WHY ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE RUNNING HERE AT THE RISK OF HAVING THEIR CHILDREN LEGALLY KIDNAPPED BY THE U.S.

Short answer, it's better than having your children kidnapped by people far worse who are willing to make turn their 8 year old boys into soldiers or take slightly older girls, rape them and turn them into prostitutes.

Why can't the come here the legal way? Because Border Patrol usually and/or often tells them "No" sans any process at all. 

What's changed since May 2018? Trump's zero tolerance policy.

Feeling Rebloggy

FACEBOOK POST BY AN IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY

"Yesterday, I met with a mother whose 5-year-old son was literally pulled out of her arms by a Border Patrol Officer while she and her son cried and begged for him not to be taken. She is an asylum seeker who fled death threats in her country. 

She has not seen or spoken to her son in weeks. 

This mother recounted the story of her son being taken, stone faced, clearly unable to begin to access the emotions under the surface. It was the lowest, saddest, most distressing moment of my career as an immigration lawyer.

I chose to be an immigration attorney after my first experience as a law student in the immigration clinic. I was asked to do an intake with a family of Iraqi asylum seekers who were being detained with their 5-month-old daughter. The baby was wearing a prison-issued onesie. Her mother asked me to hold her, because I smelled like the outside world. All along, that moment has been my marker of the lowest moment, the catalyst for my career.

Yet that was nothing compared to what is happening today.

I am writing to share with you what I am seeing so that you can be informed and take action. I want to help you know the background and combat the arguments that these parents chose this for their children, that they brought it on themselves. And to combat the lies coming from the Administration, claiming there is no choice in whether to enact the policy of separation.

There is a fundamental principal of international law which arose after World War II: the concept of a refugee – a person deserving of protection because she is unsafe in her country due to persecution in her country based on her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. 

The United States Government has recognized its responsibility in protecting refugees for almost seventy years – in international treaties and in our own laws. Whatever your politics, it is an absolute and undeniable fact that the US must protect asylum seekers under its international treaty and internal legal obligations. (I am avoiding citations and legalese in this article because I want it to be readable, but I can easily provide citations for anything written here.)

In the last decade, the political situation in Central America has deteriorated. Gangs and drug cartels have taken power and the governments of Central America, particularly in the northern triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are unable to protect their citizens. People are being extorted and required to make regular payments to gang members. If they refuse, they or their family members are murdered. 

• Boys as young as eight years old are forced into the gangs. If they or their parents refuse, they are murdered. 
• Young girls are forced to become the property of gang members and treated as sex slaves. If they or their families refuse, they are murdered. 
• The police are unable to help, and in many cases have themselves been infiltrated with gang members, so that making a police report brings more danger. Parents are fleeing and bringing their children here to rescue them from rape and murder.

When an asylum seeker wants to come to the United States, she has two choices:

• come to the bridge to ask for asylum, or 
• sneak into the country. 

Why sneak in?

Well, because border patrol officers often don’t permit people to seek asylum. They tell them to turnaround, we aren’t accepting asylum seekers.

In fact, now border patrol officers are patrolling the Mexican territory in front of the borders to keep asylum seekers from even crossing the bridge. This leaves option two: the only way to get in.

Historically, asylum seekers who crossed over got immediately apprehended (we don’t have the porous borders the Administration claims we do), then were placed in family detention centers and put through the credible fear interview process. If they passed, they got out of detention and finished out the asylum process in court. If they failed, they were sent back. 

This was far from a tolerable solution, but it has “worked” this way for over a decade, with subtle shifts in policies and practices.

What changed? 

The Trump Administration decided in May to enact a “zero tolerance” policy against people crossing the border. This means everyone, regardless of cause or circumstance of entry, gets prosecuted for illegal entry.

Parents of children, including infants, are being taken to federal court and their children are being placed in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

There is NO agency responsible for facilitating communication or reunification of these families. Parents are getting deported without their kids, and shelters are filling up. These families are being transferred and taken all around the US depending on where there is space for them. Parents are not told where they are going, where their kids are, or whether they are okay. If this does not horrify you, check your pulse.

What can you do? Here is the hard part. And I promise to keep working on this. Immigration attorneys can help – that’s easy. You can travel to detention centers and help parents pass their credible fear interviews and get out on bond. A volunteer sheet will be circulating within the next week.

Non-immigration lawyers can partner with an immigration attorney or attend a training (Mark your calendars for an opportunity for Austin Bar Association members the afternoon of June 25.)

Non-lawyers – there are the obvious options: contact your legislators and demand an end to family separation.

