Editorials & Other Articles

riversedge

(70,262 posts) Mon Aug 6, 2018, 09:10 AM Aug 2018

If Team Trump can't reunite border families, someone needs to go to jail Will Bunch

opinion — Will Bunch
If Team Trump can't reunite border families, someone needs to go to jail | Will Bunch
Updated: August 5, 2018 — 12:58 PM EDT

Link to tweet

Paulina Gutierrez Alonzo, a 26-year-old Quiche indigenous woman, shows a photo of her 7-year-old daughter Antonia Yolanda Gomez Gutierrez on her cell phone during an interview at her grandfather’s house in Joyabaj, Guatemala. Gutierrez Alonzo was deported from United States in June and separated from her daughter who is currently at an immigration center in Arizona, despite the Thursday deadline for reuniting children with their families who were caught entering the country without authorization.

by Will Bunch, STAFF COLUMNIST @will_bunch | bunchw@phillynews.com

Contempt.

That’s the one word I keep coming back to when I think about how the Trump administration — from the president and attorney general of the United States down to rank-and-file border agents and a growing gulag of profiteering private contractors — has treated desperate Central American refugees along our southern border: Contempt.

Contempt for international refugee law — and, more importantly, basic human decency — when Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in response to President Trump’s dismay over unauthorized border crossings, declared a “zero tolerance” explicitly designed to use separation of young children from their parents as a tool to deter future migration.

Contempt for human rights when the “zero tolerance” policy allows a defense contractor with $248 million in government contracts to hold detained migrant children in windowless office buildings in Phoenix without kitchens or showers, where kids in U.S. government custody have been observed bathing themselves in sinks.

Contempt for the decency of children, not to mention the law, when these migrant kids are dispatched to a network of largely unaccountable shelters where the investigative reporters of ProPublica have now documented hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights and missing children in a system that one expert called “a gold mine” for predators.

The travesty of the Trump administration’s family separation policy has not withstood the sunlight of scrutiny. It has led to massively high levels of public opposition, noisy protests and global condemnation of one of the more shameful episodes in American history.

Crucially, it has also been found in violation of the law......................................................................

6 replies

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If Team Trump can't reunite border families, someone needs to go to jail Will Bunch (Original Post) riversedge Aug 2018 OP

Kicked and recommended. Uncle Joe Aug 2018 #1

I've been struggling with the real possibility that some of these families don't want to be reunite genxlib Aug 2018 #2

If what you say is true, those very families would have been seeking asylum and as such should have shraby Aug 2018 #3

Kidnapped and tortured the children/babies. lark Aug 2018 #4

Agree 1000% genxlib Aug 2018 #5

Trump, Sessions et al need to be charged at The Hague for crimes ag humanity, both kids & parents stuffmatters Aug 2018 #6

Uncle Joe

(58,378 posts)

1. Kicked and recommended.

Reply to riversedge (Original post)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 09:11 AM

Aug 2018

Thanks for the thread riversedge

genxlib

(5,528 posts)

2. I've been struggling with the real possibility that some of these families don't want to be reunite

Reply to riversedge (Original post)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 09:32 AM

Aug 2018

I don't mean that in the child abandonment way. I mean that in the tragic choice between horrible outcomes.

Imagine that moment in every apocalyptic disaster movie where parents are forced to give up their children so that they can go on living without them. It is a cliche that adds drama to every end-times cataclysm movie but it could be a very real choice for some of these parents.

What if you were sent back to a Country where you faced fear and violence on a scale that we can not imagine. And you were left with the impression that your children might be allowed to stay in the US. Isn't it possible that some parents would want their kids to stay even if they couldn't be with them.

Of course this does not excuse the Trump administration for their failures. In fact it condemns them for not considering refugee status for people who have very real fears of danger.

It breaks my heart that this happened to people. But it might be a continuing tragedy that they are actually in a position to have to make these decisions.

shraby

(21,946 posts)

3. If what you say is true, those very families would have been seeking asylum and as such should have

Reply to genxlib (Reply #2)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 09:48 AM

Aug 2018

been allowed to stay WITH their children.

No two ways about it. The trump administration broke the law and there should be some looking out from behind bars in the very near future. They kidnapped those children any way you look at it.

lark

(23,134 posts)

4. Kidnapped and tortured the children/babies.

Reply to shraby (Reply #3)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 10:06 AM

Aug 2018

Put them in facilities with no showers, put them in overcrowded facilities where there was standing room only, where they had to sleep on floors, where it was so cold and they only gave them those thin tin blankets, moved them all over the country just to keep them away from their parents, didnt track them so didn't intend to reunite to begin with, drugged them into zombiehood, killed at least 1, and a number have been sexually assaulted, locked them in cages, lied to them constantly, didn't provide needed medical care which is what killed the 1 reported so far, didn't provide care to babies, wouldn't even change their diapers or hold them when that's a major need for infants, trained older girls how to change diapers, won't let reporters or even legislators in to see the children, charging taxpayers $700/day per child and only major drumpf donators got the contract (payback) and you know there are also kickbacks for drumpf, plus just the agony of not knowing where your parents/family are and not being able to even speak to them.

genxlib

(5,528 posts)

5. Agree 1000%

Reply to shraby (Reply #3)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 10:18 AM

Aug 2018

It is not offered as an excuse in any way. In fact, it reinforces the fact that these people should never have been treated as criminals to begin with.

stuffmatters

(2,574 posts)

6. Trump, Sessions et al need to be charged at The Hague for crimes ag humanity, both kids & parents

Reply to shraby (Reply #3)

Mon Aug 6, 2018, 04:07 PM

Aug 2018

They have violently violated International Refugee Laws. Kidnapping from the parents and mass imprisoning refugee children, imprisoning and deporting the refugee parents back to certain death, psych torture & lifelong damage of unimaginable magnitude for
all.
This is pure savagery for profit & it is against our International laws. If the Republican Congress refuses to stop this or SCOTUS inevitably will not, this case must go to The Hague.
Notice how eager Trump & the Repubs are to be freed from these higher authorities like UN,NATO, The Hague... so that they can commit their for profit, racist atrocities without any institutional constraints.

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