The Trump Policy of Separating Families at the US Border

[Bluegemz]

 

[AGBF]

People keep saying that the children are "pawns", but sometimes do use the phrase that they have been "kidnapped" by Trump. That is exactly the case. Why is no one using the real word for what they are: hostages? Trump wants a hostage negotiator called in. He has, indeed, kidnapped the children. He is hiding the babies, the small boys, and all of the girls. He is hiding the cages and the real living conditions. One mother interviewed was actually told that she was going to be sent home to Central America and that her child, whom she had not seen, would be kept in the United States! The children are hostages. They are being held by Trump until his stupid wall is built!

Finally, someone is using the "H" word!!!

It's Frank Bruni in "The New York Times".

"Trump’s Small Hostages"


"Why don’t we call the terrified children whose incarceration is riveting the country what they are at this point?

Not migrants. Not detainees. Not pawns, although that comes closest to the mark.

They’re hostages.

..."​

Go, Frank Bruni!​

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/opinion/donald-trump-immigrants-children.html

 

[AGBF]

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-r...nload?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Thanks, Elliot. It's nice to see it in black and white. The Zero Tolerance Policy, like The Final Solution. Stated plainly so that no one can be in any doubt about what it is. The Final Solution and The Zero Tolerance Policy. The Final Solution (to the Jewish Problem) and The Zero Tolerance Policy (of Spics) sound so much nicer without the parts in parentheses don't they?

 

[Bron357]

I listened to the audio and I sobbed and sobbed.
Horrific.
I get that the US doesn’t want random immigrants entering the US but separating young, frightened and confused children from their parents, how can this be right?
My daughter, age 4, was separated from me and lost (still safe though) for a grand total of 10 minutes and she was inconsolable as was I.
Sure, process them, fine them, send them back, whatever but NEVER separate children from their family. That is inhumane.

 

[icy_jade]

It is inhumane and I am horrified that the US is doing this to innocent children and their families when I’ve grown up expecting the US to be a defender of human rights. The recording was heart breaking.

 

[Arkteia]

I am remembering not Hitler (who gassed kids together with parents), but Stalin's Gulag where kids would either get with parents, or sometimes be born there. They were raised in a separate barrack, I read an account about it. And then in an orphanage. Some met their parents 10-20 years after they were separated.

I am horrified that the world may think that we all here support Trump's policy.

 

[Dancing Fire]

Every parent would go bat s$&t crazy if someone had treated their child this way. Why do they find it acceptable to treat other peoples children this way?

Simple solution, don't bring your childs into U.S. illegally. If it was this easy my grandpa could have saved a lot of money for sponsoring us here into the U.S. legally.

 

[icy_jade]

I think only psychopaths will find this practice acceptable.

 

[AGBF]

I think only psychopaths will find this practice acceptable.

Well, I have one for you. One besides Trump, I mean.

While I was driving today I had the radio on. It was just "background noise" while I concentrated on driving but I remember hearing that some people really loved hearing those migrant children cry for their parents and seeing those migrants suffer, that they didn't just not mind it, but they loved it. And the commentator mentioned Corey Lewandowski. He said if Trump had made fun of a disabled reporter while campaigning for president, right in front of everyone in his campaign (which he did), why wouldn't people following him love this? And Lewandowski does. He enjoys it.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/20/lewandowski-fox-news-womp-womp-ctn-sot.cnn

 

[Dancing Fire]

I wish the Dems. would explain to the 1.8 million dreamers of why they didn't accept Trump's offer (a path towards citizenship). b/c ,We all know the Dems. are using them as political pawns.

 

[Babyblue033]

Simple solution, don't bring your childs into U.S. illegally. If it was this easy my grandpa could have saved a lot of money for sponsoring us here into the U.S. legally.

I never get into politics, never mind immigration debates, but I just need to say this. Wrong actions of others (not getting into debates about whether or not they're wrong) does not justify or excuse our own horrific responses to it. Those actions are our own choices, we must own it and not shift blames as if we are somehow forced into doing it.

