The notion that one must get approval from a govt functionary in order to join team USA is ridiculous.
I keep hearing the same narrative from both sides that “of course we need to protect our borders” or that “obviously we can’t let anyone who wants cross the boarder” yet I’ve never heard a compelling argument as to why. Prior to the Chinese exclusion act, anyone living within our borders were counted as being citizens. Our constitution only gave our government the responsibility to count those living in our nation. It was written during a time of open borders.
In our nation, the concept of immigration control was entirely predicated upon racial and bigoted ideals. Not much has changed since then either.
So, the next time you are listening to your favorite progressive or liberal news source and you hear a story on immigration, ask yourself why the progressive and liberal voices also parrot the same unquestioned narrative as the right wing. Specifically, they all support the unsubstantiated and unquestioned position that we must have closed boarders.
One of the most common arguments is that we have to stop drugs or terrorists… Ok if that’s the goal how about we stop harassing people who want to join Team USA to make our nation greater than it’s ever been and instead redirect those resources in to drug and criminal interdiction. That way, our nation grows, benefits from immigration, and is actually made safer.
Instead we abduct children…
Concentration camps do not always equal death camps. A concentration camp is a means to concentrate a particular group away into a particular area, generally because the state argues that they are a “threat” to the “people.” This is precisely what is happening. The Japanese-American camps were concentration camps, for example. Just because they’re not Treblinka doesn’t make this morally okay. These are children.
According to the article cited, they are using the facility as a temporary overflow, and sending those “closer to being released to sponsors, rather than sending new arrivals.”
I will mention again that we are living in a country where if I let my kids ride their bikes to school or play in a park unsupervised, there is a reasonable chance that some busybody will call CPS. However, it is apparently fine for a migrant kid of the same age to roam the country like a hobo, or to be released to people who have not undergone vetting to ensure they are not putting the child in an abusive home or a situation that might lead to sex trafficking.
How about we not put them in a fucking jail.
And what are Boing Boing’s thoughts on that?
An overflow of 1600 is pretty damned big. I know it’s a difficult concept for conservatives to grasp, but these children belong with their parents or close relatives, not in a camp in the desert.
BS comparison (as usual from you). There is no third-party busybody involved here, just a government agency taking action on behalf of a xenophobic administration. And unlike CPS, the primary mission of the government agency here is not the welfare of the children.
Where your parents vetted? Mine weren’t. Did they allow you to roam the country? Mine did. It sounds to me like you are supporting child abduction in the name of fairness. Since your community doesn’t like unsupervised children you see that as justification for abducting children from their parents/guardians and holding them against their will. Is that the position you really want to take?
Tornillo has had plans to expand to hold 4000 children since it first opened.
Or god forbid, send these kids through local foster care systems where people are volunteering to look after children without available parents.
Thanks for posting this. Strong medicine.
If my parents had sent me across a border unaccompanied, or by paying a coyote, I am sure they would be checked pretty thoroughly before I was handed to them, or to someone else claiming to be a relative.
According to the El Paso Times, the expansion of the Tornillo shelter is in response to a sharp increase in children “arriving at the border without a parent or legal guardian”. A couple of sources mention that the older teenagers who are closer to being released to sponsors or family members are being moved to Tornillo, to make room for younger kids in the traditional shelters.
So if we are outraged at this, it might be good to propose an alternate solution. The average unaccompanied minor found illegally crossing the border is Male, 15-16 years old, from Guatemala, and crosses the border near Hidalgo County, Texas, according to ORR data. I suppose the ICE people could just let them pass without comment. That seems like a pretty poor choice, even more so for the 31% of kids who are 14 or younger.
Guatemala is also a significant source for children sold to or abducted by sex traffickers, according to UNICEF and the US State Dept.
I get that there is opposition here to vetting sponsors, foster parents, or people claiming to be relatives. I am not sure what a good alternative to that would be.
You’re pretty privileged that your parents didn’t have to make these choices.
the obama administration worked out alternatives to keeping them in camps, including finding relatives already here, putting them in foster care, and in some cases, sending them back home.
This is a bullshit policy and you know it. There ARE alternatives to sending them to concentration camps. This is not a difficult problem. DON’T PUT CHILDREN IN CAMPS. Problem solved.
Your implication that the parents are doing this frivolously is BS. These children, especially the ones in their mid-teens, are being sent here under needlessly dangerous circumstances because their parents fear for their lives if they stay. They’re desperate to avoid their kids dying at the hands of drug gangs, political violence, or the corrupt local police and military – problems that exist in significant part because of the policies of the U.S.
A different administration, including a GOP establishment one, might give the problem some serious consideration and left the workable Obama-era policies in place while it figured out how to co-ordinate refugee claims more effectively.
