It is beautiful!

...why did they do this?

Why did they take their religious objects and icons?

Because those were their last shreds of protection and hope.

The whole idea is to demean and dehumanize them, much like the Nazis did to the Jews.

These images all predate Trump.

Our policies and practices with respect to immigration have long been atrocious. Trump has made them far worse, but using Obama-era photos to condemn Trump will come back to bite us.

...it even transcends the current atrocity over separating children from parents.

Don't imagine for one moment that the Obama administration didn't hear from us, loud and clear, about each and every dehumanization associated with their own immigration policy and actions.

Let's not gloss over history to pretend like there weren't numerous transgressions toward humanity over his term, albeit under a decidedly more attentive and responsible chain of leadership under the Democratic president and administration.

These issues surrounding immigration which are being exacerbated and exploited under Trump are the result of the republican impasse which hasn't allowed any comprehensive legislation to move forward, much less any of these specific fixes like restraining Trump from kidnapping children, to protecting undocumented children of immigrants from deportation.

In fact, this current controversy is being precipitated by Trump as leverage for his border nonsense in the republicans' immigration bill, but also to hold firm on Sessions 'zero-tolerance' border policy which is the white supremacists' (Miller's) dream.

All of this stems from dehumanizing immigration laws and policies which predate Trump. A great deal of what we're outraged about today over immigration can't be disengaged from legislative fights which have persisted over decades.

Sure, we can and should clean up Trump's act. He's taking the nation to a dangerous place from which it will be hard to pull back. But we shouldn't just stop at the Obama era and assume all is well. The neglect of organizing and passing comprehensive fixes into law is what brought us here, in so many ways.

So, yes. Obama-era images and artifacts apply, especially when their uncomfortable reality overlaps into present day.

I already understand that.

My point is that the person responding was attributing motives to the administration that was responsible for taking those specific rosaries away, without realizing they were condemning Obama.

l am well aware that our immigration policies have been atrocious for years - BUT - we need to use facts carefully so that the label "fake news" can't be legitimately applied to our side. To do that, the photo needs to be clearly identified as from Obama's term (or as predating Trump), and then document that the practice continues.

The right has alrady caught on to the use of this image, and are using it to bolster their meme that liberals are the purveyors of fake news: https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2018/06/13/guys-theyre-doing-it-again-photo-of-rosaries-collected-at-the-border-during-the-obama-years-goes-viral-because-of-trump/

We shouldn't use photos of atrocities that pre-date Trump to condemn him, without being clear that they are illustrative but not literal.

...the op stands on its own. It is a relevant and prescient example of the dehumanizing process which exists today.

I'm really not going to take responsibility for how some idiot on the internet is using this photo. I mean, who is really listening to something that banal?

Did you miss the caption underneath the photo which states that it spans years since 2005?

for this atrocity were aware they were condemning Obama?

I did miss the date - largely becasue it is overshadowed by the prominent caption/tweet comparing the images to the holocaust

Are you seriously claiming that you were not using it to condemn Trump (as opposed to decades of racist and atrocious immimgration policies)? If your intent was really the latter, why not be explicit about it.

...from those of immigrants today?

Whoever is doing that needs to be educated and informed.

I would assume that the policies are still in effect, and worse.

instead of obscuring the Obama-era source of the image. You have the opportunity to do what you said needed to be done, and chose not to.

...you projected your own concerns onto this post.

If someone on this has some view that you disagree with, have at them. You've hit a dead end with me.

and say, with a straight face, that those responding were aware they were responding to photos taken during the Obama era?

...it doesn't have Trump's name ANYWHERE.

It says CLEARLY UNDER THE PIC, that the images date back to 2005. I worded it deliberately so as not to neglect the fact that the policies were likely continuing.

I didn't post it in the mindset that I was part of the Trump resistance Borg that you're defending here. I posted it as I would ANY image or article that highlights the inhumanity against immigrants and refugees in this country.