FYI, I'm a naturalized citizen myself and a child of immigrants, so very familiar with challenges of legal citizenship first hand.

 

[Bron357]

Simple solution, don't bring your childs into U.S. illegally. If it was this easy my grandpa could have saved a lot of money for sponsoring us here into the U.S. legally.

You were fortunate to have a grandpa who could afford to sponsor you. I’m sure if these people had the contacts and the means, they would do it the legal way.
I think we forget sometimes, that while we have a roof over our head, food to eat, employment, education, health care, that others do not have these things. I don’t think it’s a quick or easy decision for these people to leave their homes, other family and friends to attempt an illegal crossing into the US. They must be both determined and desperate. They are taking a huge risk.
I’m not suggesting that the US open the borders, let every Tom, Dick and Harry in, people entering illegally should be stopped. Then should then be quickly processed and according to their status, either returned or put through the immigration process.
At no stage however should children be separated from their parents, to do so is inhumane.

 

[perry]

I do not know how to adequately describe how wrong this is and how I feel about the people justifying it.

Today I listened to some of those justifications; and it seems as if the people providing them don't even have any common sense.

My basic response was (and is): While it is true that people who are charged with a Federal Misdemeanor can be jailed after being charged; that is rare and typically only in the case of serious concerns that potential immigrants rarely have.

Furthermore; when people are jailed their children are almost always placed with family, relative, or friends within hours (and usually the people being jailed has input into that). In the past, immigrant children have been transported to their home country for that. It is exceedingly rare for the children of someone jailed to be placed in foster care. Even then (and I'm not going to claim foster care is a panacea); they at least are in some kind of family situation.

Even war prisoners are treated better than how Trump is treating the children affected (Gulf Wars being the latest examples - and many many Iraqis did not believe how well they were treated after capture/surrender and while in the war prison camps).

Even the ugliest examples of the American past - where families were incarcerated (WW II, and Indian Tribes) did not separate children from their family/relatives.

I won't say what is happening is beyond comprehension. It has after-all happened in the past.

I am stunned that someone has not found a legal lever to have it stopped on the Federal Court level.

My other comment is: So, this is what the modern republican's call "family values." I am sure that many will keep that in mind in the future...

Perry

 

[AGBF]

Many of these children will never see their parents again. Their parents will be deported back to their Central American countries of origin and the children ripped from their arms will be part of the foster care system after this mess in detention centers ends. I didn't even realize this at first. I kept thinking of the trauma of being taken from my own parents as a child and of having a child taken from as as a child was taken from the man who went mad from his inability to do anything and hanged himself. But it is worse than that. It is the end for many families. It is only now becoming clear to me that the government of the United States has no desire to keep track of anyone. People will never be brought together again. This is far beyond the tragedy of a trauma that will will stay with children all their lives (as if one day they will be back with their parents). It is just the beginning of a life without their parents ever again.

Trump is really evil. As in Nazi evil. When I see him smile, now, I see pure evil.

 

[Bluegemz]

I have serious doubt that any group who immigrated and was ‘naturalized’ will be as safe as they may think they are now, once this mentality is unleashed. For Trump has no will to consider reality, only his own primitive impulses, and the unhinged, false reality which he drills into the public by repetition of delusional and deranged tweets. He will bend laws, distort, omitt, and manipulate the inspirations on which the Declaration Of Independence, and the Constitution were drafted, and the sacred human laws for which it stands. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”...

Who will be next is the only question. Soon it might be that Chinese are stealing our jobs, or Eastern Europeans, Indians, Muslims...who ever. Parents with mixed race children will have to prove that they are biological parents....as his animalistic base cheers, realizing only later, that they have abdicated their own human rights in the process. Only when the despair intensifies in magnitudes greater than it is now, to discover that they have no health care, infrastructure in tatters, are too uneducated for good jobs in which they can get ahead, can’t get a good education because the system supports education for the rich, and when they themselves are targets, will they sober up to the reality, including that DT never ‘cared’ about them. Then it will be rats eating rats.

 

[Bonfire]

This is not who we are...

