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

Just figured we could collect this mess in one thread.

Dallas News: A Border Patrol chief testifies that Francisco Galicia never claimed U.S. citizenship, but document says otherwise

A U.S. Border Patrol chief on Thursday testified before the House Judiciary Committee that 18-year-old Francisco Erwin Galicia never claimed to be a U.S. citizen when he was in Border Patrol custody for 23 days.

But that contradicts a notice to appear in immigration court served to Galicia in which the Department of Homeland Security accused him of falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen while in custody.

Galicia is a Dallas-born U.S. citizen who lives in Edinburg in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. He also says he has dual citizenship in Mexico. The story of his 26 days in detention after being picked up by the Border Patrol in Falfurrias garnered widespread national attention after The Dallas Morning News first reported it on Monday.

But Claudia Galan, Galicia’s attorney, produced for The News a notice to appear that DHS issued to Francisco that reads:

“On or about June 27, 2019, you were found at the Falfurrias, Texas, Border Patrol Checkpoint, a distance of more than 25 miles from the United States border with Mexico ... You did not receive the permission of an immigration officer to proceed beyond that 25 mile limit ... At that time, you falsely represented yourself to be a citizen of the United States for the purpose of furthering your entry into the United States.”

Which leads me to this thought: how many other US citizens are in our concentration camps right now?

I mean, it's not like ICE has a long history of illegally detaining and deporting US citizens or anything.

Gremlin wrote:

Which leads me to this thought: how many other US citizens are in our concentration camps right now?

I mean, it's not like ICE has a long history of illegally detaining and deporting US citizens or anything.

I am 99.999% certain that it isn't 0.

The Chief of Law Enforcement Operations for Customs and Border Protection isn't sure if a three-year-old separated from her grandmother was a "criminal or a national security threat to the United States." Nor could he say if the grandmother was a threat.

And he said so right after saying that he wasn't aware of any botched family separations, prompting Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to remind him that his agency can't find the parents of hundreds of children they separated.

I mean, there was this 9-year old US citizen who was held for two days back in March:

NYT: 9-Year-Old Girl Was Detained at Border for 30 Hours Despite Being a U.S. Citizen
Time: 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Detained for 32 Hours After Crossing the Border to Go to School

It doesn't matter if you have your passport or ID on you: Border Patrol will just tell you it's fake and then punish you for lying about being a citizen. And since they think you're not a citizen, you don't get a lawyer and don't have any rights.

Now think about what happens to the innocent, law-abiding people who aren't US citizens but who tried to follow our ever-changing asylum rules and are being kept in camps because of it.

Gremlin wrote:

Now think about what happens to the innocent, law-abiding people who aren't US citizens but who tried to follow our ever-changing asylum rules and are being kept in camps because of it.

Somewhere dank and dark, Stephen Miller is getting an erection.
I deleted several paragraphs of impotent rage but decided to leave that top sentence. f*ck this feels terrible.

Edit: And then I read this and manage a chuckle at its relevance. f*ck!

Gremlin wrote:

Now think about what happens to the innocent, law-abiding people who aren't US citizens but who tried to follow our ever-changing asylum rules and are being kept in camps because of it.

A casual perusal of the comments section of any newspaper article about immigration will tell you that conservatives don't view immigrants or even asylum seekers as "innocent" or "law-abiding."

In their minds they either illegally crossed the border or overstayed their visas and are therefore dangerous criminals hell bent on destroying America. Nevermind that overstaying your visa or improper entry are only misdemeanors.

And certainly nevermind that asylum seekers are chasing one of 3,000 refugee slots allowed for people from Latin America/Caribbean (that Trump hopes to reduce to zero next year...as in zero refugees regardless of their origin) and people hoping to fight deportation face a million case court backlog that means if they get detained today they might see a judge by August 2021.

As Trump was visiting the survivors of a mass shooting directed against Hispanics, ICE was busy in Mississippi arresting 680 mostly Latinx undocumented immigrants at poultry processing facilities across six cities in what was the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.

ICE officials said the arrests were part of a year-long criminal investigation. Facilities of Peco Foods, Inc., (the 8th largest poultry processor in the country), Koch Foods (no relation to the Koch Bros. and the 135th largest private company in the country), PH Food Inc., MP Food Inc., a Pearl River Foods Inc. were raided.

