[Discussion] Separating and/or Detaining Families at the US-Mexico Border

Just figured we could collect this mess in one thread.

Aetius wrote:

The fact is that most Americans are afraid of immigrants, especially those who speak different languages and have a different skin color. It's completely irrational, as all the evidence - especially economic evidence - indicates that immigrants are a huge positive to the receiving society, but the fear been there since before the country was founded and we've never dealt with it as a society. If we were a rational society, we'd be advertising for immigrants and trying to attract as many as possible.

For once, we're in complete agreement. I co-sign this.

Gremlin wrote:

If we were a rational society, we'd be advertising for immigrants and trying to attract as many as possible.

Which is exactly what corporate America is doing, and has been doing for years.

Gremlin wrote:
Aetius wrote:

The fact is that most Americans are afraid of immigrants, especially those who speak different languages and have a different skin color. It's completely irrational, as all the evidence - especially economic evidence - indicates that immigrants are a huge positive to the receiving society, but the fear been there since before the country was founded and we've never dealt with it as a society. If we were a rational society, we'd be advertising for immigrants and trying to attract as many as possible.

For once, we're in complete agreement. I co-sign this.

From a country with similar problems but more effective information suppression regimes, I too heartily endorse this stance and/or product.

Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone
As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as three years old are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C.

As the White House faces court orders to reunite families separated at the border, immigrant children as young as 3 are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C.

Requiring unaccompanied minors to go through deportation alone is not a new practice. But in the wake of the Trump administration’s controversial family separation policy, more young children — including toddlers — are being affected than in the past.

The 2,000-plus children will likely need to deal with court proceedings even as they grapple with the ongoing trauma of being taken from their parents.

“We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. “It really highlighted the absurdity of what we’re doing with these kids.”

Immigration lawyer says ICE agent pushed her to the ground as she went to help reunite a family

Andrea Martinez and Megan Galicia, two immigration lawyers in Kansas City, said the deal for their client, a pregnant mother who was scheduled to be deported with her 3-year-old son to Honduras, was hashed out in advance with immigration officials.
The 3 a.m. encounter ended up with the family in tears, Martinez with a fractured foot after she says she was shoved by an ICE agent, and Luis detained and placed in removal proceedings, the lawyers say, another tale that illustrates the complexity and potent brew of emotions swirling around the country’s byzantine immigration processes in a tense political climate. Though the Trump administration has ended its practice of family separations through an executive order, the spotlight on the vagaries of the immigration system remain as the Republican-controlled Congress struggles to settle upon more concrete legislative resolutions.
Gremlin wrote:
Aetius wrote:

The fact is that most Americans are afraid of immigrants, especially those who speak different languages and have a different skin color. It's completely irrational, as all the evidence - especially economic evidence - indicates that immigrants are a huge positive to the receiving society, but the fear been there since before the country was founded and we've never dealt with it as a society. If we were a rational society, we'd be advertising for immigrants and trying to attract as many as possible.

For once, we're in complete agreement. I co-sign this.

I certainly agree with the last statement, but would like to see some evidence supporting the first one.

Mixolyde wrote:

I certainly agree with the last statement, but would like to see some evidence supporting the first one.

I don't know about "most" but I certainly agree that it's driven by irrational fear.

CBS News interview with ICE whistleblower interrupted by surprise visit from government agents

In his first television interview, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson James Schwab has opened up about why he abruptly resigned in March. But his interview with CBS News' Jamie Yuccas on Wednesday was unexpectedly interrupted by agents identifying themselves as agents from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's Office.

"They just said that they wanted to talk to me about the leak with the Oakland mayor," Schwab said of his conversation with the agents.

Before the surprise visit, Schwab told Yuccas that both the Obama and Trump White Houses asked him to "spin" information. But he said he felt compelled to resign after the current administration told him to lie about an incident that pitted the government against Oakland's mayor.

Mixolyde wrote:

I certainly agree with the last statement, but would like to see some evidence supporting the first one.