What we have instead is an incompetent regime that rejects expert opinion in favour of “winging it” and that rejects real solutions in favour of Bizarro-world policies and, more importantly, a xenophobic regime in a rush to pander to its racist supporters.
We had an “alternate solution” under Obama: no family separation and measured rather than zero tolerance. Somehow the Obama administration managed to deport a record number of undocumented immigrants under that policy. The situation in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador then was just as bad at the time and there was never any need for camps like this in the U.S.
So BS on asking for a solution that already existed before Dolt-45 made things needlessly worse. And judging by your earlier BS downplaying this situation, BS on the idea that the outraged “we” includes you.
The solution is easy. Open the borders so that their parents can come with them.
Will also accept: Manual labor visas, an immigration policy purged of outdated white supremacist bullcrap, and throwing more money towards USCIS Asylum/Refugee Officers to evaluate and process claims.
2014-
The Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.
Also:
“In fiscal 2011, ORR had 53 shelters that housed 6,560 kids. By 2013, there were 80 shelters with nearly 25,000 unaccompanied children”. Mother Jones (7/2014)
Right now, the number of minors in custody is 12,800. The average length of time in HHS custody is currently 57 days. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/orr_fact_sheet_on_unaccompanied_alien_childrens_services_0.pdf
The HHS has to comply with Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, among other laws. Which means that they cannot just let the little girls go with the man who says he is their uncle, without some due diligence. It seems absurd, but this is a thing that has happened.
So rather than spend money and resources to improve vetting, we lock children up in concentration camps. So to prevent possible abuse you engage in systematic widespread abuse.
Um, no. These camps were neither a sensible nor the only solution to the problem here.
So rather than spend money shoring up and developing a federal based foster care system or relying on state and local versions of it, the government throws children into concentration camps.
Does your mother know you are a Nazi?
Nice scenario. Of course, many of these children are being taken directly from their parents. There is no sending across borders unaccompanied or use of coyote required for us to abduct children directly from the arms of their parents. So, before we address your scenario, how about you try and defend that policy…
My question is why you seem to be defending child abduction.
I notice you didn’t say average abducted minor. Or even simply average minor. You focus solely on the unaccompanied ones. OK, I’ll bite. Did you know that “all children who arrive at an Office of Refugee Resettlement facility — regardless of with whom they crossed the border — are considered unaccompanied once they are detained”*? So, when you start talking about unaccompanied minors you are talking about people who cross with their parents. This is how Jeff Sessions and the rest of Cult45 get their 80% unaccompanied number.
In fact, the truth is that about 13 percent were identified as unaccompanied alien children. This is a far cry from the numbers being used to justify the abduction and secret relocation of children who came here wanting to join Team USA.
Well, then. It seems these children should be immediately granted asylum protections as they are fleeing a nation where their lives are in direct and immediate danger. But instead you offered this information seemingly to paint the nation of origin for these abducted children as what? A shit-hole country? For reasons? Because it supports your attempts to dehumanize these children is the most obvious and immediately recognizable reason…
But of course you aren’t. You are still stuck in the narrative that people should not be free to come to this nation and participate in our experiment. You think Team USA is only for certain types of people and you don’t think these people are the right kind of people.
Mindysan33 pointed out that
But the intent of the use of the term in the title of the post was to conjure up images of Auschwitz. That seems to be working.
The facility we are talking about is a temporary shelter, built to accommodate a temporary surge in the numbers of UACs referred to the ORR. The primary mission of the ORR in regards to these children is safe placement with the child’s family or other sponsors.
“A common tactic used by human smugglers is to place minors with unrelated adults and provide fraudulent documents as part of the services they deliver…The aliens and their smugglers believe that if they can make a claim that they are traveling as a family unit, this will allow for their prompt release from immigration custody.”
-Marc Sanders, head of Human Smuggling investigation at DHS
In August alone, Border Patrol agents identified at least 60 cases of fraudulent family claims.
I understand that in support of an open borders policy, any facility the government uses to house refugees must be painted as Auschwitz, regardless of how short the processing time is, or the safety and comfort of the accommodations.
We cannot just “not ever separate families”, because sometimes they are not real families. Sometimes there is reason to suspect the child is being abused or trafficked. Sometimes the child is with a parent, but the parent is referred for criminal prosecution for serious criminal offenses. In these cases, the minor is put into HHS custody while the situation is investigated. But the child only stays with HSS as long as it takes to place the minor with suitable family or sponsors.
Absolutely, if by “these people” you mean human traffickers affiliated with drug cartels.
Excellent. Then let’s stop harassing people for wanting to join Team USA, redirect the billions we spend stopping those good people towards stopping human traffickers and criminals, and actually make our boarders safer. Because right now we spend our effort and money in all the wrong places.
Ok, so leave everyone alone except the coyote and human traffickers. No need to abduct children from their families.