Mike Hurst, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi stated "To those who use illegal aliens for a competitive advantage or to make a quick buck, we have something to say to you: If we find you have violated federal criminal law, we are coming for you," but he declined to say whether anyone other than the immigrants workers would be arrested and charged. Neither Mark Hickman, the founder and CEO of Peco Foods, Joseph Grendys, the billionaire owner of Koch Foods, or any of their executives or plant managers were arrested in yesterday's raids.

ICE prepared for the raids by setting up facilities at Mississippi Air National Guard base to process those detained, setting up misting fans and ordering 2,000 catered meals.

What ICE didn't quite do was plan for the fact that some of the people they detained were also parents, some of U.S. citizens. Local communities relied on volunteers to pick up children who were still waiting at school for their detained parents. Community centers and private businesses had to step up to house and feed the children last night.

A spokesman for ICE said that they contacted area schools when they started the raids so the schools could keep a lookout for any child that wasn't picked up and get in touch with their emergency contact. The spokesman also claimed that any detained parent who “is not being criminally arrested or is subject to mandatory detention, will be expeditiously processed."

Trump's zero tolerance policy requires the government to criminally prosecute everyone who illegally crossed the border or overstayed their visa. That means none of the detained parents will be released.

And contrary to Trump's insistence that these people are rapists, murderers, and drug dealers, community members say many of the people had quietly worked at the processing plants for 10 or 15 years.

ICE released 300 of the 680 detained in raids at Mississippi food processing plants

WTF? Releasing almost half? So their processes so crappy that they miss that often? So basically they just grabbed anyone brown (because we all know that no white boys were picked up) and hauled them off to jail/

Oh, ICE is still going to deport them.

AP News wrote:

In an email Thursday, Bryan Cox [ICE spokesperson] said more than 300 of the 680 people arrested Wednesday have been released from custody. He says about 30 were released at the plants and about 270 others were released from the military hangar where they had been brought after the raids to be processed.

He did not say why they were let go except to say those released at the plants had been let go due to “humanitarian factors.”

He said they “were placed into proceedings before the federal immigration courts and will have their day in court at a later date.”

Officials had said Wednesday that they would release detainees who met certain conditions, such as pregnant women or those who hadn’t faced immigration proceedings previously.

They'll just be deported months or years from now. And it will be a quiet trickle that local news probably won't even cover instead of national news that ICE is ripping hundreds of parents away from their children. All because Americans like cheap food and some people find working a hard and difficult job US citizens don't want to do better than what they could get in their home country.

OG_slinger wrote:

All because Americans like cheap food and some people find working a hard and difficult job US citizens don't want to do better than what they could get in their home country.

Well, also possibly because the workers dared to stand up for their human rights.

The businesses targeted included a poultry processing plant for Koch Foods Inc., which recently settled a sexual harassment suit brought against it by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $3.5 million. The suit alleged “that supervisors touched and/or made sexually suggestive comments to female Hispanic employees, hit Hispanic employees and charged many of them money for normal everyday work activities.” Immigrant rights activists suspect that the sexual harassment investigation made the plants a target for ICE, increasingly the likelihood that harassed workers in other plants won’t speak up about bad treatment out of fear of ICE retribution.

How soulless do you have to be to appeal a court order to provide basic necessities to the children you're stealing from their parents and locking up?

The Hill wrote:

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a previous court order mandating the Trump administration provide basic personal hygiene items to children in detention at facilities in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

The ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Fransisco hands a loss to the Trump administration, which had challenged a lower court decision two years ago ordering U.S. officials to provide basic personal hygiene items as well as adequate sleeping conditions, temperatures and food and water to children in detention at facilities in the Rio Grande Valley.

The appeals court's ruling essentially backs the two-decade old Flores agreement, which mandates key aspects of how immigrant children can be held by authorities, including that they be kept under the “least restrictive conditions” possible.

“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” the appeals court panel ruled.

“The district court properly construed the agreement as requiring such conditions rather than allowing the government to decide whether to provide them,” they added.

