I’m worried about migrant children housed in makeshift detention facilities, forcibly removed from their parents.
I’m worried that so many Americans seem to think this is okay.
I’m worried that we haven’t learned anything from our past.
We have separated families before — slave families and Native American families. We have interned Japanese-American families. And now, we’re doing it again.
This is not the country I pledged allegiance to. This is not the country I love.
A lot of us are worrying about those kids, and wondering what we can do that would make a difference.
I feel selfish and narcissistic for carrying on with this trip to Canada instead of heading for the opposite border…where I could do what, exactly: throw myself between immigrant children and ICE agents? Grab a kid and run?
Not realistic… or helpful… at all. But others are doing realistic, helpful things, like these:
- #ResistanceLive acts as a clearinghouse for ways that you can help. Loads of info and support. Daily Facebook Live updates by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin. Patreon
- #FamiliesBelongTogether organized the June 14th protests across the country and will presumably have more events soon.
- RAICES provides free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees in Texas. Donate
- The Florence Project provides free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody in Arizona. Donate
I’m not sure yet what my part can be in this, but I can help spread the word. Be forewarned, I will be harping on this issue and sharing information as I find it on how ordinary people like you and me can make a difference.
I have tried not to annoy you with my politics, but I can’t avoid it any more.
This isn’t politics, it’s human suffering. It’s families, parents and children who belong together.
I’ll still share my travels here but I can’t pretend horrific things aren’t happening.
I’m joining the resistance, and I hope you will too.
Please watch this Facebook Live video from human rights attorney Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, and if she gets through to you at all, follow her.
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It’s disgraceful and stupid and frankly unbelievable how those people can look in the mirror. I feel like those carrying out these orders are the worst. How is the entire corps not on strike yet? The solution is so simple: just don’t do it.
I don’t want to make excuses for them, like fear of losing their jobs, etc., but I do wish some journalist could get to even one of them and find out how they justify this to themselves and their families/friends. When you read some of the comments on the news stories, you can see that a lot of conservatives are completely brainwashed and toe the company line all the way. I remember when Rupert Murdoch bought Fox News and a slew of U.S. newspapers, my colleagues at ABC News were horrified. Now I know why.
No, obviously,unfortunately, just 1, 5 or 20 employees refusing or talking to press would do nothing.The majority of the workforce would have to be decent human beings and agree to stand together to not comply with those orders.
Lavonne, what you are failing to realize is that the parents of these children (and sometimes the children themselves) are CRIMINALS. They have violated the laws of the United States of America by sneaking into this country without going through through the proper channels. Furthermore they are stealing taxpayer money by taking advantage of services (healthcare, welfare, etc.) to which they are not entitled.
If an American woman who has a child or four at home commits a crime in this country and is sentenced to a term in jail or prison, she is separated from her children. Her children do not serve time with her. Why should these illegal CRIMINALS be treated any differently. The children of the illegal criminals are not serving a life sentence. They will be repatriated with their parents once their parents are processed and sent back to whatever shithole country they originated from. These children of CRIMINALS are suffering a fate no worse then that which American children suffer when their parent(s) are imprisoned. they are fed, kept indoors, given healthcare, etc. as needed. It’s probably a far better life then they lived in their respective countries of origin.
The USA is a country of laws and those that choose not to follow the law must suffer the consequences. You need to stop watching CNN and learn what is really happening.
Gregg Rubin
And YOU need to stop watching Fox News. I refuse to debate this with you.
What you are failing to realize is that YOU are a child of CRIMINALS.that violated human rights by sneaking into this country and murdered thousands of indigenous people for their land, then raped little girls and women for fun. Furthermore, your ancestors stole children away from enslaved indigenous people and forced them to a school to “learn” foreign cultures, language and slave characteristics, while marrying off the girls to white foreigners AFTER on THEIR land, which they were not entitled. YOUR ANCESTORS ARE WAR CRIMINALS
Why should you, an child of WAR CRIMINALS be respected or listened to? Especially since you now want to do it again? Go back to whatever shithole country your ancestors originated from.
“A country of laws” … sigh. Yet we selectively enforces some, completely ignore others and bend them all to benefit the law du jour.