One indicator is population segregation: do Americans mind living near and among those of other races and languages? The answer is yes, they mind - a lot. Americans are relatively free to move between states and within metro areas, and they vote with their feet when their neighborhood changes demographics. The top ten most segregated cities in the country are home to nearly 70 million people, or about 22% of the population as well as a huge chunk of the recent immigrant population. Take, for example, Chicago:

IMAGE(http://atlantablackstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Chicago-map1.jpg)

Red is white, blue is black, orange is latino, and green is asian. The demarcation is almost literally down to the street level, and it's across all racial lines, not just whites versus everyone else. So, while most Americans say they view openness to foreigners as essential to our national character, their behavior indicates that they are only okay with immigrants as long as "those people" stay in their place. As soon as it affects them personally - or they perceive that it is affecting them - they self-segregate.

You can also see the American fear of immigrants in polling data. Consider this poll, done in 2016 for Vox by Morning Consult:

IMAGE(https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a_hm8e5AtFPA5DEtAfXbxNwqsR0=/0x0:970x793/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:970x793)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6745343/screenshot_l.png)

Step back from the individual answers for a moment, and consider that 71% of respondents had a negative concern about immigration - none of which have any reasonable basis in fact. And it gets crazier: about 27% of the American population is made up of recent immigrants and their children. That's a possible indicator of two equally disconcerting scenarios - either almost 100% of "native" Americans have a negative concern about immigration, or a significant percentage of recent immigrants have a negative concern about other immigrants. So not only do we fear immigrants, but as we assimilate new immigrants we pass the fear on to them.

They settled into East L.A.'s Maravilla public housing projects, a majority Latino community. As an Afro Latino, Perez said he struggled with bigotry.

He was often taunted in school for his curly hair and mercilessly teased after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because some assumed he was Arab.

Latinos "can be super prejudiced, like anybody," Perez said.

The good news is that we are - slowly - getting better about welcoming immigrants. Indeed, the fact that illegal immigration exists is a strong indication that our societal attitudes towards immigrants have shifted in relation to the laws that govern immigration, which are still blatantly racist, classist, and highly restrictive. We have a significant number of people who are willing to buck both society and the government and hire immigrants anyway, even if it's just for profit. It's certainly not the best system, and results in significant exploitation, but it's a small step in the right direction.

Thanks for the data, Aetius. That is some interesting stuff.

It's interesting, but it also leaves out chunks of the story.

Chicago's South Side is predominantly black because that's the only place that the city's elite allowed all the southern blacks who were coming north during The Great Migration and WWII to live. They literally set aside multiple South Side neighborhoods exclusively to house the thousands and thousands of migrating blacks. Those neighborhoods became known as The Black Belt and 75% of all black people were crammed into them (resulting in massive overcrowding, poverty, etc.).

This was enforced by having all the owners of property surrounding The Black Belt sign restrictive covenants which forbade the selling or renting of their property to non-whites. When those were made illegal after the war the policy of restricting where black people could live was continued with redlining.

It's not America that's uncomfortable with immigration. It's predominantly *white* Americans who are uncomfortable with immigration (or anyone they consider non-white).

The "white" Americans of 1850s and 1920s were deeply fearful of the non-white immigrants of the time: Irish and Italians. The KKK experienced rebirth in the 20s largely because "white" America feared that the waves of Catholic Irish immigrants--who were considered the murders, rapists, and drug dealers of their day--would dilute or destroy America's essence. Now we celebrate St. Paddy's Day and you probably can't throw a stone without hitting an Italian restaurant.

Given the choice between someone dedicated enough to their child’s welfare that he or she is willing to make a dangerous three month trek through hostile territory for the privilege of picking the strawberries I eat or a racist f*cking pig, give me the hard working immigrant every damned day of the week.

Trump admin ran 'pilot program' for separating migrant families in 2017

NBC wrote:

The government was separating migrant parents from their kids for months prior to the official introduction of zero tolerance, running what a U.S. official called a "pilot program" for widespread prosecutions in Texas, but apparently did not create a clear system for parents to track or reunite with their kids.

Officials have said that at least 2,342 children were separated from their parents after being apprehended crossing the border unlawfully since May 5, when the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy towards migrants went into effect.