Form mom groups, dad groups, psychologist groups, contact the media, and get loud. Give money. I personally think money is best spent on the RAICES bond fund (https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund…) where 100% of your donation will help pay to get a parent out of detention so they can claim their own child.

What you should not do, in my opinion: anything to support or legitimize what is happening. This includes offering to foster these kids and take them off the hands of the agency, donate supplies, or assist the Department of Homeland Security in any way. I know your hearts are in the right place, and you want to help the kids. But if the shelters are at capacity and no one is offering to take the kids, maybe the administration will stop taking them from their parents. Maybe they need to feel the pain of what it is to care for so many distraught babies, so they stop the horror show.

Thank you for reading this far, for letting me get this off my chest, and for caring. The only positive that comes out of moments like these is the groundswell of goodness.


In solidarity,
Kate"

Facebook Post by Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch

 (Lincoln-Goldfinch Law, An Immigration Firm)

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Taking 2000 Children From Parents at the Border In 6 Weeks Is Immoral. Here’s What We Can Do About It

feeling rebloggy

 It may be hard to believe that this is happening in the United States in 2018, that hundreds of children are being snatched from their parents, frequently under false pretenses, often screaming, and placed in vast warehouselike centers like the former Walmart in Brownsville, Tex., where nearly 1,500 boys now spend their days. The parents often don’t know where their children are, or when they will see them again.

In 2014 the Obama administration detained hundreds of families and unaccompanied minors crossing the border, a practice that the federal courts quickly curtailed. But separating families as a matter of unofficial policy is something new and malicious, a function of President Trump’s [ethnoracist] obsession with undocumented immigrants. 

This spring, the administration ordered that everyone caught crossing illegally into the United States be prosecuted. And since children cannot accompany grown-ups to jail, people who had crossed illegally with children had their children taken away. Hundreds upon hundreds of children, of all ages, creating a new industry in mass shelters...

~NY TIMES

READ MORE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/opinion/children-parents-asylum-immigration.html

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17443198/children-immigrant-families-separated-parents

• VOTE IN YOUR PRIMARIES. Put these spiritually bankrupt republicans and useless democrats out on the street. Take away their jobs. Furthermore, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT ELSE YOU CAN GET DONE during primary-season (like get rid of an internationally known rape culture endorsing judge)
• CALL CONGRESS (Use your zip code+ to find your congressmen here:  https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members )
• DONATE - KIDS IN NEED OF DEFENSE (from NY TIMES ARTICLE)
• https://supportkind.org/resources/how-you-can-help-end-family-separation-and-ensure-protection-for-children/
• PROTEST - PEOPLE TOOK TO THE STREETS IN A NATIONWIDE THIS PAST THURSDAY. BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THE NEXT ONE.
• VOTE THIS NOVEMBER

We need to do all of these things for BROWN & BLACK MIGRANTS and ASYLUM SEEKERS and also for BLACK LIVES MATTER, NATIVE LIVES MATTER ETC.  

It's ALL HANDS ON DECK TIME 

If we do not hang together,

WE WILL hang separately

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM 

HIDDEN HORRORS NOW IN PLAIN SIGHT: U.S. ARRESTS THEN CHAINS MIGRANTS & ASYLUM SEEKERS, SNATCHES THEN LOSES THEIR CHILDREN

FROM THE INTERCEPT  

"FEDERAL MAGISTRATE JUDGE Ronald G. Morgan is in his 60s, with a bright-pink face and a crisp, friendly manner — though lately he has been making disconcerting little mistakes in court...during a morning session I attended in early May, he announced that he’d just dealt with 35 defendants — all at one time — when the actual number was 40. And after the proceedings, he forgot to pronounce their guilt. Marshals had already led them out, so Morgan sheepishly had to call the 40 defendants back to the courtroom to correct his error. 

These days, he seems distracted and troubled.

That is understandable. In late April [2018], magistrates’ courts in Brownsville suddenly turned into “zero tolerance” factories for criminalizing migrants, many of whom have no prior criminal record. Many are from murderously violent countries in Central America and have fled to the U.S. seeking asylum, and they often arrive with children in tow. 

It used to be rare to charge migrants seeking asylum with crimes. If they did so, they were put into detention with their children while they pursued their claims. Or they were released with supervision — along with their children. The best interests of the children were considered paramount, and those interests including keeping families together.

But now, in federal courts like Morgan’s, not only are parents finding themselves charged with the crime of “illegal entry,” but the government is breaking up families, sending children to detention centers, often hundreds of miles from their mothers and fathers, or to distant foster homes.

These family separations had been occurring intermittently since last fall [2017], and mass trials have been occurring off and on since “Operation Streamline” was first introduced in 2005. 