What you fail to see or understand is that these are fragile times. If you cannot put your cold hard soul into what’s going on, you are the one breaking the laws. God’s laws. Universal laws.
Regardless of whether you THINK a person is a criminal, that persons child is NOT. Yet, you are okay with allowing these children to be ripped from their Mothers arms? You are okay to let them be at the mercy of strangers.
I’m so sorry. For you.
Mr. Rubin – You are sadly uninformed. The parents of these children are NOT criminals; many are seeking asylum. This is what asylum means, according to the US government: https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum
BUT, these people are being separated from their children, and those children are being put into a totally separate, and overwhelmed, system EVEN WHEN THERE IS DEEMED A CREDIBLE REASON FOR THEM TO SEEK ASYLUM!!!. And then….their children are often lost in the system, crying, sobbing, unable to articulate in any language any helpful information.
They are children, being torn from their parents, with no recourse, no consolation, only trauma. Here’s more on that:
TM: So, just so I make sure I understand: the parents come in and say, “We’re persecuted” or give some reason for asylum. They come in. And then their child or children are taken away and they’re in lockup for at least six weeks away from the kids and often don’t know where the kids are. Is that what’s happening under zero tolerance?
AC: So the idea of zero tolerance under the stated policy is that we don’t care why you’re afraid. We don’t care if it’s religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you’re going to have your children taken away from you. That’s the policy. …..
Article 31 of the Refugee Convention clearly says that it is improper for any state to use criminal laws that could deter asylum seekers as long as that asylum seeker is asking for asylum within a reasonable amount of time. But our administration is kind of ignoring this longstanding international and national jurisprudence of basic beliefs ….
Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country,” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification. In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.” Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said, “Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. But sometimes deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may look like. We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th, and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of them had direct information from immigration on where their child was located. The one number they were given by some government official from the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know there are more parents who are being deported without their child, without any process or information on how to get their child back. SOURCE: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/whats-really-happening-asylum-seeking-families-separated/
What we are doing is a violation of human rights. It is WRONG.
If you are so comfortable with it, let me ask you this: If you found yourself needing to become a whistleblower on your workplace for some reason, and you want to the government and said “look, I need your help to get myself and my family safely out of town, because I’ve got some important information about gang activity at my company” how would you feel if the government’s response was to put YOU in jail, seize your children, and hold you for two weeks to appear before a prosecutor? How would you feel if that prosecutor said “yeah, you’ve got good info – let him go guys, and let him stay in a safe house” and then you asked about your family, and you got a non-working phone number or a message at the end of the call in Swahili? What if you finally reached someone, and they said “oh, gee, we don’t know where your kids are” – how would you feel then? Because that’s what’s happening here.
If you are OK with making desperate human beings somehow “less than” by calling them criminals, you are sliding down a slope that makes it somehow OK to never let them out of camps. And then, maybe to make them work to pay off their costs…and then maybe not feed them too much….and then to just put some of them to death because, well, they’re “criminals” and just trying to take advantage, right? And then you support the next Holocaust….or maybe you really are OK with that….
It’s funny, because from across the pond, US is looking like the “shithole country…”
So “law” is your priority — not freedom, compassion, humanity, opportunity, or family? We’re just a nation of laws and that’s how you like it. Well, that’s good for you, I guess, with an authoritarian at the helm. But some of us are striving a lot higher.
Gregg, I can see you’re trying hard to present an opposing viewpoint, but it’s buried in the dust of your running roughshod over one of the most important tenants of our legal system: No one is a criminal in this country until they’ve been tried and convicted in a court of law. You make the point yourself with your example of a woman with a child of four being “sentenced.” That happens after a trial. That woman in your example was first arrested, given a bail hearing where a judge decides if she’s a risk to her child and/or a flight risk, and if neither are the case, she’s allowed to post bail and remain with her child because at that point she’s innocent. The state has to then convince a judge and/or a jury of her peers that she’s guilty and has to go to jail.
That’s not what’s going on at our borders. People are coming to our country to seek asylum, to seek refuge, to seek freedom. I’ll go out on a limb to say just like your (and my) ancestors. What they’re finding these days is that the processing points where they can enter and be processed have been closed by the current administration. What they’re doing instead is to cross, in many cases, the Rio Grand in a rubber boat an then turn themselves in. At that point they’re exposed to a perversion of due process under law. In violation of the of the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which we are a signatory, families are being torn apart and treated like criminals. What used to be “never in America” is becoming “only in America.”