 

[redwood66]

While the whole situation is terrible, let's not continue to post pics that have been proven to be untrue.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/toddler-cage-photo/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...rying-miscaptioned-not-ice-custody/710396002/

 

[Bluegemz]

While the whole situation is terrible, let's not continue to post pics that have been proven to be untrue.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/toddler-cage-photo/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...rying-miscaptioned-not-ice-custody/710396002/

The point of that image was to show the hateful and sick posts, about an image which ‘they’ reacted to. It does show a current reality about the mentality of the racist and abusive supporters. That is FAR more disturbing. In addition, it’s obvious that this is what is happening, kids Crying in cages. I’m not sure what your point is here.

 

[nala]

This is revolting but I want to point out that the separation of parents from hildren is nothing new. It brought my sister memories of her childhood. She is 53. While she was not held hostage by the government, my parents left her behind as they crossed the border illegally. They left her with my aunt, whom she hardly knew. 3 months of this separation caused a lot of trauma. She cried herself to sleep. Felt lonely among her cousins. She might as well have lived in a cage, that’s how poor the aunt was. Think wooden shack and dirt floor. Lots of kids running around. Sadly, this separation happens all the time. Only now it’s being televised. But it is a sacrifice parents make on a daily basis in search of a better future. At least now everyone can see.

 

[redwood66]

The point of that image was to show the hateful and sick posts, about an image which ‘they’ reacted to. It does show a current reality about the mentality of the racist and abusive supporters. That is FAR more disturbing. In addition, it’s obvious that this is what is happening, kids Crying in cages. I’m not sure what your point is here.

Perpetuating incorrect information is not helpful. The messages are terrible but not the feeling of most people about this situation.

 

[Bluegemz]

What are you talking about?

 

[icy_jade]

Ok pls someone tell me that all these are fake news too...

“The AP reported that Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border to at least three "tender age" shelters in South Texas.

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis.”



I have two young children. I cannot imagine how I will react if my kids are taken from me for weeks or months or forever.

If you have children yourself, put yourself in their shoes... even if you don’t, surely you can see that this is horrible and cruel (ok unless you are a psychopath - I keep forgetting there seems to be lots in the US). This sort of trauma can do terrible things to those kids brains, lasting long-term damage that is unnecessary and does not have to be inflicted on them at all. Even if they cannot keep families together, surely women with young children can be kept together instead? Isn’t it also easier to care for the kids that way rather than to keep the kids in pens?

 

[redwood66]

What are you talking about?

You brought up the messages next to that pic, I was responding to you.

 

[AGBF]

Perpetuating incorrect information is not helpful.

I agree, redwood. I am glad you gave the information you did. The poster who put the photo on Pricescope said she found it on a pro-Trump page, however. She did not claim it was something she knew to be authentic. I am glad to know the truth. I am also sorry that a Trump supporter saw fit to brag about it on his page. It supports my posting above that there are actually people in this country who are loving the spectacle of brown-skinned people, the other, suffering at Trump's hands. People like Corey Lewandowski who mocks children with Down's Syndrome. Imagine not speaking English, being at an intellectual disadvantage, and being torn from the only people you know. Is that something to mock?

(I was referring to this.)


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/toddler-cage-photo/

 

[Bluegemz]

You brought up the messages next to that pic, I was responding to you.

I’m not sure what Is false information about this. Replace said crying child with the others captured on film, during This crisis...,including sounds of wailing children. ...the point and the sentiment is the same. It was not my intent to show the ‘hate’, not the child.
And those nasty posts DO represent what many of his die hard base believe, and are emboldened enough to support posting on multiple sites, pages, etc. I’m glad that many do not.

 

[icy_jade]

“Kraft saw some of the detained children in April.

“It was really devastating to see,” she said. “The first room we went into was a toddler room and there was a little girl who couldn’t have been more than 2 years old who was just sobbing and crying and was inconsolable.”

Staff told Kraft they were forbidden to physically comfort the children.

“And we all knew that the problem was her mother wasn’t there. And she wanted her mother. And none of us could fix that.”

