Trump's New Order Does Nothing To Help Children Now Separated From Their Parents

stumbler · Jul 29, 2018

‘If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine’: Inside the abusive immigrant youth shelters
According to logs obtained by ProPublica, some immigrant youth shelters are a hotbed of sexual abuse.

Unaccompanied minors and children separated at the border from their families are living in shelters where sexual abusers look after them.

ProPublica obtained the police reports and call logs from more than two-thirds of youth immigrant shelters run and/or contracted by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. These shelters span 17 states and house around 10,000 immigrant youth at any given time.

Despite these shelters having a zero-tolerance policy against all forms of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior, the logs obtained by ProPublica show that in the past five years, police have responded to at least 125 calls reporting sex offenses these shelters.

That number doesn’t include another 200 calls from more than a dozen HHS-contracted shelters that care for at-risk youth residing in the U.S. The call records for those facilities don’t distinguish which calls came from unaccompanied immigrants and which came from other youth housed on the property.

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, told ProPublica. “You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

While it isn’t clear whether any of the children mentioned as victims in the reports were separated from their parents at the border as a result of Trump administration policies, the general fact remains that the shelters where immigrant children are being held are often dangerous.

A 46-year-old youth care worker at a shelter in Tuscon, Arizona was fired and convicted after repeatedly molesting a 15-year-old Honduran boy.

“I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” the worker reportedly said to the child, according to the police report.

n 2017, another Honduran boy at the same shelter was recovering from surgery when he claims a worker at the shelter appeared at his bedside and reportedly said, “You have it very big,” referring to the 17-year-old’s penis. A few days later, the same employee brushed the teen with his hand while he was playing video games. According to the police report, the next time the staff member approached him, the boy locked himself in a bathroom.

While the majority of the offenders reported by ProPublica have since been placed on administrative leave or convicted, some shelters currently employ staff with a documented history of sexual misconduct.

As ThinkProgress has previously reported, The Villages, a shelter for unaccompanied minors, currently employs a man with a history of sex crimes. The shelter’s sole human resource employee, Jeffrey Montague, was banned from the Boy Scouts of America after allegations surfaced that he had made sexual advances on an exchange student at the high school where he worked. In October of 2007, Montague was charged with solicitation of sodomy in a public park in Topeka, Kansas, according to court records. He entered a diversion agreement one month later in Topeka Municipal Court.

But because the case was settled out of court, Montague passed a state background check.

The Villages executive director claims that because Montague does not have direct interaction with the children, his checkered past doesn’t matter. The Kansas Department of Children and Families is currently investigating his employment at the shelter.
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stumbler · Jul 29, 2018

Judge orders independent monitor for immigrant facilities after children detail shocking conditions
"It seems like there continue to be persistent problems."

A federal judge has ordered an independent monitor to evaluate conditions in border facilities that house immigrant children, amid allegations of unsafe conditions and rampant abuse.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said there was a serious “disconnect” between the Trump administration’s own assessment of facilities in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and hundreds of pages of class action testimony detailing major problems, including abusive treatment, lack of adequate food and water, and unsanitary conditions.

“It seems like there continue to be persistent problems,” Judge Gee said. “I need to appoint an independent monitor to give me an objective viewpoint about what is going on at the facilities.”

Gee gave both sides until August 10 to agree on a proposed monitor. If they are unable to reach an agreement, both sides will give a suggestion to the judge and she will choose.

Hundreds of sworn affidavits from children and parents detail inhumane treatment at various stops from processing by Border Patrol agents to transportation to contractor-run facilities.

“There is no privacy. It is dirty and they don’t clean it,” a Guatemalan boy named Erick, said of his initial days in custody near the border. “The room is always cold. The guards took my sweater.” He added that there was only one bathroom, which a security camera was constantly pointed at it.