Attorney Jeff Sessions tried to justify all this by misquoting Romans 13 when he said: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” That verse has been used to justify slavery in the South during the 19th century. Paul goes on to say: ” Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
No one is stealing taxpayer money…well, except for the Trump Family, of course, who are filling their pockets with cash from every deal they can think to make with Russia and China and the Middle East. But as far as immigrants not here with papers…do you really think they actually walk into welfare offices and healthcare centers KNOWING that ICE will be called on them? Trust me, they aren’t that dumb…desperate yes, but not stupid! And you are calling innocent children taken from their parents, traumatized by America, CRIMINALS? Well, they aren’t now, but do not think for one moment that this behavior, this abomination by US, won’t have repercussions in the future. You, sir, are advocating for this country to lose it’s soul, it’s written word of taking in the huddled masses yearning to be free. And why? Not because we don’t have a place for this next generation, but because you and your ilk are just plain afraid of the color change they bring. I urge you to look at the population of the Earth, look carefully at where the increasing numbers are, the birth rates of those countries…and then kiss your sorry White ass good-by!
Greg, seeking asylum isn’t illegal according to the 1951 Refugee Act, an international law to which we are signatories.
They’ve broken no laws.
Crimes??? Criminal??? You seem to have lost sight of the crimes of America. How dare you speak of sneaking into this country. This country was stolen from its inhabitants by criminals. Threw the kids of the Natives into schools because that stopped them from “being criminals.”
But they wouldn’t stop there, oh no. The criminal activity continued with stealing people, so that they could come here to work for free for two hundred years. Did the crimes stop there? Nope, then they made the people that they stole criminals, if they tried to run for freedom. Later made these same people criminals for being free & walking along railroad tracks looking for a better life. Made them criminals for not saying yes sir to a white person. Made them criminals for drinking water or using the bathroom in the wrong places.
But the crimes just kept coming. Confiscating the businesses, goods, dignity of Japanese Americans, throwing them into camps because of “war.” America was at war with Germany too. Did German Americans go into camps?
Forgive me if you using the word criminal holds no weight with me. Skewed- Americans pull out the word criminal whenever they want to justify dehumanizing other people.
You are a sorry excuse for a human & you definitely would have been drinking beer under a swinging black body strung up for a “crime” if you were alive in 1925.
What you are listening to, saying, writing, & thinking only proves that you are a part of a lynch mob, a slave owner, a camp guard, & Native reprogrammer. The year & the tool that you are using means nothing. You are one of them.
Gregg Rubin , what you fail to realize is seeking asylum is not illegal. When a parent has to flee her country out of fear for her child’s or her own life she can legally enter the country. So now let’s talk about treatment of legal aliens and their childeren.
Next time do your research. Your perspective is not based on being a law abiding citizen. It’s from ignorance of immigration law.
I wish I could like this a million times.Scary how some spew he lamestream media taking points without thinking things through. Illegal is Illegal and Illegals are CRIMINALS. bottom line .period.
Thank you for this post and your resources. I will begin spreading the word, watching#resistancelive and doing what I can.
Excellent, Suzanne, thank you!
Oh look! A troll! But that being an aside, Pia I have often said that this is less about differences in politics and more about differences in morals. My moral structure is you simply don’t do this to children. Your moral structure is if you can blame someone else, its all good.
Excuse me, where do you see that I believe this situation to be a good thing?
I think she meant that comment for Gregg Rubin. Not sure why your name is there.
If they are truly asylum seekers and not illegal immigrants there are more than a dozen US consulates throughout Mexico where they can seek said asylum. You are only fooling yourselves if you believe the tens of thousands of adults to whom the children belong are asylum seekers (ones that traveled thousands of miles past US consulates to sneak across our border).
As a retired law enforcement officer I can assure you, we are a country of laws. Unfortunately the selective enforcement of said laws started with my employer, the California state government, which refused to allow me to turn in illegal immigrants (even felonious violators) to Immigration (and subsequently ICE) as I came across them during the course of my investigations.
Gregg Rubin