But on May 7, [2018] Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the U.S. government will prosecute “100 percent of illegal southwest border crossings.” He added that people who were “smuggling a child” will be prosecuted “and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” 

In practice, this means that even parents fleeing violence to protect their young children will be deemed smugglers — that is, criminals.

Sessions’s announcement came just two weeks after an official with the Department of Health and Human Services told Congress that the agency had lost track of 1,475 unaccompanied migrant children it had placed with sponsors..."

READ MORE: https://theintercept.com/2018/05/29/zero-tolerance-border-policy-immigration-mass-trials-children/


I can't find all the articles I read yesterday. But I read about one woman's child being taken from her while she was breastfeeding her. I've also read that United States officials sometimes make legal-kidnapping of the children more peaceful by saying they were taking the children away temporarily, only to give them a bath 

As disgustingly racist and sexist as this country has been in the last few decades at varying points, this is getting hella-scary. 

Yesterday, I read about a republican bill that is being put together to stop this madness. Today I read that the Orange Devil has already said he won't sign it. At least Vice President Pence has stopped calling this hellhound a Christian when he give speeches. Now he says Piece-Of-Garbage-In-Chief is sympathetic to Christians.

And I'm reading that up to 1/3rd of White Christians have finally lost sympathy for Trump.  All I can say to that is, "It's about time" and hope that I won't be saying "too little, too late" in the very near future.

The Ex-Walmart where children 

are being housed 22 out of 24 hours per day

https://amp.businessinsider.com/migrant-kids-detention-center-pictures-details-us-mexico-border-casa-padre-2018-6

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/11/17443198/children-immigrant-families-separated-parents

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

MAXINE WATERS' STATEMENT ON TRUMP'S RACIST SLURS TARGETING IMMIGRANTS

From Maxine Waters' Press Release

LOS ANGELES – Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, released the following statement in response to Donald Trump’s comments on immigrants from what he referred to as “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting:

“Donald Trump is a racist and indecent man with no good values who is woefully unfit and undeserving of the office in which he serves. That this president, a deeply flawed human being with no understanding of public policy, would make such ill-informed and deplorable comments about Haitians, Salvadorans, and immigrants from African countries, merely underscores everything we already know about him: he is a hopeless and ignorant bigot.

“Donald Trump dog-whistled his way into the White House, running a campaign based on hate, bigotry, and fear. Upon taking his oath of office, he surrounded himself with alt-right white nationalists, such as Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka, and nominated a well-known racist, Jeff Sessions, to lead his Department of Justice. One of his first actions as president was to institute a prejudicial and potentially unconstitutional ‘Muslim ban’, and since then, his administration has significantly increased its efforts to target minority communities and increase deportations. Furthermore, when the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white nationalist groups rallied and ultimately murdered an innocent woman in Charlottesville, he refused to rebuke them.  While he won’t denounce white nationalists from our nation’s highest office, he has leveled attacks on journalists, athletes, private citizens, and even Members of Congress – many of whom, not coincidentally, are people of color.

“Donald Trump is crumbling under pressure from the ultra-right-wing conservatives. These radical conservatives elected Trump expecting him to use his presidential authority to deport thousands of innocent young people, many of whom were brought to this country as children and have since made positive contributions to our society. In true Trump-fashion, to compensate for his deficiencies and failure to grasp immigration policy, he has resorted to using an ignorant racial slur to denigrate people and countries about whom he knows nothing and for whom he has no care. Perhaps if these countries had white majorities, he might actually care about them. But they do not, and therefore he does not.

“What's even worse than his racist comment and divisive tactics, he is a hopeless liar who believes that he can make these comments in the presence of others -- as he has done in this recent meeting with Members of Congress involved in negotiations about DACA – and then deny them, which only adds to the 2,000 lies that he has already told since taking office that have been documented by the media. 

“Donald Trump is an embarrassment and a national disgrace. Members of Congress have a responsibility to the American people and our democracy to impeach him.

“Justification for impeachment of this president includes the obvious obstruction of justice; continuing revelations about his associates and members of his family who have questionable contacts and connections to Russia; the alienation of our allies abroad; the attacks on the media and the 1st Amendment of the Constitution; the name-calling and attacks on his political opponents; the disrespect of women, including a U.S. Senator who he implied would do anything for a political contribution; and all of the disgraceful, untruthful, and disturbing actions by this president that continue to prove that he has no respect for our country’s most sacred values and traditions.

“No longer can Members of Congress, particularly Republicans, stand with such a dangerous, disturbed, and deceitful man who is a threat to everything for which America, the greatest democracy on earth, stands. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to impeach him without delay.”

###

https://waters.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-waters-statement-donald-trump-s-racist-slurs-about-immigrants