The Post's Michael E. Miller explains how shelters for immigrant children recently separated from their parents are different from other detention facilities.
The AP toured a holding facility in South Texas that's holding hundreds of immigrant children. While reporters were not allowed to record the tour, video released by border patrol shows them waiting in a series of cages created by metal fencing. (June 18) -- The Associated Press
Klamath Falls, OR— White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has been identified as the driving force behind the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that separates immigrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border.
Please call and leave a message and then share all over.
Here’s the comment line for the Justice Department: (202) 353-1555
You have to wait through a long ramble, but at the end, you can leave a message.
1) Identify yourself and the state in which you live.
2) Say something like: “I’m calling today to demand that the Justice Department immediately stop taking children from their families on the US border.”
3) Restrain your impulses and be polite.
Please call, people. This thing at the border is full Nazi.
How to contact the Department of Justice.
Trump and two members of his cabinet mounted an aggressive defense on Monday of his policy of separating children from their parents at the border in response to a growing outcry from members of both parties.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions also defended the practice, while insisting that “we do not want to separate parents from their children,” and later, at a tumultuous White House news briefing, Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, gave a forceful explanation of the administration’s actions, arguing that it had no choice, and insisting that the only way the practice could end would be through congressional action.
Ms. Nielsen insisted that the children who had been taken into custody were well cared for, but she was not able to answer several questions from reporters who demanded specifics about their whereabouts and care. She said she had not seen widely circulated footage of families penned behind chain-link cage fencing, nor heard audio taken of children wailing inside detention centers.
Initially, the criticism of what was occurring at the border came mainly from Democrats and former first ladies, including Laura Bush, whose husband also struggled with how to stop illegal immigration when he was president. On Monday, Michelle Obama and Rosalynn Carter both weighed in, with Mrs. Carter saying in a statement that “the practice and policy today of removing children from their parents’ care at our border with Mexico is disgraceful and a shame to our country.”
There is a law against “improper entry” at the border, as well as a consent decree known as the Flores settlement that limits to 20 days the amount of time that migrant children may be held in immigration detention. A 2008 anti-trafficking statute — signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush — also requires that certain unaccompanied minors be transferred out of immigration detention in 72 hours. None of those laws or precedents mean that children must be taken away from their parents.
In 1997, the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to a settlement in a case called Flores vs. Reno. Among other things, this settlement prohibits unaccompanied children who have crossed the border from being held in federal detention facilities for longer than 20 days. In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this 20-day prohibition applies to both accompanied minors (children who came along with family members) and unaccompanied minors.
A 2008 anti-trafficking statute — signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush — also requires that certain unaccompanied minors be transferred out of immigration detention in 72 hours.
Both the Flores settlement and the anti-trafficking law say that the authorities are permitted to separate children, but they are not required to do so. The Trump administration interpreted this as a requirement, or a “loophole,” that Congress must fix to stop the separations.
The energetic defense of the policy by Trump and members of his administration is at odds with the political reality on Capitol Hill, where Trump’s demands to change the laws faces opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.
It has Trump’s backing and that of his administration — “If we build the wall, if we pass legislation to end the lawlessness, we won’t face these terrible choices,” Mr. Sessions said Monday. But it is almost certain to fail.
Trump’s comments to the House Republicans on Tuesday will be critical to the bill’s chances. The immigration hard-liners who are uneasy about it are unlikely to be swayed by arguments from Mr. Ryan or other Republican leaders; they want reassurance from Trump.
Trump on immigration: "The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won't be." He also says, "We want safety and we want security for our country. If the Democrats would sit down, instead of obstructing, we could have something done very quickly. Good for the children. Good for the country. Good for the world."
What Trump wants is to blackmail the American people in order to build a wall. He does not care a thing about the children being taken from their parents. All he cares about is getting his wall built and wants to blackmail the Democrats into going along with his wall in order to change his "zero tolerance" policy that he created.
ABC News@ABC "I hate it," Trump says of administration's policy of separating children from parents at the U.S. border, claiming he has no ability to alter the policy without votes from Democrats. https://abcn.ws/2yfAW2y
There is, of course, no law requiring that families and children be separated at the border, and were there one it wouldn’t be Democrats — who have been the most outspoken critics of the policy — that would have created it.
In May, Trump’s own Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance” policy that would “prosecute every case that is brought to us” and thus, leading to the detention of migrant parents. Because children are not allowed in detention facilities, those who traveled to the border with their parents were separated from them and placed in a shelter.
As a result, parents have reportedly been told their children are being taken away for a quick shower when they are being moved to shelters with propagandized murals. A baby was reportedly plucked from her mothers’ breast while feeding. ICE has put out a flyer with a hotline that parents should call if they cannot find their kids.
Every living first lady — including Melania Trump — has condemned the policy of separating immigrant families caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a rare moment of bipartisan unity from the women who make up the small sorority of presidential spouses.
In the past 48 hours, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Rosalynn Carter all spoke out against the Trump administration’s border policy.
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