The photo is more than likely one which has not been seen by most of the general public, much less known has to be the actual policy which almost certainly is still in effect.

The point is that my post is absolutely correct according to my interest and intent. I didn't mislead and I didn't obfuscate from the fact that the images dated back to 2005. I put that fact RIGHT UNDER THE IMAGE.


Now goddamit, you've trashed up my thread with your nonsense to the degree that you MUST HAVE gotten your point across by now. It's SPLASHED ALL ACROSS THE THREAD.

What's next? A good dose of SHAMING?

...decided to go down the garden path and lay this at Barack Obama's feet.

Ahem.

If indeed they do, what is the rationale behind it? We don't need to make assumptions about that.

has been with us for a long time. Trump has managed to bring it to the surface and magnify it. Trump is the fulfillment of all the unaddressed racism and bigotry, not the initial cause.

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097f291c7a8e33fb3908ec/master/w_964,c_limit/IAM_00058289-copy.jpg

AD: Reward your congressional representative with a gift that symbolizes our shared hatred for the Brown Vermin who attempting to invade and contaminate our blessed country. Contact ICE for pricing.

Appeasing the nazis again. You take a moms child then she can not comfort herself with praying the rosery.

https://shareblue.com/steve-bannon-attacks-pope-children-family-separation/

American bishops on dRumpf's policy:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/catholic-bishops-statement-on-trump-immigration-policies-family-separation-border/

(And those guys got put in by rightwing JPII and Ratzinger.)

My faith restored in Pope Frank

The media is happy to hype when my rightwing bishop, Zubic, sez vote R or go to hell.

But the catholic hierarchy saying something normal commonsense moral is never going to be news. A non-factor in any political discussion of the issues.

Instead we'll hear from Opus Dei Santorum, and bircher loving 'catholics' like Bannon and Conway.

and many church leaders have spoken out against Trump's immigration policies.

Why are you attacking Catholics who have forcefully condemned this. In fact they have come under server criticism from the Right Wing Haters Inc. for their outspoken appeals for compassionate treatment of these people fleeing atrocious situations.

Los Angeles Times, Saturday, June 16, 2018, page A2
Decrying 'zero tolerance'
Faith leaders call Trump policy of splitting migrant families sad, sinful

US Conference of Catholic Bishops
African Methodist Episcopal Church
Southern Baptist Convention
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Franklin Graham
Poor People's Campaign

Don't ever accuse me of ignorant hatred, then throw Franklin Graham in my face.

Had I left anyone off, I could have been accused of expurgating the list. Right?

...there is so much evil in all of this.

Who are we?

actions with very selective Bible verses. Tell me again how the tRump administration is based on and blessed by evangelical christians. Oh, that's right I forgot. My trumpster, evangelical sister attacked me because I was not a true christian unless I embraced the president, who supposedly is chosen by god. She is also actively anti-catholic and literally hates them. She has purged all Catholic friends and included me (I am Lutheran) so apparently Lutherans aren't welcome in their world either. You are right. To them rosaries are nothing more than trophies. I become more horrified every day by what is happening in my family and in this country.

I read articles this morning that show that we continue to strip immigrants of their meager possessions that they brought with them. What does this say about us? Personally, I don't like this practice and I deplore what is happening to their children at our borders.

when we use images from the Obama era - to identify them as such, and then explain that the practices are clear. To do otherwise is misleading, and gives Republicans ammunition for their claims of fake news.

Optics is using whatever image we can find to hype people up - even if using the image is misleading.

Do pieces of jewelry and money end up in the pockets of Border agents?

I want the answers to those questions.

The problem is that the regulation limits retention of the items to 30 days - and most detentions last far longer.

I cited the law when this image first circulated a couple of weeks ago. Look for 2-3 other threads with this image. (I'll go back and find it later and edit this post - got to run now)

These personal items were not "held", they were thrown away in the garbage!

After that they are disposed of, if not claimed by their owner.