“When I told the CBP officer that my mother was killed, they made fun of me and said I was ‘weak.’ a boy named Victor said. He added that a guard told him, “This is it for you. You’re fucked,” after a friend didn’t pick up when Victor used his once-a-week call to try and make contact with them.

According to KTLA, the independent monitor ordered by Gee will be “confined to Customs and Border Protection detention facilities along the border in the Rio Grande valley in Texas. The monitor will also only assess accusations of ill treatment made to Judge Gee in a June 2017 motion.”

Also on Friday, one day after the court-ordered deadline to reunite families torn apart by the Trump administration’s child separation policy, ProPublica published a report describing more than 125 calls over the last five years reporting sex offenses at shelters that primarily serve immigrant children. The increased pressure on these facilities due to the Trump administration’s policies have made it harder for these centers to be adequately staffed — increasing the possibility of sexual abuse going unnoticed.

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, told ProPublica. “You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

A majority of the staff mentioned in the ProPublica report have been put on leave or convicted, but a number of shelters continue to employ staff with a documented history of sexual abuse.

The Trump administration was under a court order to reunite all separated families by Thursday, but as of Saturday, hundreds of children have not been reunited with their parents.
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stumbler · Jul 31, 2018

Inside The Search For The 468 Parents Deported Without Their Children

The Trump administration has admitted in court that it deported at least 468 immigrant parents without their children, and while those families are entitled under a federal court order to the chance to be reunified, the Trump administration has yet to make any effort to find them.

“We don’t keep track of individuals once they’ve been deported,” Matthew Albence, the head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told reporters on a conference call Thursday. Asked what the plan is now for reuniting hundreds of children in U.S. custody with parents already removed from the country, a Health and Human Services official demurred, saying they are awaiting instructions from federal courts.

In this vacuum, a host of advocacy and faith-based groups have mobilized, launching a sprawling, transnational effort to track down hundreds of parents and ask them whether they want to their child returned to them or to leave them behind in the United States to pursue asylum on their own.

The task ahead is daunting for the independent groups, which include the Women’s Refugee Commission, the International Red Cross, Save the Children, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Justice in Motion and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I don’t have a magic bullet for how we’re going to do it. It’s just going to be very hard detective work,” an exhausted Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in class action lawsuit over the family separations, told reporters Thursday. “We’re going need every piece of information the U.S. government has about them so we have some basis to go on, including the name of any relative listed in an interview.”

When pressed to provide such information at court hearing on Friday, attorneys for the Trump administration complained that doing so would be “burdensome” and “onerous” and would divert resources from the other ongoing reunification efforts.

But U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who is presiding over the case, shot back that the administration is “at fault for losing several hundred parents.”

“That’s the most pressing group,” Sabraw said of the parents removed from the country. “All efforts have to be made to identify and locate those parents and then to reunify as quickly as possible.” On Sunday, he ordered the government to turn over the names of the deported parents along with any other piece of information that could help the ACLU and other groups track them down.

While the consulates in the parents’ host countries would normally be used to locate people in such a situation, that collaboration isn’t possible if the parents fled to the U.S. in the first place because of government persecution.

“If people were seeking asylum because they feared their own government, they may not want the consulate looking for them,” he explained.

Christie Turner with Kids in Need of Defense flagged an additional challenge.

“Because they were fleeing violence and persecution, they in all likelihood cannot return to where they were living before,” Turner said. “They are essentially in hiding, so they will be very difficult to contact.”

For parents who have returned to rural, remote towns in Central America that have little phone or internet access and few residents who can translate between Spanish and indigenous languages, the task is harder still.

Scattered to the wind
The Trump administration has not disclosed how many of the 468 separated parents who are no longer in the U.S. were forcibly deported and how many signed “voluntary departure” papers.

Trump administration officials told Politico that the vast majority of the deported parents in that situation were never even given the option of having their children returned to them. Those who were given the option — including the more than 100 who allegedly waived their right to be reunified with their children — may not have been afforded informed consent. The ACLU submitted extensive sworn testimony on Wednesday alleging that few if any understood what they were agreeing to, and claiming that many felt “coerced” and “intimidated” into signing the forms, which were often provided in a language they cannot read or understand.

