by Roxanne Tellier
” If you knew of a child who was being forced by a parent or guardian to sleep on a cold concrete floor, in overcrowded surroundings, with screaming lights always on overhead that made it hard to sleep, had limited access to a bathroom, no way to brush their teeth, no soap and no towel — would you do something? “
That’s the question NPR‘s Scott Simon asked in his latest column. For many Americans under Trump’s spell – the answer is ‘no.’
Trump has always wanted some kind of a monument to celebrate his legacy as president. He wanted a wall … a multi-billion dollar wall … that I’m sure he’d inevitably gild to better reflect what he believes is his own brilliance.
Instead, history will look upon Trump’s administration with revulsion. His sadistic cruelty will give him a singular place of dishonour in a Hall of Infamy, where his actions will place him shoulder to shoulder beside other human monsters.
And his legacy will be the cries of abused, mistreated babies in concentration camps. The TrumpCamps. A place where the hopes of the downtrodden, the ‘huddled masses yearning to be free,‘ go to have their dreams beaten out of them.
Trump likes to say that he didn’t start this border policy, that he is only continuing on what President Obama had previously put into place. But, as a man who had told over 10,000 lies by the time he’d been in office for just two years, his words are .. you guessed it .. more lies.
” During the Obama administration, family separations were rare and predicated upon two conditions: whether border officials felt the parents or guardians posed a threat to the children, or whether the adults, under U.S. immigration law, had to be detained based on prior criminal convictions.” (The Los Angeles Times, Scott Martell)
” While it’s true that Obama did, during a 2014 surge in migration, implement wide-scale detention of families, Trump’s administration chose a much harsher path.. As part of a broader border crackdown, Trump instituted a “zero tolerance” policy in April 2018 that called for every illegal entry case to be prosecuted. That policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents before Trump walked it back two months later, amid international outcry, with an executive order. (The ACLU estimates over 700 families have been separated since then due to loopholes in a federal ruling that ordered the Trump administration to reunify separated families.)
While Obama was undoubtedly tough on immigration — his administration still holds the record for most deportations — border officials used discretion during his presidency to determine which illegal crossing cases to prosecute. On the other hand, in April 2018, the Justice Department under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions instituted a “zero tolerance” policy that called for every illegal entry case to be prosecuted. This resulted in children being separated from parents — even when the parents had done nothing more than try to cross the border.” (Vox.com/June 2019)
And, as Speaker Pelosi recently said, no migrant children died for 10 years prior, but already six are dead under the Trump regime and conditions are worsening.
So let’s address the moral loophole that so many of trump’s followers use to excuse their being complicit in the abuse of children – that the children should suffer, in order to punish the parents, and to deter others from coming to America, because they have ‘broken a law.‘
Well, crossing the border is actually only a misdemeanor. And asking for asylum, which is what the majority of these families are attempting to do, is a human right. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
And that’s before we even mention that the United States Constitution grants many of the same legal rights to non-citizens and citizens, as does the American legal system, which allows federal prosecutors to use their discretion when deciding whether to prosecute a crime.
But let’s say we do call their pleas for asylum and refuge a crime; at best, it is a misdemeanor. So just how far are you willing to go to punish them for this great ‘crime’?
And before you answer that … remember that there are other laws frequently broken by pretty much everyone, be they citizen, tourist, or asylum seeker. There are tons of opportunities to commit a misdemeanor in the United States, and maybe you yourself have done so at some time. Things like … buying fireworks, or pot … illegal in many states, federally illegal everywhere. Jaywalking. Cutting down your own tree for Christmas from a National forest. Trespassing on federal lands – if you like mountain biking on the Pacific Crest Trail, you better not have kids; should they choose to prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, the feds could grab them.
It’s very safe to say that the immigration laws, as put into place under Trump by Jeff Sessions, constitute a cruel and unusual interpretation and enforcement of normal border protection. Worse yet, the way they went about putting this quasi-legal abuse into place has only triggered yet more refugees intent on reaching America before the border is closed entirely. This plan has backfired spectacularly.
Perhaps there is a lesser, though just as noteworthy, part of Trump’s disgusting legacy; his perverse twisting of laws in order to thwart the nation’s freedom, rights, and democracy itself, and the gross, self-serving, monsters who rush to enforce his bidding.
Can you possibly imagine the logic used by this woman, as she attempts to argue that babies, toddlers, children, and parents really have no need for soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a towel, or even a bed? I can only believe that there are twisting worms and maggots in her skull that have replaced whatever brain she had prior to this court appearance.
Considering what private contractors are being paid to house the refugees – it’s around $750, per day, per person – it is hard to believe the contractors cannot afford to keep the children safe and sanitary.
For the private corporations driving this incarceration, the millions are rolling in, all paid for by the taxpayers. For just a little idea of what this is costing, consider that Comprehensive Health Services Inc., a private company based in Cape Canaveral, were paid $50.7 million to cover the costs of keeping 1,000 migrant kids warehoused between February 22 and July 6, 2019. Pretty sweet money for less than five months work.
And yet, government officials have blamed detention facilities lack of amenities on Congress’ not yet having passed an emergency funding package of almost $3 billion.
