Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/24/feds-move-300-migrant-kids-out.html
Most kids moved to another Border Patrol station, a “temporary site with roll-out mattresses, showers, medical facilities and air conditioning.”
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“Well, we’ll just shuffle 'em around. No problem.”
In an email to AP on Monday, they said: “Our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.”
How about diverting some of that military spending, private black-ops funding you’re trying to do in Venezuela, dial back the war drums for Iran, and stop fueling a drug war that is the cause of all the immigration bullshit? Maybe that could help?
Fuck you, Homeland Security
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“Our short-term holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations and we urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.”
The crisis your favourite demagogue manufactured to appeal to his bigoted base, you egregious child-abusing scumbags?
Abolish ICE.
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Vice President Mike Pence, asked about the unsafe, unsanitary conditions for the children on Meet The Press on Sunday, said “it’s totally unacceptable” adding that he hopes Congress will allocate more resources to border security.
That’s Newspeak for: ‘Every time Congress does not pay up for the wall, we make a couple of hundred of kids suffer.’
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So now we are death marching children
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Quick! The media has spotted us! Hide the children!
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Yes!
It is right and fit to condemn the Trump administration for its argument and its treatment of children. But it’s wrong to think the problem can be cured with a presidential election. Trump will depart; the problem will not depart with him. This administration is merely the latest one to subject immigrant children to abusive conditions. It’s been 35 years since Jenny Flores was strip-searched in an adult facility. Before Sarah Fabian defended concrete floors and bright lights for President Donald Trump, she defended putting kids in solitary confinement for President Barack Obama.
The fault lies not with any one administration or politician, but with the culture: the ICE and CBP culture that encourages the abuse, the culture of the legal apologists who defend it, and our culture—a largely indifferent America that hasn’t done a damn thing about it. This stain on America’s soul will not wash out with an election cycle. It will only change when Americans demand that the government treat the least of us as both the law and our values require—and firmly maintain that demand no matter how we feel about the party in power.
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Eventually, they’ll just start killing all these kids. And then the assholes on our Facebook friends lists will just say “Just because we’re killing children doesn’t mean it’s a concentration camp! Stop disrespecting the Jews!” Or alternately: “Lol, feel owned, libtard?”
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In the photo for this article a little kid in an orange shirt stands out…I remember the little girl in a pink coat in Schindler’s List. When I watched that film years ago I wondered why people didn’t break down the fences to set people free. Now I wonder why I lack the courage and ability to break these kids out.
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I can’t tell if they’re just trying to kick the can down the road (make people think the problem is solved - but just until someone finds and investigates the newer facilities and finds them just as abusive), or they’re moving the kids somewhere where no one will be allowed to see inside. I mean, it’s definitely one of those.
What was maddening was the institutional defense of the situation from those in charge - that the agents didn’t have the training or funds to properly deal with the situation. The problem for them is - that’s not a defense. That’s a situation where you push back against orders and say, “We literally can’t do this.”
Yet it’s still an improvement over Pence’s previous response. When asked,
“You’re a father. You’re a man of faith. You can’t approve of that.”
Pence’s response was:
“Well, I – I – no – no American – no American should approve of this mass influx of people coming across our border.”
I mean, they’re already started. In the previous decade, there had been no deaths of children in custody, apparently. Then, in a year, 7(+). That’s not due to anything other than changed policies. Policies that are going to kill a lot more people.
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Courage aside, it’s because you’re afraid of making things worse (the US government has the information about where these kids need to go to be reunited with their parents, if anyone does), and a belief in institutions - that they’ll (eventually) do the right thing. That last one is a real killer when the basic underpinnings of liberal democracy go bye-bye - the institutions don’t just fail us, they become their own problems. But few people who aren’t actively trying to create that situation really expect it, because it’s too terrible to contemplate.
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Hell of a week when Somali pirates and the Taliban have a greater grasp on human rights than the US government.
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For my part, the answer is “I will instantly be shot and killed and accomplish nothing”. That’s assuming I could even get far enough to discover where these camps are and how to break into them, how to keep the children safe after breaking them out, where to send them once they’re free, while meanwhile not letting my elderly father die of neglect, losing my job and home, etc. etc. Justice in this scenario seems like a fantasy, not feasible even for a massive, organized group of people, let alone a handful of concerned citizens. Unless the country breaks down into complete anarchy or civil war (and probably even then), the odds are impossibly stacked against us. The only way to realistically save these kids is by getting the government to voluntarily shut down this program against its own financial and political interests, and with a government with no respect for human rights or the rule of law and a sizeable percentage of the U.S. population rabidly racist and pro-fascist and absolutely loving what’s happening, that sounds just as outlandish.
I really don’t know what to do. A viable solution literally does not seem to exist. Too much of humanity is inherently vile and worthless and they need to not be in order for this sort of thing to stop.
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While I fear you might be right on this I just don’t want to believe it’s true. I can go with mentally lazy and pacified with entertainment but I hope the human race isn’t so damned with evil. I really want to believe that if people were face to face with this kind of horror this they would be moved to stop it. Like you, it’s probably good for me to not know where these camps are located. I, too would be shot and killed without changing anything. I still play like it’s a representative government. I write my US senators and my representative. The next thing I need to do is to start trying to talk face to face with the right wing people I know. If nothing else I want to make them uncomfortable with their support of this moral disgrace. I also plan to talk to friends from Latin countries to get a sense of how best to help. Resist! Insist and Persist. what else is left?
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On the plus side, I hear that the new camp has a encouraging slogan over the front gate:
“El trabajo te libera”…
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Oh, but it’s the Media that are the Enemy of the People™.
God damn it.
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