“When these parents find out what they actually signed, they break down in tears. They do want their children back,” Gelernt told reporters Friday after the hearing. “I can’t imagine anything closer to torture than to send these parents back home to their countries and make them live the rest of their lives knowing that just because they got confused or felt pressure, they gave away their child by mistake.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project, which is working with hundreds of separated families in the McAllen, Texas area, told reporters on a conference call on Friday that seven of their clients have been deported without their children — four fathers from Guatemala and three from Honduras, with children ages 6 to 17. Despite having only the parent’s name, national origin and date of birth, the organization has been able to establish contact with three of them, all of whom say they desperately want to be reunited with their children.

“We are being as creative as we can,” said Efrén Olivares with the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We reached out to relatives in the U.S. to try to get their phone numbers down in Central American. We are working with the Human Rights Ombudsman’s office in Guatemala and Honduras, and they have been very, very helpful. We are talking to NGOs that do human rights work on the ground in Central America to ask them to assist us if they can on this effort, and we are also considering hiring private investigators to assist us.”

Nan Schivone told TPM that her New York-based organization Justice in Motion is collaborating with community and religious radio stations in Central America to begin airing public service announcements that the deported parents may hear.

“We want to spread the message that if there are separated parents who don’t know where their kids are, they can come forward in confidence,” she said.

Schivone said that this and the groups’ other efforts to locate the parents are entirely funded by donations and foundation grants, with no assistance from the Trump administration.

“The government created this mess but they’re leaving it to civil society to clean up,” she said.

Because of the difficulties involved, the ACLU is not asking courts to set a hard deadline for locating the deported parents. Rather, they have asked that if and when they are located, and if they do want their child returned to them, that the Trump administration make it happen within seven days.

Judge Sabraw issued a decision on July 16 to halt the deportations of separated parents, hundreds of which may have taken place prior to his ruling. If more parents were deported since then in violation of the court order, they may be entitled to come back to the U.S. to be reunified with their children and pursue asylum. Whether the Trump administration will attempt to block such returns remains to be seen.

“I think the government is going to fight very hard to not let anyone come back, and secondarily, going to fight very hard to not pay for that travel,” Gelernt predicted.

A harrowing choice
When 25-year-old Elsa Johana Ortiz Enriquez crossed the border with her 8-year-old son Anthony on May 26, border agents separated her and son. A few days later, he was shipped to a shelter for “unaccompanied” children and she was put on a plane back to Guatemala. Ortiz told the New York Times that she is “completely devastated” and has no idea when or if she will see her son again.

“Please don’t put me on the plane,” she said she pleaded with the immigration officials. “I can’t go without my son.” When she could not stop sobbing, she said, the agents on the plane gave her a tranquilizer.

Ortiz has since retained a U.S. attorney to help her fight to get her child back. And when Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen traveled to Guatemala City in early July for a summit with Central American officials, she traveled from her small village to the nation’s capital to stand outside the summit’s hotel with a sign reading “Please give me back my son.”

Despite Judge Sabraw’s order, she has yet to hear if and when they will be reunited.
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shootersa · Jul 31, 2018

Hypocrite.
Liar.
TWAT.

stumbler · Aug 1, 2018

Arizona Migrant Detention Employee Accused of Molesting 14-Year-Old

An Arizona migrant detention center employee is accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl who was being held at the Southwest Key facility in Phoenix. Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, faces charges of sexual abuse, child molestation, and aggravated assault. The girl’s roommate reported the alleged abuse to police. Surveillance video shows Negrete approaching the room where the girl was staying with two other minors several times Friday night. Negrete is accused of touching the girl’s breasts and crotch over her clothes and kissing her. Phoenix police said Negrete admitted his involvement. His bond was set at $150,000. The facility he worked at houses immigrant children who were separated from their parents. Southwest Key is a nonprofit organization that houses children at facilities in Arizona, California, and Texas under a $458 million government contract. At least two other instances of sexual abuse at Southwest Key facilities have been reported, according to The Arizona Republic. The organization did not immediately return the news outlet’s request for comment.
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shootersa · Aug 2, 2018

