So far, the photos that have been released from the border detention centers do not show any girls. The Department of Health and Human Services hasn't been able to tell us where girls separated from their families are being sent. The Obama administration's former acting head of Immigration.
Klamath Falls, OR— The Trump Administration has released photos of young boys being held at detention centers for undocumented immigrants, but so far it has not released any images of young girls.
That discrepancy has led to Administration critics to start a Twitter hashtag #wherearethegirls. Pressed on the question at a White House briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that children are being cared for in the same way but that she would have to “look into” why no photos have been released.
Migrant rights groups say they are concerned about the risks that girls and young women face in detention, noting issues such as pregnancy, sexual assault, menstruation and psychological trauma from assault and rape they faced in their home countries.
A reporter pressed the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to release information and images of detained migrant girls and toddlers.
“Where are the Girls?” Child Trafficking Feared as DHS Can’t Say Where Immigrant Girls are Being Held.
As the debate swarms over illegal immigration, Americans on both the left and the right are at each other’s throats pointing fingers over who’s responsible. In the meantime, what was a “conspiracy theory” a month ago is now being confirmed by the very people accused of keeping people in cages. One question, however, has just been raised which gives one a dark and sickly feeling inside when thinking about the potential answers to it: “Where are the girls?”
There is something particularly disturbing about the minuscule amount of footage recently released by HHS last week—it only shows boys, and only boys age 10 and up. Where are the girls? Where are the toddlers? Where are the babies?
Could it be that HHS is only releasing footage of these older boys to portray an image of less suffering and compliant young men in order to keep the public happy? Are the places where girls are kept so disturbing that none of this footage can be released?
According to official policy, the government does not remove toddlers and babies from their mothers. However, as TFTP reported, a mother from Honduras who came to the U.S. seeking asylum with her family said she was breastfeeding her infant at a detention center when her baby was suddenly taken from her with no warning and no explanation.
Since the question of “where are the girls?” began to gain traction, a firestorm has erupted on social media of people fearing the worst. Many people are claiming that they are being trafficked or abused. Indeed, as TFTP reported yesterday, a police officer was arrested for abusing one of these little girls and threatening her undocumented mother with deportation if she spoke up.
Exactly what is happening to the girls that are making it over the border remains unclear.
These children are being used as pawns in a political game as rivals bicker over how to handle them while ignoring real factors that would curb this massive immigration problem.
Many Americans have been taught to dehumanize these refugees and to believe that it is not our problem. However, these refugees are a direct result of decades-old US policy.
It took the publicity brought by Sen. Jeff Merkley, among others, to finally make Americans aware of the horrendous policy of housing children ripped away from their parents who have come through border points to seek asylum.
ICE made detention centers available for the media to tour to show that the children are not being housed in cages, have beds to sleep on and activities to do. They did show that. They also showed that the kids must look at a mural of Donald Trump among other horrifying images.
They showed that traumatized children cannot get comforted by anyone, including their own siblings. MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff described it as de facto incarceration for minors who did nothing but come with their parents to escape violence and persecution in their home country.
No tours have been given of a facility housing girl. Are their facilities safe? Have they been sexually assaulted or exploited? What precautions are being taken to keep them protected? Why are we not hearing about them?
Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently asked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations.
This may seem like a run-of-the-mill government request for record-keeping efficiency. It isn’t. An entire paper trail for a system rife with human rights and constitutional abuses is at stake.
ICE has asked for permission to begin routinely destroying 11 kinds of records, including those related to sexual assaults, solitary confinement and even deaths of people in its custody.
Other records subject to destruction include alternatives to detention programs, regular detention monitoring reports, logs about the people detained in ICE facilities, and communications from the public reporting detention abuses. ICE proposed various timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for reports about solitary confinement.
It was successfully blocked and so far, ICE has not changed the records policy. But the fact that they wanted to do it says volumes.
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