From https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna883636

There are many more such news. I’ll be happy if they are all fake news but sadly I don’t think they are. Pls don’t take some example of fake news to brush the genuine ones aside.

 

[Calliecake]

Trump could end this policy with one phone call. These are not lies. Children have been held in chain link cages. I realize Fox News is doing their best to make this seem exceptable. They try to justify children being torn from the parents and held captive. This is NOT acceptable.

Yesterday the story of a 10 ten old girl with Down syndrome being held was being reported on Fox News. As a commentator was saying how frightened this child must feel, Corey Lewandowski was on the same screen saying “ womp womp”.

Your party won’t take a firm stand and call this what it is TORTURE. They care more about pleasing Trump. If they cared about these children that would be screaming it to reporters. Why won’t they release photos of the babies and girls? Instead they show pictures of teenage boys while trying to make people believe they are MS13 gang members. They are CHILDREN. The pictures from last night’s meeting with republicans all smiling and applauding trump are disgusting.

No one is perpetuating false information. It’s your president’s administration choosing to do these terrible things to families. You and your party can at least own it.

 

[AGBF]

This is revolting but I want to point out that the separation of parents from hildren is nothing new. It brought my sister memories of her childhood. She is 53. While she was not held hostage by the government, my parents left her behind as they crossed the border illegally. They left her with my aunt, whom she hardly knew. 3 months of this separation caused a lot of trauma. She cried herself to sleep. Felt lonely among her cousins. She might as well have lived in a cage, that’s how poor the aunt was. Think wooden shack and dirt floor. Lots of kids running around. Sadly, this separation happens all the time. Only now it’s being televised. But it is a sacrifice parents make on a daily basis in search of a better future. At least now everyone can see.

I have noticed this heart-wrenching phenomenon in Central America and Bolivia. I do not know if it is prevalent in other parts of South America and other parts of the world: both parents leaving one or more young children at home while they go to the United States to work, hoping to make more money to bring the others over. In my family of origin, that was not the pattern. My great-grandfather and my grandfather left the family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and traveled back and forth by ship when they could. The rest of the (very large) family remained in Europe until other boys were old enough to work in the United States, too, and share in doing the passage. Eventually, when there was enough money, everyone together, the women and girls included, migrated to the United States. So there was separation, but the young children were never separated from their mother.

AGBF

 

[redwood66]

Trump could end this policy with one phone call. These are not lies. Children have been held in chain link cages. I realize Fox News is doing their best to make this seem exceptable. They try to justify children being torn from the parents and held captive. This is NOT acceptable.

Yesterday the story of a 10 ten old girl with Down syndrome being held was being reported on Fox News. As a commentator was saying how frightened this child must feel, Corey Lewandowski was on the same screen saying “ womp womp”.

Your party won’t take a firm stand and call this what it is TORTURE. They care more about pleasing Trump. If they cared about these children that would be screaming it to reporters. Why won’t they release photos of the babies and girls? Instead they show pictures of teenage boys while trying to make people believe they are MS13 gang members. They are CHILDREN. The pictures from last night’s meeting with republicans all smiling and applauding trump are disgusting.

No one is perpetuating false information. It’s your president’s administration choosing to do these terrible things to families. You and your party can at least own it.

We can do the your party my party thing all day long, fact is Congress needs to do something about immigration. The kids are the ones losing out in this fight. Congress has failed for decades and here we are. I know that Trump and Sessions are using this as a deterrent for increased border crossings and it is a terrible way to do it because it has backfired. But the democrats are no better in their lack of compromise. This has given them a bludgeon to use in November and they don't want to let go of it. So neither party is guiltless in this situation.

 

[Matata]

This is not who we are...

Yes it is and more's the pity. Disclaimer: I'm not calling you out. I want to respond to this particular statement because someone says it every time our government or some radical left-right wing group engages in another atrocity. Whether we like it or not, there is an uncomfortably large population of citizens in this country who support and advocate all that has come to the fore since trump was elected. They are part of us and if we don't like it, we need to find ways to change it.