The sad truth is that “Money isn’t keeping guards from allowing people to access toilets,” she said. “Money isn’t causing guards to take clothing and medicine away from children.” Nope, it’s not the money that makes them sadists – they already were, and cruelty has always been the point of these camps.
This lack of human kindness is a vile enough comment on the lack of compassion being shown to these refugees. It’s so vile that journalist and author Michael Scott Moore, once held captive by Somali pirates, noted that the pirates at least gave him soap and a toothbrush. Trump’s administration treats migrants more harshly than Somali pirates do their hostages.
And Trump has the nerve to call other countries ‘third world shitholes.’
Despite the continual gaslighting around the existence and conditions of these camps, we are slowly beginning to understand the depth of the perverse cruelty implicit in how they are being run.
While the administration attempted to deny, in the beginning, that children were being separated from their families, it soon became clear that this separation was not only a key part of Sessions’ brutal orders, but that the staff and guards of the camps had no interest in the well being of the kids, nor had they any intention of ensuring that the children could at some point be reunited with their families. There were no records kept, even as the youngest of babies, just a few months old, were torn from their mothers’ breasts and put into freezing centres with no facilities to properly care for the children.
No identifying marks. No paperwork. Not even a tattoo, temporary or permanent, to ensure that these little ones would be able to see their parents again. That’s not how you treat immigrants, it’s how you treat children and adults whom you intend to enslave, or to use for sexual trafficking or as human guinea pigs. Without a paper trail, these asylum seekers were more likely to be raped or murdered by the Customs and Border Patrol than they were by the coyotes who preyed upon them on their long trek.
The horror stories of shocking neglect and incompetence by the staff that have come out in the last few weeks should be enough to break the heart of anyone not made of stone. In one case, four toddlers under the age of three … two year old babies! … were so severely neglected and sick that lawyers had to force … FORCE … the government to hospitalize the children, less they die in the camp.
“One 2-year-old’s eyes were rolled back in her head, and she was “completely unresponsive” and limp, according to Toby Gialluca, a Florida-based attorney.
She described seeing terror in the children’s eyes.
“It’s just a cold, fearful look that you should never see in a child of that age,” Gialluca said. “You look at them and you think, ‘What have you seen?’”
The camps are hellholes, and conditions are so unsanitary that the sites are ripe for tuberculosis, dysentery, or Durchfall, a disorder of the digestive system caused by improper and inadequate food. In fact, many babies and toddlers are already refusing food and water, as they are too frail to keep anything down.
Would you call the police if you knew that thousands of children were being held in cold, cramped, filthy and uncomfortable circumstances? Would you have the guts to report that the facilities where they are kept are riddled with flu and lice outbreaks, and the cells are so crowed that children and babies sleep on the floor, on a mat, beside an open toilet?
The lawyers that visited the Texas camp last week were sickened by the neglect and visibly filthy conditions, and appalled at the lack of proper adult supervision. The Associated Press report said that the site lacked adequate food, water or sanitation inside, and described teen mothers and other younger kids being asked to care for infants and toddlers on their own.
Conditions are ripe for the spread of contagious diseases like scabies, boils, rashes, and abscesses that result mostly from vitamin deficiency and infections. While some may argue that these camps are just holding places, not the death camps of World War Two, once the dominoes of illness begin to fall, death will certainly sweep through these grossly unsanitary centres.
I have often been accused of being too kind-hearted. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that I believe in treating every living creature with respect and kindness. I see neither of those being offered to the children of the camps.
Instead, Trump is now using the most sickening and gruesome accounts of this sadistic treatment of babies and asylum seekers as a rally point in his election stomping. He’s actively encouraging a blood lust in his fans, whipping up the worst qualities of these people who can only make themselves feel bigger by seeing others as smaller.
Trump plays on that divisiveness. He knows that if he turns his supporters against others, he can get away with his overt sadism and racism. He knows that, no matter how bad things get because of his tax or tariff decisions for his base, and even as he steals away their health care and social security, they treasure his promises to be even crueler to immigrants and those Trump calls his enemies.
This week’s announcement that ‘millions’ of illegal immigrants would be rounded up and deported was just one more action of a leader who is completely out of control and power drunk. The point was to terrorize these families who have long been integrated into American society, but who have not yet attained citizenship, often through no fault of their own. These are your neighbours, the people that care for your children and your sick and elderly, the people who work in your gardens and fields. They are the citizens least likely to commit crimes, and most likely to be drastically underpaid, which keeps the price of goods and services low for other Americans.
Just before giving the order to begin the round up, Trump decided to postpone the show — and put it back on the road for the July 4th weekend, a weekend once dedicated to the celebration of ‘life, liberty, and the American Way.”
Could there be a more fitting cap to his legacy of terror, detention, cruelty, and horrific neglect? Only he could turn America’s birthday into a day that will go down in infamy as a day filled with terror and the cries of the innocent.
When, inevitably, the pendulum swings back, and Trump has become history, I foresee a day when being called a “Republican” will have the same cachet as being called a “Nazi,” and the name “Trump” will be as reviled as that of “Hitler.”
That day cannot come soon enough.
frustratedboomers 