You can like the answer or not, but the authority is a regulation. The regulation, by its terms, only provides for confiscation followed by retention for 30 days. Beyond 30 days, the items are disposed of.

...I can't independently verify this right now, but the reporter on MSNBC who has led the way on uncovering the conditions in the detention centers just said there's a MINIMUM stay of 54 days.

And these items (taken during the Obama era) were not returned to the owner.

The source of these objects is the assumption that detentions will be short. The period to claim them is 30 days, and even during the Obama era, detentions exceeded 30 day - how do you think these objects were collected if Trump's policies are different as to this aspect?

Most immigrants are still in detention 30 days later. There is no provision for long-term storage of the items.

I'm not saying it is a good policy - just that there is no difference in the treatment between the Trump administration and prior adminsitrations. The items in the photo were confiscated and disposed of pursuant to the same regulation that currently exists.

Border Patrol hasn't been much better - the screening of border agents has always been abysmal. There might have the few guys or gals who really do think they're protecting America, but there's way to many cynical tools who are more inclined to bully someone who can't legally fight back than do their jobs in a professional manner - or stand off and laugh as their co-workers dehumanize the people they catch.

NPR had a story on the screening of ICE agents that a few years ago I remember hearing about when MS-13 started being talked about to gin up white fear - apparently DHS's background checks are 2 to 5 years lagging even back around 2005, so over the years there have been quite a few gang members, abusers, and racists hired based on whatever they put down on their clearance surveys that should never have been near the border - either they turn a blind eye to smugglers who are associated with the gang or cartel the agent belongs to, or the agent use their guise of official authority to hunt down brown people for their own pleasure in relative isolation and with tacit approval from their management.

Back when I lived in the East County, the sheriff's deputies I was acquainted with have said that Border Patrol tends to get the wash-outs and burn-outs they wouldn't hire - and that's really telling, as way too many sheriff's deputies are still authoritarian a-holes who pick and choose who they're going to "apply the law to" (in their words).

Haele

this is just plain disgraceful.

This is a visual that will remain forever. Like those from Nazi Germany. Taking the very religion from people. Rosaries aren't necessary, but are very meaningful to Catholics. I remember my grandmother visiting, sitting in the rocker while we watched tv; she'd do her rosary thing religiously. You say hail mary's or whatever for each bead, and work your way through the beads. It's very important to Catholics.

They also confiscate Bibles and religious jewelry.

What is most important right now is that we demand the press be allowed in to report what is really happening to these kids.

When any organization has a culture of abuse, abuse will happen. Trump and the people he has running the DHS have an attitude that these people need to be punished. That is certainly filtering down to the guards as we've already seen. Under this culture it is a certainty that violence will occur against the prisoners. We need to see now! I fear horrific things are occurring to these defenseless children. And why and where are they hiding the little girls?

We as the public demand to see what is being done in our name. Let the cameras in!

They were also expressing concern about pedophiles applying to work with these children. What a comforting thought, right. And what about parents being deported without their children. What are they doing with these kids left behind?

Times 1000

Just that final little piece of humiliation and dehumanization, I guess.

I'm so mad about this, I'll tell you. When we flip the houses, I'm going to be putting serious pressure on my US Senators and Representative to set up a tribunal for these Trump immigration people so they can be tried for crimes against humanity.

And I'm not shitting anybody here. This isn't like what we did in '09 where we graciously chose to ignore the war crimes committed by the Bushies.

No.

The foul, inhumane and sick treatment of these children - ripping them away from mothers and putting them in cages - MUST BE ENDED NOW, and those who did it must be held to account.

We did NOT accept the argument that, "I was only following orders" at Nuremberg, and we should not accept it now. These people know what they are doing, and they could have refused. Therefore they need to be tried for crimes against humanity.

When I worked psych wards in the Navy, we always confiscated anything that a patient could use to kill themselves, including rosaries, shoe laces, jewelry, etc. The difference is that these items were placed in safe keeping and returned to the patient when they were discharged.