But numbers provided to NBC News by the Department of Homeland Security show that another 1,768 were separated from their parents between October 2016 and February 2018, bringing the total number of separated kids to more than 4,100.

It's unclear how many of those 1,768 children were separated after President Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017. NBC repeatedly asked DHS for comprehensive data, but the agency declined to provide month-by-month figures and did not provide any numbers for March and April 2018.

Holy f*ck!

So, here's the plan: defy the law, make the parents choose to give up their children, hope the courts back them up.

Trump administration may seek to detain migrant families longer than previously allowed

The Trump administration plans to detain migrant families together in custody rather than release them, according to a new court filing that suggests such detentions could last longer than the 20 days envisioned by a court settlement.

“The government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a legal notice to a federal judge in California who has been overseeing long-running litigation about the detention of undocumented immigrants.

The filing comes as the Justice Departments seeks to navigate two different court edicts — an injunction issued this week by a federal judge in San Diego that required the government to begin reuniting the roughly 2,000 migrant children still separated from their families, and an older court settlement in federal court in Los Angeles that requires the immigration agencies to release minors in their custody if they are held for more than 20 days.

Leon Fresco, who served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Obama administration, said officials had always had the ability to hold kids with families past 20 days — if the parents consented to it. But under President Barack Obama, Fresco said, officials felt it would be too cruel to present mothers with a Sophie’s choice between turning their child over to refugee resettlement authorities, or keeping them detained.

The latest filing, he said, indicated that the Trump administration would be at least willing to do that.

“What they want to do is put the choice to the mom, separate or not separate, but make the choice so onerous that there really is no option other than to stay in family detention,” Fresco said.

Aetius wrote:

You can also see the American fear of immigrants in polling data. Consider this poll, done in 2016 for Vox by Morning Consult:

IMAGE(https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a_hm8e5AtFPA5DEtAfXbxNwqsR0=/0x0:970x793/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:970x793)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6745343/screenshot_l.png)

Step back from the individual answers for a moment, and consider that 71% of respondents had a negative concern about immigration - none of which have any reasonable basis in fact. And it gets crazier: about 27% of the American population is made up of recent immigrants and their children. That's a possible indicator of two equally disconcerting scenarios - either almost 100% of "native" Americans have a negative concern about immigration, or a significant percentage of recent immigrants have a negative concern about other immigrants. So not only do we fear immigrants, but as we assimilate new immigrants we pass the fear on to them.

They settled into East L.A.'s Maravilla public housing projects, a majority Latino community. As an Afro Latino, Perez said he struggled with bigotry.

He was often taunted in school for his curly hair and mercilessly teased after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because some assumed he was Arab.

Latinos "can be super prejudiced, like anybody," Perez said.

The good news is that we are - slowly - getting better about welcoming immigrants. Indeed, the fact that illegal immigration exists is a strong indication that our societal attitudes towards immigrants have shifted in relation to the laws that govern immigration, which are still blatantly racist, classist, and highly restrictive. We have a significant number of people who are willing to buck both society and the government and hire immigrants anyway, even if it's just for profit. It's certainly not the best system, and results in significant exploitation, but it's a small step in the right direction.

While I agree with the conclusion that Americans largely fear imigrants irrationally, I think the question is very badly formed. My concerns about "immigration" (the US immigration system) include that it hurts national security, weakens the economy, weakens American values, and increases crime, but that is not because we let too many immigrants in, but because of things like this monstrous family separation policy. I would not be surprised to learn that the majority or at least a large minority of the people who answered "weakens American values" were talking about mistreating and turning away immigrants rather than immigration itself weakening American values. On the other hand some certainly were looking at it from that perspective.

In other news, this is horrifying: are separated children being set up for adoption

ElectricPi wrote:

In other news, this is horrifying: are separated children being set up for adoption

Note that forced adoptions of the children of one group by another group meets the definition of genocide, and for good reason. It's the tactic that Australia used against the indigenous Australians, Canada used against its native population, and was part of the Indian Adoption Project in the United States.

Gremlin wrote:
ElectricPi wrote:

In other news, this is horrifying: are separated children being set up for adoption

Note that forced adoptions of the children of one group by another group meets the definition of genocide, and for good reason. It's the tactic that Australia used against the indigenous Australians, Canada used against its native population, and was part of the Indian Adoption Project in the United States.