The cruelty is the point

Claims: Migrant children molested in US-funded foster care

AP wrote:

After local Guatemalan officials burned down an environmental activist’s home, he decided to leave his village behind and flee to the United States, hoping he’d be granted asylum and his little boy, whose heart was failing, would receive lifesaving medical care.

But after crossing the border into Arizona in May of last year, Border Patrol agents tore the man’s 7-year-old son from his arms and sent the father nearly 2,000 miles (3,220 kilometers) away to a detention center in Georgia. The boy, now 8, went into a U.S.-funded foster home for migrant children in New York.

The foster care programs are aimed at providing migrant children with care while authorities work to connect them with parents, relatives or other sponsors. But instead the boy told a counselor he was repeatedly sexually molested by other boys in the foster home.

A review of 38 legal claims obtained by The Associated Press — some of which have never been made public — shows taxpayers could be on the hook for more than $200 million in damages from parents who said their children were harmed while in government custody.

The father and son are among dozens of families — separated at the border as part of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy — who are now preparing to sue the federal government, including several who say their young children were sexually, physically or emotionally abused in federally funded foster care.

The US won’t provide flu vaccines to migrant families at border detention camps

CNBC wrote:

The U.S. won’t be vaccinating migrant families in holding centers ahead of this year’s flu season, despite calls from doctors to boost efforts to fight the infection that’s killed at least three children at detention facilities in the past year.

“In general, due to the short-term nature of CBP holding and the complexities of operating vaccination programs, neither CBP nor its medical contractors administer vaccinations to those in our custody,” a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

At least three children who were held in detention centers after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico have died in recent months, in part, from the flu, according to a letter to Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., from several doctors urging Congress to investigate health conditions at the centers.

The U.S. had previously gone almost a decade without any children dying while under U.S. immigration custody.

“I can tell you from personal experience that child deaths are rare events,” Harvard pediatrics professor Dr. Jonathan Winickoff said in an email. Winickoff, who is also the director of pediatric research for Harvard’s Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, signed on to the Aug. 1 letter with forensic pathologist Judy Melinek and Johns Hopkins public health professors Dr. Joshua Sharfstein and Dr. Paul Spiegel.

They said the U.S. death rate in children from the flu is about one in 600,000. So far, three children have died out of 200,000 people held at detention facilities along the border, they wrote.

“When I learned that multiple children had died in detention from potentially preventable causes, it truly disturbed me,” Winickoff said. “The country needs urgent answers to that question so that children stop dying in detention.”

Winickoff said that current holding conditions, like being placed in close proximity to other immigrants, make it easy to spread infectious diseases from person to person. He added that contracting the flu weakens a child’s immune system, making it harder to fight off other illnesses.

Trump has previously gone on record saying that immigrants are the source of "tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border" and that without tough border security immigrants would bring "large scale crime and disease" to America.

Even Trump's new favorite news network because they don't report his bad poll numbers is still pushing the age old scare that immigrants bring disease.

And, if you were curious, it's not undocumented immigrants causing the measles outbreak mentioned in the super racist OAN segment. The largest outbreaks happened in communities where anti-vaxxer ideas had taken root. In the case of measles, 75% of the cases were from tight knit Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in New York and New York City that had been targeted by a misinformation campaign by the anti-vax group Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health.

You want to get a pandemic? This is how you get a pandemic.

And death-from-deliberate-neglect camps, but we were well on our way to having those already.

Gawd, you'd think we'd want to vaccinate migrants so we can better track them using the GPS implants that the vaccines have.

Trump Administration Announces Plan To Detain Migrant Children For Longer

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced new rules that would allow border officials to detain migrant children for a longer period of time, ripping up a long-standing set of protections that prevent migrant children from being detained for more than 20 days.

The Flores settlement, established in 1997 after a 1985 class-action lawsuit involving several migrant children, limits the amount of time the government is allowed to detain an immigrant child to 20 days or less. The agreement also establishes minimum guidelines for safe and sanitary conditions in detention facilities, requiring the government to provide children with basic needs like food, water and medical care.

They are concentration camps.

The intentional, systematic, incarceration, and deprivation of an “undesirable people”, with a happy bonus of “accidental” deaths - sounds like Nazi Republican final solution policy, to me.