On a personal note, a friend of mine hanged himself with the laces from his moccasins because the intake person failed to notice them when he was admitted.

As you can see, most responses in the thread assume they were taken recently. We need to be scrupulous about facts used to condemn Trump. Leave false & misleading images to Trump and his acolytes.

Unfortunately, our immigration policies have been atrocious for decades - including during the Obama years, when these photos were taken.

Note the date on this article (containing the image you've posted here) is January 1, 2016, 11 months before Trump was elected.

...the issue of immigration isn't just a string that unravels from the beginning of the Trump administration, however drastically he's exacerbated the abuses.

The post and the article is clear about the origins of the images. Dehumanizing immigration policies don't vanish at the edge of the Obama-era.

that people assume the image was taken under the Trump adminstration, and from the comments you've made - you are aware that far too many people beleive it is new under Trump.

Unless your intent is to mislead people into believing the image was taken under the Trump administration, you should label it in your post - especially when you see the assumptions people are making. Not to mention that the points you make in this post, and in your earlier response to me, would be far more powerfully made if they were included in your OP - rather than permitting people to think that it all started with Trump.

As to whether rosaries are being taken - likely, but I have not seen it documented anywhere. The regulation is not specific to rosaries, so it is an administrative policy decision as to what is taken. I can't imagine Trump is better than Obama on this matter - but, again, it would be better to be clear that it is (as near as I can tell) just an assumption that Trump continues the practice as to rosaries.

...advocacy does not begin and end with opposition to Trump.

I think it's folly to advocate from that standpoint. The dehumanization of immigrants and refugees is what's conveyed in this image, in this post.

The fact that it's associated with the recent atrocities of the Trump administration isn't some kind of conundrum, it's a perfect storm of opposition. It's an opportunity to dig deeper into the roots and dirt of the issue.

You should know that there has been significant resistance over the years in our own party to changes and remedies which many in affected communities have been advocating. What we don't need at this point is some papering over issues associated with immigration to feather or fine-tune some political goal.

Outrage shouldn't stop at the edge of the Obama-era. Not that he should be blamed for everything, but we should at least acknowledge the past.

And we shouldn't fear the politics of that, as we take advantage of the unanimity of concern we have right now over these families' plights, to press for permanent solutions that can't be undone by the whim of an errant Executive.

So, that's what you're going to get from me on this, Ms. Toad. This post is effective because it transcends today's politics.

But you made a choice, by posting a tweet that clearly echoes the current non-transcending meme that Trump is Hitler-esque.

Our own side has atrocious immigration policies - I've said that for years (and been condemned on DU for my views on this matter). Feel free to search for my posts well before the Trump era on this issue.

What troubles me is solely using an Obama-era photo in the midst of an immediate and extremely non-transcending condemnation of the Trump administration, without being crystal clear that the image is not from the Trump adminsitration.

...I'm not going to take responsibility for your hyperbolic concerns plastered all over the post (as if they weren't enough to convey whatever you're obsessed with on this thread).

Repeatedly, in recent weeks, photos from the Obama era have been used to condemn Trump and compare him to Hitler (including at least 2 prior threads with this image).

We need to be better than that.

...it clearly states when the photos originated, as does the article.

Trump is NOT in the post. My advocacy doesn't begin or end with confronting Trump. I have every right to advocate from my OWN POV.

I have already acknowledged that I missed the small date below the photo, and since then what I have done is to describe the prominent reference to the holocaust (caption & everything above the photo) - which you are well aware people are connecting with Trump.

Your OP does not make the point that you now contend you were trying to make (a history of bad immigration policies and practices) - as is evident by the responses in this thread. If you are trying to speak more broadly, there is an easy fix.

...more of this shit?

Go bother someone else.

Your post generated a much needed discussion. I salute you.

