News Day

“On Feb. 20, a young woman named Mirian arrived at the Texas border carrying her 18-month-old son. They had fled their home in Honduras through a cloud of tear gas, she told border agents, and needed protection from the political violence there.

“She had hoped she and her son would find refuge together. Instead, the agents ordered her to place her son in the back seat of a government vehicle, she said later in a sworn declaration to a federal court. They both cried as the boy was driven away.”

This New York Times report sounds like something out of Law and Order or some other ripped-from-the-headlines almost-true crime show. Unlike a television show, there’s no happy ending and the forces of the law look like the villains, not the heroes. Continue reading →

On April 26, the New York Times reported:

“A top official with the Department of Health and Human Services told members of Congress on Thursday that the agency had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, raising concerns they could end up in the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives.”

These children were “unaccompanied minors” who arrived at the border on their own and were placed in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and then placed with sponsors. Most were from Central America, and were fleeing violence from gangs and drug cartels. Most of the 7,635 unaccompanied minors placed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) arrived before 2017.   Continue reading →

Immigration horror stories: Children ripped from their parents’ arms. Anguished mothers and fathers. Missing children. Children kicked, punched, called “dogs” by Customs and Border Protection officials. A teenager spending a year and a half in custody because he gave the finger to a classmate.

Makes you want to scream: Make it stop! Make it all stop! Continue reading →

On May 22, the ACLU released a report documenting horrendous abuse and neglect of unaccompanied immigrant children detained by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The ACLU produced the report together with the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. Examples of abuses reported by the ACLU include allegations that CBP officials:

• Punched a child’s head three times
• Kicked a child in the ribs
• Used a stun gun on a boy, causing him to fall to the ground, shaking, with his eyes rolling back in his head
• Ran over a 17-year-old with a patrol vehicle and then punched him several times
• Verbally abused detained children, calling them dogs and “other ugly things”
• Denied detained children permission to stand or move freely for days and threatened children who stood up with transfer to solitary confinement in a small, freezing room
• Denied a pregnant minor medical attention when she reported pain, which preceded a stillbirth
• Subjected a 16-year-old girl to a search in which they “forcefully spread her legs and touched her private parts so hard that she screamed”
• Left a 4-pound premature baby and her minor mother in an overcrowded and dirty cell full of sick people, against medical advice
• Threw out a child’s birth certificate and threatened him with sexual abuse by an adult male detainee.

Continue reading →

The Emperor’s New Clothes

I do not like writing about Trump. I fear that writing about him only strengthens him by giving him more of the attention he craves and thrives on. Nonetheless, this year is already full of so much new information about his racism, lies, and other bizarre behavior that I will record several reports here, to make track-backs easier for myself and for anyone else who may want the information. Continue reading →