(The Nazis were just better at keeping records)

Whether learned or accidental, the current administration is definitely not making that mistake.

Judge bars Trump fast-track deportation policy, saying threat to legal migrants was not assessed

WaPo wrote:

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from dramatically expanding its power to deport migrants who have illegally entered the United States in the past two years by using a fast-track deportation process that bypasses immigration judges.

In a 126-page ruling, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a nationwide preliminary injunction shortly before midnight Friday, halting enforcement of the administration’s July 23 policy widening application of the “expedited removal” program to undocumented immigrants anywhere in the country who entered over the past two years.

Previously, only migrants caught within 100 miles of the border who illegally had entered within the preceding two weeks were subject to deportation without access to courts or lawyers.

Jackson ruled that the suing immigration advocacy groups, Make the Road New York, LUPE (La Unión del Pueblo Entero) and We Count, were likely to prevail in ongoing litigation and show irreparable harm being suffered by those they represent, including many legal immigrants and asylum seekers who could be swept up and expelled from the country without legal recourse.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration from detaining migrant children for indefinite periods

WaPo wrote:

A federal judge in Los Angeles has blocked the Trump administration from activating new regulations that would have dramatically expanded its ability to detain migrant children with their parents for indefinite periods of time, dealing a blow to the president’s efforts to tamp down unauthorized border crossings.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issued the permanent injunction Friday, hours after hearing arguments from the Justice Department and advocates for immigrants in a long-running federal case in the Central District of California.

Lawyers for the Justice Department had urged Gee to allow the Trump administration to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement, a 1997 federal consent decree that sets basic standards for detaining migrant children. The decree led to a 20-day limit for holding children in detention facilities that have not been licensed by the states for the purpose of caring for minors.

,,,

In the ruling Friday, Gee wrote that the regulations “fail to implement and are inconsistent with the relevant and substantive terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement” and therefore cannot take effect, noting that the agreement is a binding contract that was never appealed.

“Defendants cannot simply ignore the dictates of the consent decree merely because they no longer agree with its approach as a matter of policy,” she wrote. “Defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets.”

WP: CDC recommended that migrants receive flu vaccine, but CBP rejected the idea

EL PASO — As influenza spread through migrant detention facilities last winter, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vaccinate detained migrants against the virus, a push that CBP rejected, according to a newly released letter to Congress.

The CDC recommendation was revealed in a letter from the agency to Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC. The agency’s director, Robert Redfield, issued the letter Nov. 7 in response to questions DeLauro posed last month after the flu had taken a toll on migrants in U.S. custody during the past year.

An 8-year-old Guatemalan boy died of the flu while being detained near El Paso in December, a month before the CDC’s vaccination recommendation. In the months after CBP rejected the recommendation, at least two children — one in El Paso and one in Weslaco, Tex. — died after being diagnosed with the flu in Border Patrol custody, autopsy reports showed. Influenza outbreaks in Border Patrol detention facilities continued through May, sickening hundreds of people, including agents and detainees.

Hey, guess what is still happening on our southern border?

NBC: Detained migrants say they were forced to clean COVID-infected ICE facility
"This is a life or death situation," said a translation of the message from 70 migrants at the La Palma ICE facility in Arizona, obtained by NBC News.

LOS ANGELES — Asylum-seeking migrants locked up inside an Arizona Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center with one of the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases say they were forced to clean the facility and are "begging" for protection from the virus, according to a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.

"This is a life or death situation," said a translation of their message, dated May 18, and sent to the Florence Immigrants & Refugees Rights Project, a legal advocacy group that has filed a lawsuit on behalf of migrants in the facility.

Yahoo News: Immigrant detainees say ICE is using coronavirus disinfectant sprays that cause bleeding, burns and pain

Advocacy organizations have filed complaints against Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in Florida and California, claiming that migrants being held there are suffering severe side effects from disinfectant sprays being used to combat the coronavirus.

One of the complaints was sent by Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice and the advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants on May 21. That complaint, which focused on the Adelanto detention center in California, included testimonials from detainees who called in to a hotline run by Freedom for Immigrants.