I hadn't even thought about it from that perspective, I was horrified by the idea of it happening just looking at it on the individual level, but you are right, and that brings it to a whole new level of horror.

Slate Op-Ed: White Fight: Donald Trump is leading the Republican charge to preserve a shrinking white majority.

Under the Trump administration, even naturalized citizens are now a target. The government agency that oversees immigration applications is hiring lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants suspected of obtaining citizenship through fake identities or other false information on their applications. Cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, where offenders could lose their citizenship or legal status.

I smell another Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in the making...

These are mostly cases where people had prior deportation orders and then gained LPR status and later citizenship through the use of alternative identities. The cases came to light en masse when the old fingerprint cards were digitally compared against new records.

Also worth noting that denaturalization has been a thing for as long as naturalization has, and used when warranted maybe twice a year per office. This ramp up is because of the fingerprint thing.

Blind_Evil wrote:

These are mostly cases where people had prior deportation orders

Donald Trump wrote:

With few exceptions

The exceptions would be where people obtained LPR status through marriages later proven through clear and convincing evidence to be fraudulent and former war criminals who hid their history during the refugee process and were later outed by other refugees.

If your implication or the general tenor is that we are denatzing people willy-nilly or because they're brown or Muslim or whatever, it isn't happening. At least not in my neck of the woods. If you don't trust me, that's fine.

Blind_Evil wrote:

The exceptions would be where people obtained LPR status through marriages later proven through clear and convincing evidence to be fraudulent and former war criminals who hid their history during the refugee process and were later outed by other refugees.

If your implication or the general tenor is that we are denatzing people willy-nilly or because they're brown or Muslim or whatever, it isn't happening. At least not in my neck of the woods. If you don't trust me, that's fine.

It sounds like you have personal knowledge, so I am inclined to believe you, at least as it relates to "your neck of the woods". Given this administration, I still think it is important to stay sceptical that this task force will stay focused on such appropriate cases, and exercise reasonable judgement (I don't care if they applied for asylum 37 times using 57 different aliases, if they have a legitimate claim for asylum they shouldn't be deported). If the only people who are impacted are war criminals, people who faked asylum claims, and those who chose to accept work on tourist visas and lied about it on work visa and other documents (I'm looking at you Melania), then this may turn out to be a non-issue.

Hopefully this is just bad timing of a routine and appropriate government action, but even if it is, this type of routine and appropriate government action deserves scrutiny and monitoring in the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

I do, I've been a USCIS officer since 2013 and employee since 2012. Working for this administration has been trying on the nerves, even as our day to day work is essentially the same. Occasionally people ask how and why continue, why I stay in the job, etc. I stay becausehis is my career and will be well after this administration. You can find me in the "Gamers without Jobs" thread, excited about getting hired. It's the first thing I've ever been successful with, as I'm now quite senior and respected around the district I work in (ME, NH, MA, RI). I'm as fair and compassionate as I can be, and there's no way to know my replacement would approach my job that way.

Worth noting: denaturalization isn't just an unchecked administrative process that happens in-house. The cases get tried in front of district court judges.

Blind_Evil wrote:

The exceptions would be where people obtained LPR status through marriages later proven through clear and convincing evidence to be fraudulent and former war criminals who hid their history during the refugee process and were later outed by other refugees.

If your implication or the general tenor is that we are denatzing people willy-nilly or because they're brown or Muslim or whatever, it isn't happening. At least not in my neck of the woods. If you don't trust me, that's fine.

Yeah, sorry, I don't.

I've been brushing up against INS, then USCIS, for 20 years. Mostly it's just a large bureaucracy. Sometimes it's a large bureaucracy with a very spiky side comprised of ex-cops and former military.

Yeah, per your nice history lesson, INS had an enforcement arm prior to 2001. But then Bush moved it from Justice to his new DHS and gave it a macho-sounding TLA that fits nice on a raid jacket.

Now Trump is letting them off the chain.

How far is the digging going to go? It didn't seem like that slippery a slope, but there's Trump, doing the unthinkable.