Lying hypocrite

stumbler · Aug 2, 2018

Judge Slams Trump Admin For ‘Losing Several Hundred Parents’

At the latest federal court hearing over the ongoing migrant family separation crisis, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw took the Trump administration to task for only reuniting about 1,442 of the more than 2,551 children by the court’s July 26 deadline. Sabraw took particular issue with the government’s lack of progress in finding and contacting the estimated 468 parents who were deported without their children. Hundreds more have been released into the U.S. interior and the Trump administration claims they are not able to find them.

“The government is at fault for losing several hundred parents in the process and that’s where we go next,” Sabraw said, adding that he is far from confident that the administration has made the necessary changes in inter-agency cooperation to ensure something like this never happens again.

“Each (department) was like its own stovepipe, each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,” he said. “What was lost in the process was the family.”

Yet the judge did not hold the government in contempt for missing the deadline to reunite more than a third of the forcibly separated children. Nor did he immediately rule on the American Civil Liberties Union’s motion to ban the Trump administration from immediately deporting reunified families.

After the hearing, lead ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told reporters that he hopes Judge Sabraw agrees that the parents who have a final order of removal need at least a week to talk to a lawyer and their child about the heart-wrenching choice in front of them: whether to leave their child behind in the U.S. to pursue his or her own asylum claim or be deported together.

“It’s remarkable that after all these months of keeping children separated, they’re unwilling to give seven days for them to make a decision that is literally life-altering,” he said.

That stay of removal should also apply, Gelernt argued, to the 120 parents the Trump administration claims waived their right to be reunified with their child. The ACLU and other legal groups have collected testimony from dozens of parents who say they were misled or coerced into signing such forms.

“When these parents find out what they actually signed, they break down in tears. They do want their children back,” he said. “I can’t imagine anything closer to torture than to send these parents back home to their countries and having to live the rest of the lives knowing that just because they got confused or felt pressure that they gave away their child by mistake.”

The parties will be back in Judge Sabraw’s court next Friday.
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stumbler · Aug 4, 2018

Judge: Trump Administration ‘100 Percent’ Responsible for Reunifications

A federal judge told lawyers representing the Trump administration that it was “100 percent” the government's responsibility to find the parents of children who were separated by family separation and deported by immigration officials. “It appears only 12 or 13 of over 500 parents have been located, which is just unacceptable at this point. And it appears that there is not a plan in place,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw told them on Friday, lamenting that the government did not have a clear plan on how to locate the deported parents. The Trump administration also suggested that the American Civil Liberties Union, who is suing the government on behalf of the parents, to use their own resources to help find the parents. “All of this is the result of the government’s separation and then inability and failure to track and reunite,” Judge Sabraw said. “And for every parent who is not located there will be a permanently orphaned child, and that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.” She then ordered the government to appoint a person or team to “to prepare and present to the court a clear plan for remaining reunifications.” Many of the over 400 parents who were deported are located in countries like Guatemala and Honduras. On Thursday, the ACLU told the court that the government’s databases don’t have sufficient home addresses for about 120 of the children who still need to be reunified.
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Rixer · Aug 4, 2018

But would they take MY kids when they were still living at home.... Nooooooo.

imported__2355 · Aug 4, 2018

This is the essence of my objection to what the Trump administration does: It makes declarations and sets forth on a high sounding course without consideration for the consequences of its actions. Then it first denies that there are any consequences, then blames others for its failings, then says what's done is done and no further effort on their part is required.

Meanwhile real people suffer while they flail about playing CYA games. And the Trumpians just giggle about it and look for the next thing to make a mess of, and say that it's the responsibility of their opponents to clean things up.