A Janitor Preserves the Seized Belongings of Migrants
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-janitors-collection-of-things-confiscated-from-migrants-in-the-desert





By Peter C. Baker

March 12, 2017

When migrants are apprehended, Customs and Border Protection agents dispose of personal-hygiene items such as toilet paper during intake.
THOMAS KIEFER / INSTITUTE

Tom Kiefer was a Customs and Border Protection janitor for almost four years before he took a good look inside the trash. Every day at work—at the C.B.P. processing center in Ajo, Arizona, less than fifty miles from the border with Mexico—he would throw away bags full of items confiscated from undocumented migrants apprehended in the desert. One day in 2007, he was rummaging through these bags looking for packaged food, which he’d received permission to donate to a local pantry. In the process, he also noticed toothbrushes, rosaries, pocket Bibles, water bottles, keys, shoelaces, razors, mix CDs, condoms, contraceptive pills, sunglasses, keys: a vibrant, startling testament to the lives of those who had been detained or deported. Without telling anyone, Kiefer began collecting the items, stashing them in sorted piles in the garages of friends. “I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he told me recently. “But I knew there was something to be done.”

Kiefer, who is now fifty-eight, had moved to Ajo from Los Angeles, in 2001, hoping to simplify his life, purchase a home, and focus on his passion: taking pictures. (Previously, he’d been a collector and dealer of antique cast-iron bed frames, and, before that, a graphic designer.) He took the C.B.P. job, in 2003, for purely practical reasons: it paid ten dollars and forty-two cents an hour, and it seemed unlikely to steal mental space away from his photography projects. Now he began photographing his C.B.P. collection in his studio, arranging and rearranging items, sometimes putting a single stuffed animal or T-shirt in the frame, more often capturing like with like: dozens of roll-on deodorant sticks, hundreds of nail clippers. Today, he has taken hundreds of photographs of objects he brought home from the processing center. Together they make up “El Sueño Americano” (“The American Dream”), an ongoing project that, thanks to its unconventional perspective on U.S. migrant policies, has launched Kiefer into a photography career he’s dreamed of for decades.

Spending time with the confiscated items—collecting them, curating them, looking at them, photographing them—changed Kiefer’s relationship to his job. Before, he’d been punching the clock so that he could get back to photography; now he felt awakened to hundreds of human dramas playing out around him during each shift. He’d always known, technically, about the C.B.P.’s strict confiscation policies, which were posted on bilingual signs and applied to all items classified as either “non-essential” or “potentially lethal.” But he hadn’t spent much time thinking about these policies, and he hadn’t realized how broadly they were applied, or just how many of the confiscated items—including cell phones and wallets, many still containing I.D.s, prepaid debit cards, and cash—were ending up in the trash, never to be returned. Increasingly, Kiefer felt uncomfortable at work: angry at the system that employed him, sad for the people being “processed,” and afraid that he would be caught making off with government property. But he kept sneaking out what he could, kept building his piles, and kept taking pictures, which at first he showed to no one.

Many of the photographs that make up “El Sueño Americano” are clean and bright, even exuberant: a radiant sea of toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes, all pointed in the same direction, like a swarming Pop-art school of fish; a plastic quilt of condoms, their multi-hued wrappers advertising a cornucopia of brands, flavors, and designs. These lively objects can seem incongruent with the gravity of their backstories. “I have been criticized—by some art-world people—for making pictures about the migrant experience that don’t speak directly to the grimy extremities of risking your life to cross the border,” Kiefer said. A striking contrast to “El Sueño Americano” is the work of John Moore, who has also photographed the everyday property carried by migrants—items not confiscated but found on their dead bodies and encased in plastic bags held at a forensics lab in Arizona. But Kiefer sees his project as a counterweight to C.B.P.’s dehumanizing practices, which yank everyday objects from the contexts that imbued them with meaning. He hopes not just to draw people’s attention to those practices but also to evoke the value the objects must have once had to their owners. “I’m doing something different,” he told me. “I’m presenting these deeply personal objects in a way that is reverential and respectful.”.....................................................