“The guards have started spraying this chemical everywhere, all over everything, all the time. It causes a terrible reaction on our skin,” one of the detainees said, adding, “When I blow my nose, blood comes out. They are treating us like animals. One person fainted and was taken out, I don't know what happened to them. There is no fresh air.”

Safety guidelines for HDQ Neutral issued by its manufacturer, Spartan Chemical, warn that the disinfectant is “harmful if inhaled” and that it “causes severe skin burns and serious eye damage.” The guidelines specify that HDQ Neutral should be used “only outdoors or in a well-ventilated area” and protective gear should be worn while handling the chemical.

According to the complaint about Adelanto, which is one of the country’s largest ICE detention centers, staff there are spraying HDQ Neutral “every 15-30 minutes” on surfaces throughout the housing unit, which lacks ventilation. The complaint said “at least nine” detainees have experienced severe symptoms from the spray since May 11, including blisters, rashes, bleeding, fainting, breathing difficulties, headaches, stomach pain and nausea. Multiple detainees complained of receiving inadequate care for these symptoms.

“Many of us are very allergic to the substance that they have been spraying. It causes rashes and there is one man with blisters … They spray it on the phones, chairs, tables, every 15-20 minutes - all day & all night long,” said one of the detainees quoted in the complaint.

“There is no fresh air to breathe in the room. The guards have masks & gloves so don't seem bothered by it but many of us have very red eyes, sore throats, and headaches."

Also, CPB took the money the Democratic politicians gave them and spent it on ATVs instead of medical supplies.

We conclude that CBP violated the purpose statute when it obligated the line item
appropriations in the 2019 Emergency Supplemental for goods and services that
were not within the purpose availability of such line items. CBP plans to adjust its
accounts for several of these obligations and should do so for any additional
purpose violations by obligating the account available for the appropriate purpose. If
CBP lacks sufficient budget authority to make the adjustments, then it should report
a violation of the Antideficiency Act as required by law.

Defund the CBP while we're at it.

Yet another example of Lucy pulling up the football when Democrats trust Republicans to follow the law.

Mixolyde wrote:

Defund the CBP while we're at it.

Yet another example of Lucy pulling up the football when Democrats trust Republicans to follow the law.

If I were democratic leadership, it’d be one sensational headline after another - so quick that Fox News couldn’t possibly keep up with the changes and outrage. Cycle right through that sh•t and just start legislating. Push through judges, disband via lack of funding crummy programs such as this and hammer away at the ethics of the office and give real teeth to some of these ‘norms’ that have been trampled on.

BlackSheep wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Defund the CBP while we're at it.

Yet another example of Lucy pulling up the football when Democrats trust Republicans to follow the law.

If I were democratic leadership, it’d be one sensational headline after another - so quick that Fox News couldn’t possibly keep up with the changes and outrage. Cycle right through that sh•t and just start legislating. Push through judges, disband via lack of funding crummy programs such as this and hammer away at the ethics of the office and give real teeth to some of these ‘norms’ that have been trampled on.

That reminds me, where has Pelosi been since impeachment? It seems like they were good at dominating the news cycle through that process.

I trust K-pop stans to do a better job of that these days.

JLS wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Defund the CBP while we're at it.

Yet another example of Lucy pulling up the football when Democrats trust Republicans to follow the law.

If I were democratic leadership, it’d be one sensational headline after another - so quick that Fox News couldn’t possibly keep up with the changes and outrage. Cycle right through that sh•t and just start legislating. Push through judges, disband via lack of funding crummy programs such as this and hammer away at the ethics of the office and give real teeth to some of these ‘norms’ that have been trampled on.

That reminds me, where has Pelosi been since impeachment? It seems like they were good at dominating the news cycle through that process.

I trust K-pop stans to do a better job of that these days.

She's just waiting for her moment to shine. Tearing up a speech or doing a sick sarcastic clap. That's the stuff that really gets Trump.

Texas Tribune: ICE guards ‘systematically’ sexually assault detainees in an El Paso detention center, lawyers say

Allegations include guards attacking victims in camera “blind spots” and telling them that “no one would believe” them in ICE detention centers, which imprison about 50,000 immigrants each year at a taxpayer expense of $2.7 billion.