Fix what you broke. Clean your own mess and start acting like responsible adults, not juvenile delinquents.

Sanity_is_Relative · Aug 8, 2018

stumbler · Aug 10, 2018

And this story really does not do justice to this. Rachel Maddow read the actual transcript and the judge was not just furious because the mother and child were removed against his orders he told them to turn them to turn that plane around or he was going to start handing out citations for contemp of court beginning with AG Jess Sessions. And they turned the plane around and brought them back.

‘Turn the Plane Around’: Judge Threatens Sessions After Woman, Child Deported Mid-Court Hearing

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan was not happy with Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday, when he learned that the government was trying to deport a woman and a young girl while their lawyer was literally in the process of arguing their case.

The woman, identified only as Carmen, and her daughter had been scheduled to be deported, but the government agreed to postpone their removal until Thursday night so an appeal of the decision could be heard in court, the Washington Post reported. When court was in recess in the middle of the hearing, however, an attorney with the ACLU–which is representing them in a lawsuit–received an email notification that Carmen and her child had been taken from the detention center where they had been kept, and were being deported.

Judge Sullivan had strong words for Sessions when he found out about this, and even threatened to hold him in contempt of court.

“This is pretty outrageous,” the judge said. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” Sullivan said. He ruled in favor of the ACLU’s request to put the deportation on hold, and ordered the Trump administration to “turn the plane around.”

The ACLU said they were told by government attorneys after the hearing that the woman and child were already on a flight to El Salvador, but would be sent back to Texas, where they had been detained.

Law&Crime reached out to the Justice Department for comment, but they have yet to respond.

The ACLU’s lawsuit, where they represent Carmen and 11 other people from Central American countries, is based on a claim that the administration is unfairly preventing people from seeking asylum and not allowing them to have fair hearings.

“The whole point of this was to get a ruling from the court before they could be placed in danger,” ACLU attorney Jennifer Chang Newell said.
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stumbler · Aug 10, 2018

Trump’s zero-tolerance policy fails to deter border crossings, per new data
Over the past year, border crossings increased by 57 percent.

The number of migrant families detained by U.S. officials along the southern border has barely changed from June to July, indicating that the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy has failed to deter migrants from entering the United States.

Recent data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Wednesday shows that over the past two months, there was a decrease of nearly 7 percent in people apprehended at the border. But July 2018 numbers reflect a 57 percent increase compared to July 2017. Apprehensions of families increased more than 142 percent over the past year, with more than 9,200 undocumented family members detained in July 2018. As The Washington Post noted, overall, more families with children have entered the United States in fiscal 2018 than at any time during Barack Obama’s presidency.

“People have no choice. They’re fleeing potential death to themselves, to their kids,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Immigrants’ Rights Project told MSNBC. “It’s not going to deter and it’s inhumane.”

The recent numbers also reflect a significant spike from March 2018, before the administration’s zero-tolerance policy was announced. Under the policy, officials can prosecute all people, including asylum seekers, who do not cross into the United States at ports of entry or who make false statements to immigration officials. As a result, thousands of families were separated from one another since April, while parents awaited prosecution.

“To those who wish to challenge the Trump Administration’s commitment to public safety, national security, and the rule of law, I warn you: illegally entering this country will not be rewarded, but will instead be met with the full prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement at the time of the policy announcement in April.

But the threats seem to have gone unnoticed by migrants who continue to cross into the United States. Indeed, detention has long been seen as an ineffective curb on immigration.

A 2013 study by the University of Southern California Gould School of Law found that the threat of arrest or punishment does little to dissuade migrants from crossing the U.S. border. As many migrants who cross the border are fleeing violence or are seeking to reunite with family members already in the United States, few are thwarted by the possibility of detention.

