidance, reviewed by CNN, also applies to refugee applicants — immigrants seeking similar protections in the US who are still abroad.

Under new guidance given Wednesday to the officers who interview asylum seekers at the US’ borders and evaluate refugee applications, claims based on fear of gang and domestic violence will be immediately rejected. In addition, the guidance tells officers they should consider whether an immigrant crossed the border illegally and weigh that against their claim, potentially rejecting even legitimate fears of persecution if the immigrant crossed illegally.

The move is likely to draw swift condemnation from immigration advocates and legal challenges. Advocates say international law is clear that asylum claims are valid even when a migrant enters a country illegally. They also argue that rejecting these traumatized immigrants puts their lives at risk immediately upon their return home.

The changes being implemented by the Department of Homeland Security come on the heels of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision last month that gang and domestic violence victims no longer qualify for asylum. Asylum protects migrants already in the US who fear persecution in their home country.

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/politics/border-immigrants-asylum-restrictions/index.html

*******************************************

Ah, the transition to the “Banana Republic of America!”

PWS

07-12-18

PROFESSOR RUTH ELLEN WASEM IN THE HILL: SAVING ICE – Ditch The Wanton & Counterproductive Cruelty – Supplement “Essential Functions” With “Quality of Life Enforcement!”

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/395358-abolishing-ice-good-policy-bad-politics

Ruth writes:

. . . .

The privatization of ICE detention centers has exacerbated the problems the bureau faces and has given considerable fodder to media exposes of abuses. The DHS Office of Inspector General recently released a scathing report on failures of the private contractors to comply with detention standards. It’s time to restructure the responsibilities to administer detention and removal policies more humanely.

To its credit, ICE also performs critical assignments that include investigating foreign nationals who violate the laws. The main categories of crimes its agents investigate are suspected terrorism, criminal acts, suspected fraudulent activities (i.e., possessing or manufacturing fraudulent immigration documents) and suspected smuggling and trafficking of foreign nationals. ICE investigators are housed in the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) component and are among those who would dismantle ICE.

If ICE is not at the border performing critical background checks and national security screenings, who does? First, the State Department consular officers screen all foreign nationals requesting a visa, employing biometric technologies along with biographic background checks. In some high-risk consulates abroad, ICE assists in national security screenings. Then, DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors examine all foreign nationals who seek admission to the United States at ports of entry. CBP inspectors and consular officials partner with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to utilize the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment on known and suspected terrorists and terrorist groups.

They also check the background of all foreign nationals in biometric and biographic databases such the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Improvements in intelligence-gathering, along with advances in technologies and inter-agency sharing, have greatly enhanced the rigor of our national security screenings.

The most effective policy for interior immigration enforcement would be one prioritizing “quality of life” enforcement. As I have written elsewhere, it would be aimed at protecting U.S. residents from the deleterious and criminal aspects of immigration. Foremost, it would involve the investigation and removal of foreign nationals who have been convicted of crimes and who are deportable, thus maintaining the important activities of the current ICE investigators.

“Quality of life” enforcement, furthermore, would prioritize investigations of specific work sites for wage, hour and safety violations, sweatshop conditions and trafficking in persons — all illegal activities to which unauthorized workers are vulnerable. “Quality of life” enforcement also would encompass stringent labor market tests (e.g., labor certifications and attestations) to ensure that U.S. workers are not adversely affected by the recruitment of foreign workers, as well as reliable employment verification systems. Many of these functions once were performed by the Department of Labor (DOL), before funding cuts gutted its enforcement duties.

Prioritizing these functions likely would go a long way toward curbing unauthorized migration. Whether DOL or a revamped immigration enforcement be the lead on “quality of life” measures remains a key management question. There is a strong case for re-establishing DOL’s traditional role in protecting U.S. workers and certifying the hiring of foreign workers. Given the critical role that ICE investigators play, it is imperative that they be housed in an agency that provides them with adequate support. These are finer points that can be resolved as the functions are reorganized.

Including a multi-pronged agency or agencies charged with ensuring “quality of life” immigration enforcement measures as part of a package of immigration reforms would only increase the strong public support (roughly two-thirds favor) for comprehensive immigration reform. Good policy. Good politics.

Ruth Ellen Wasem is a clinical professor of policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas in Austin. For more than 25 years, she was a domestic policy specialist at the U.S. Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service. She has testified before Congress about asylum policy, legal immigration trends, human rights and the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. She is writing a book about the legislative drive to end race- and nationality-based immigration.

*******************************************

Hit the above link to read Ruth’s entire article over at The Hill.

I believe that both Nolan Rappaport and I have previously noted the importance of better wage and hour enforcement in preventing employer abuse of both the legal and extra-legal immigration systems. Sure make lots more sense than “busting” hard-working, productive members of our community who have the bad fortune to be here without documents in an era of irrational enforcement!

There are lots of “smart immigration enforcement” options out there. Although the Obama Administration for the most part screwed up immigration policy, toward the end they actually were coming around to some of the “smart enforcement” initiatives, particularly with DACA at USCIS and more consistent and widespread use of prosecutorial discretion (“PD”) at ICE.

Naturally, the Trump Administration abandoned all of the “smart” initiatives started by the Obama Administration and instead doubled down on every cruel, ineffective, and just plain stupid policy from the past. But, that’s because it’s never been about law enforcement or developing a rational immigration policy. It’s really all about racism and White Nationalism. This Administration, representing a minority of Americans, has absolutely no interest in democracy or governing for the common good.

That’s why it’s critical for the rest of us, who want no part of White Nationalist Nation, to begin the process for “regime change” at the ballot box this Fall! And, in the meantime, join the New Due Process Army and fight the horrible excesses and intentionally ugly policies of the Trumpsters!

PWS

07-11-18

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Better get out the vote in November to throw the White Nationalists/Putinists and their fellow travelers out of office. Otherwise, it might be too late for the world’s most successful democracy.

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CONCLUSION: WE NEED REGIME CHANGE NOW! THE ONLY WAY TO GET IT WILL BE AT THE BALLOT BOX THIS FALL. GET OUT THE VOTE! JUST SAY NO TO TRUMP, SESSIONS, THEIR GOP ENABLERS & THEIR REGIME OF CRUELTY, INCOMPETENCE, & DISHONESTY!

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No Touching, No Running

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