‘My son is not the same’: New testimony paints bleak picture of family separation

“(My son) is not the same since we were reunited. I thought that, because he is so young he would not be traumatized by this experience, but he does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me. That behavior is not normal. In El Salvador he would stay with his dad or my sister and not cry. Now he cries for fear of being alone.”

— Olivia Caceres was separated from her 1-year-old son in November at a legal point of entry. The boy’s father, who was seeking asylum, remains detained, Caceres said. It took three months for Caceres to get her son back from government custody. According to her testimony, she said that after reuniting with her toddler, “he continued to cry when we got home and would hold on to my leg and would not let me go. When I took off his clothes he was full of dirt and lice. It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us.”

“[The children] did not have shoes or blankets in the detention center, and there were people in the cells that had to sleep standing up. They did not have enough to eat either, and could not drink the water, because of the chlorine they added to it … the incarcerated children were insulted – called named such as “animals” and “donkeys.”

— Ludin Jimenez said she was separated from her children, age 9 and 17, when she crossed the border in May seeking asylum. The family was reunited June 28 in Boston. She wrote that she was kept in a cell with nearly 50 other mothers. “The officers told them that they could not eat because they were asking about their children. There was a pregnant woman who fainted from hunger.”

According to her statement, Jimenez was not allowed “to bathe or brush her teeth for the eight days that she spent in the ‘dog pound.’”

“There was an immigration officer who was a good person. He said that he understood what was going on, but could not help. He brought them cookies, since he knew they did not get enough to eat.”

“The guards would wake all the girls up at 4 a.m. to count them by kicking on their mats. … G cried when she told me she kept hoping her mother would show up to take her out of that horrible place, but that never happened. … G overheard a girl asking to make a phone call to her family, but she was told they did not allow girls to make phone calls while detained. “

— Alma Poletti, an investigator for Washington’s attorney general, interviewed eight children who were separated from their families and sent to the Seattle area for care and detention. “The place was freezing …The girls placed their mats in the floor very close to one another, since there was not enough space to fit them more comfortably. Girls as young as 3 years old were detained in this place and without their mothers,” Poletti wrote. She said one girl, 14, referred to as “G,” “felt hungry most of the time she was there because the food they provided her wasn’t good in quality or quantity.” “G” couldn’t sleep through the night, Poletti added.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

How far is the digging going to go?

In terms of naturalization and denaturalization, it goes back to the moment someone entered the country or applied for a benefit while outside the country. One requirement for naturalization is a lawful admission for permanent residence. If an individual lied about something during their immigration or adjustment of status, and that something would have led to the denial of the benefit, it can lead to the commencement of removal proceedings.

That's the law part. The logistics part is that USCIS doesn't have the workforce to rifle through every existing file for fraud, which is very difficult to prove in historical (10 year or older) cases.

NYT: Trump Administration in Chaotic Scramble to Reunify Migrant Families

Read the whole thing, because the details are bonkers: thousands of children, they're resorting to DNA matches because CPB destroyed the family records, they aren't sure which children they have were separated from their parents, HHS is working overtime to manually sort through the individual records.

The family separations, part of an aggressive effort by the Trump administration to deter illegal immigration, have produced a chaotic scramble as officials now face political and judicial pressure to reunite families.

Records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.

But those precautions were undermined in some cases by the other federal agency that has initial custody of apprehended migrants in the first 72 hours after they cross the border — Customs and Border Protection. In hundreds of cases, Customs agents deleted the initial records in which parents and children were listed together as a family with a “family identification number,” according to two officials at the Department of Homeland Security, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the process.

HHS is complaining about the deadline. (I think the way to address that would have been to not separate the children in the first place, but what do I know.)

I have a niece who was traumatized for a long time simply because she was accidentally locked out of the house for a few minutes when no one noticed she had stepped outside. For a long time afterwards, even when she was outside with someone else, even a trusted adult, she would need to periodically go back to check to make sure the door was still open and that her mom was still there.

That was only a separation of a few minutes. These children are separated for *months* under horrible conditions. I can't comprehend how people can think that it's no big deal or that they deserve it somehow.