Heightened criticism of the zero tolerance policy eventually compelled Trump to sign an executive order in June to halt family separation, while keeping the zero-tolerance policy in place, opting to detain families together. Since then, the administration has been scrambling to reunite thousands of families it separated over the past several months. Hundreds still remain separated.
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https://thinkprogress.org/border-crossings-rise-despite-trumps-zero-tolerance-policy-b9a33c2ca8f2/

shootersa · Aug 10, 2018

Meanwhile President Trump is doing what he can to reform immigration to, you know, keep ILLEGAL immigrants out of the country.
Earlier this year The immigration reform bill pushed by Republicans and supported by President Trump died an expected and quiet death in the house.

President Trump is moving forward with his vision of reform, and addressing the issue of foreigners overstaying their VISA and just ............. staying.
An estimated 600,000 last year, and according to some estimates, how almost half of ILLEGAL immigrants now in the country got here.

Trump is telling the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Homeland Security Department, to crack down. There are a couple of other changes President Trump ordered with a policy memorandum, making it much harder for some to get a Visa or stay in the country if, for example, they drop out of college and are on an educational visa or an exchange visa.

Good for President Trump.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-...en-student-exchange-visa-oversight-1526068718

stumbler · Aug 10, 2018

Hey Trump I thought "chain migration" was just a terrible thing. What's up with this? Oh wait I know. Do as I say not as I do.

Melania Trump’s parents get US citizenship under program slammed by Trump

The Slovenian-born parents of Melania Trump became US citizens at a naturalization ceremony in New York on Thursday, reportedly taking advantage of a family reunification program President Donald Trump has vehemently denounced.

Trump’s in-laws Viktor and Amalija Knavs took the oath of citizenship, their immigration lawyer Michael Wildes confirmed to AFP.

Asked by the New York Times if they had obtained citizenship under a program derisively branded “chain migration” by the president, Wildes replied: “I suppose.”

He said chain migration, which allows naturalized US citizens to sponsor close relatives for permanent residency, was a “dirtier” way of characterizing what he called “a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification.”

Trump has taken a hardline on immigration policy, criticizing so-called chain migration.

The Republican president has said such a system steals jobs from Americans and threatens national security, calling for a merit-based system that gives preference to more educated, English-speaking professionals.

– ‘NOT ACCEPTABLE!’ –

Writing on Twitter in November, Trump made his views on the system clear.

“CHAIN MIGRATION must end now! Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!”

He frequently cites the example of Sayfullo Saipov, a naturalized immigrant from Uzbekistan who drove a rented truck down a busy bike path in New York in October, killing eight people and injuring 12, to illustrate why the family reunification program must be ended.

Highlighting the administration’s approach to immigration, the naturalization took place as a Washington federal judge threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of court after the government moved to deport a mother and daughter, despite an order halting such a move.

The woman, referred to as “Carmen,” and her daughter were part of a group of immigrants who had fled “extreme sexual and gang violence” in Central America, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

It is not clear when the Knavs couple obtained their green cards, though their status as permanent residents was first revealed by Wildes in February.

Melania Trump, the 48-year-old first lady, was their sponsor, Wildes told the Times.

Under US law they must have been permanent residents for five years before applying to become citizens, and the time to process an application can take several months thereafter.

Viktor Knavs, a car salesman in Slovenia, and Amalija, who worked in a textile factory, are over 70 years old, retired and pass much of the year in the United States, where they regularly spend time with their daughter and grandson Barron.
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Sanity_is_Relative · Aug 11, 2018

stumbler · Aug 16, 2018

HHS official says he warned about the trauma family separation would cause and was ignored
The administration moved forward with the policy anyway.

An official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the government agency tasked with looking after families separated at the border due to the Trump administration’s now-reversed “zero tolerance” policy, says he warned others in the administration that family separation could have a traumatic affect on the children.

Jonathan White, an executive director in the office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday about the family separation crisis. The former deputy director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and a trained clinical social worker, White said he was involved in multiple discussions about immigration policies that could result in the separation of families throughout the course of a year and repeatedly “raised a number of concerns… about any policy which would result in family separation.”

“There’s no question that separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child,” White said.

According to White, he and other ORR employees who raised concerns about family separations at the border were told “there was no policy which would result in separation of children from family units,” echoing the patently false talking point parroted by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

In contrast, HHS Secretary Alex Azar has defended the family separation policy, calling it one of the “greatest acts of American generosity.”

White left his post at ORR just a few weeks before the administration proceeded with implementing the “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of over 2,000 children from their families. As of Tuesday, more than 700 children remain separated from their families because their parents have been deemed ineligible for reunification or were deported.

While surely not the only example of the trauma of family separation, on Tuesday The New York Times published a story that provides insight into exactly what HHS officials warned would happen to children forcibly separated from their parents. Five-year-old Thiago was separated at the border from his mother for over 50 days. Now reunited, his mother says he isn’t the same child. He begs to be breastfed and is suffering from separation anxiety. Instead of playing with the toys he used to love, Thiago now pretends to pat down and handcuff “migrants.”

The report also references a 3-year-old boy who similarly pretends to handcuff and vaccinate people, “behavior he almost certainly witnessed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to those working with him.”

At some HHS-contracted facilities, children have reportedly been pinned down and drugged with psychotropic medication. There is also evidence that some children at Shiloh Residential Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas were not able to have any private phone calls and on some occasions were prohibited from leaving the living space to get drinking water. A child reportedly tried to leave the area for drinking water once and was thrown to the floor by a guard, injuring the child’s elbow.

Mental health organizations have long warned of the potential effects of the Trump administration’s immigration policies on young children, particularly as it relates to family separation. Experts say post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attachment issues, anxiety, and depression are just some of the effects family separation can have on a child. Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, specifically called the policy “child abuse.”
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conroe4 · Aug 17, 2018

Don't enter the country illegally, and don't bring your kids. You won't have a problem here.

Come here illegally, and you may have a problem, and you will eventually. It's that simple.

romer12 · Aug 17, 2018

jimmy crackpot: take a closer look your picture. the women is falling DOWN and the ICE agents are trying to catch her. there is no
way in hell two men could throw a women over that high fence...................
MORE fake news from the Democrats.............

stumbler · Aug 28, 2018

Well here's one kid @shootersa doesn't have to worry about going to foster care.

Toddler dies after ICE detainment, lawyer alleges substandard care

A migrant mother and her lawyers allege that substandard care at a detention facility run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is to blame for her toddler’s death six weeks after their release.

Yazmin Juarez, 20, and her 18-month-old daughter, Mariee, came to the U.S. from Guatemala via the Rio Grande, according to CNN. Juarez sought asylum and was detained by ICE agents. She and her child were placed in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

Juarez’s lawyers say Mariee contracted a respiratory infection at the center, which "went woefully under-treated for nearly a month." Juarez sought treatment for her daughter and was prescribed medication that her lawyers say did not help her daughter.

Upon their release, Juarez and Mariee flew to New Jersey to be with Juarez’s mother. Mariee was then hospitalized for respiratory failure and died six weeks later in Philadelphia, according to CNN.

"A mother lost her little girl because ICE and those running the Dilley immigration prison failed them inexcusably," the law firm told CNN. "We are working with Yazmin and her family to obtain justice for the failures by ICE and others, and to ensure that no other family suffers such a needless and devastating loss."

ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency's custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care. Comprehensive medical care is provided to all individuals in ICE custody,” ICE said in a statement to The Hill.

The revelation comes amid increased scrutiny over ICE regarding its role in the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which led to the separation of thousands of children from their family at the U.S. southern border.

“Abolish ICE” has become a rallying cry among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but a poll released Monday shows only a quarter of all Democrats actually support eliminating the body.
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http://thehill.com/homenews/news/40...r-ice-custody-lawyer-alleges-substandard-care

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