Separating immigrant families and imprisoning children

[Starlight]

The families are not being separated.

False.

This is the primary thing that's outraging people. If you think you got this falsehood from reading the OP article, try reading it again because your reading comprehension appears poor.

Try rereading sentences such as:

Nearly 2,000 children have been taken from their parents since Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the policy,

For bonus reading comprehension points, try reading some other articles too.

But there are unaccompanied children there.

Some unaccompanied children cross the border by themselves.

However under the new Trump administration policy, if families cross the border together, the administration separates them, imprisons the parents, and then declares the children 'unaccompanied' since the parents are now in separate prison.

There is a lot of sex trafficking being done across the border in women and children.

I have seen zero evidence for this. It appears to exist mostly in the imagination of right-wingers as far as I can tell.

The reason they separate the children is to keep them safe.

No, you're making stuff up.

If they have parents with them or legal guardians then they remain together.

No, you're back to outright falsehoods.

"facility that's divided into separate wings for unaccompanied children, adults on their own, and mothers and fathers with children."

That was talking about how one particular facility was laid out. Given the Trump administrations policy changes that result in breaking up families, the parts of existing facilities designed to house entire families at once, aren't going to get much use.

[seer]

The EU may actually have a good idea...

EU leaders consider centers outside bloc to process refugees

European Council President Donald Tusk has proposed that EU leaders create “regional disembarkation platforms” outside the European Union, where officials could quickly differentiate between refugees in need of protection and economic migrants who would potentially face return to their countries of origin.

The proposal is an effort to break the acute political crisis over migration and asylum that has bedeviled EU leaders since 2015 — and even threatened in recent days to topple the German government — even as the numbers of arrivals have plummeted since the peak of the crisis.

The disembarkation platform concept — which officials said would have to be implemented in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) — could create a formal mechanism by which the EU can bridge the divide between hard-line leaders calling for tough border controls and those insisting that EU nations obey international law and welcome refugees in need of protection.

But the idea could also open EU leaders to criticism that they are outsourcing their political problem by creating centers for people seeking entry in countries on the periphery of the bloc. Among the potential partner nations are Tunisia and Albania, but officials say it is far too soon to speculate.

https://www.politico.eu/article/regi...cess-refugees/

[Cow Poke]

As I skimmed over your post, I first assumed you were referring to Romans chapter 11, given Sessions keeps using Romans 13 to portray mindless obedience to his authoritarian whims as if it were a virtue. Took me a moment to parse it correctly.

Ah, my wife worked for a federal bankruptcy lawyer, so "Chapter 11" and "Chapter 13" are household words.

[Starlight]

according to the media, all Trump has to do is wave his magic wand, and all will be well.

This is a lie.

No, that part is true. Trump could end the separation of families today if he wanted. The reason for this is made clear in the quoted point 2:

If, however, illegal immigrants cross the border illegally, the Trump administration now treats them as criminals.

The Trump administration made a deliberate and conscious decision to punish first-time border-crossers more harshly, prosecuting them for their crime to an extent not done before. As part of that prosecution, they get imprisoned pending the trial, and that is when their children are taken away. All Trump has to do is wave his magic wand and go back to the Obama era policy of not prosecuting them as criminals and hence not imprisoning them for a lengthy amount of time and hence not taking away their children.

Hence the article is lying.

1. Trump Created Separation Of Children From Illegal Immigrant Parents. This is plainly false. In 1997, the federal government made an agreement in a case called Flores not to keep unaccompanied illegal immigrant children in custody beyond twenty days. The settlement said nothing about accompanied illegal immigrant children – children who crossed the border with their parents. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals then ruled that accompanied children also could not be held in custody under the terms of the settlement. This meant that the government either had to release whole families, or that the government had to separate parents from children.

That final option wasn't suggested by the courts and is a completely fictional invention of the Trump administration, and extremely Orwellian, and I don't buy it at all. The courts said effectively "no imprisoning families for more than 20 days". The Trump administration is getting around this by separating the families and then declaring the children 'unaccompanied'. To my mind, that is a false declaration they are making: The children are not unaccompanied, and if they claim they are, they're lying. The court didn't say "you have the option of separating the families", this is something the Trump team have come up with themselves, that they (wrongly IMO) think makes what they are doing compliant with the court's ruling. I would personally like to see a direct legal challenge against the legal theory that the Trump team is using to claim they are compliant with the court's past rulings here.

Immigrants who come to points of entry to seek asylum aren’t actually illegally in the country – they’re not arrested. They’re processed through ICE, and their children stay with them.

Unfortunately, this is not true. Legal asylum applicants are being caught up in the dragnet of "let's be mean to immigrant" policies, and are also seeing their children taken away.

If, however, illegal immigrants cross the border illegally, the Trump administration now treats them as criminals.

Right, and that is the key point that the Trump administration has changed and could fix today with its magic wand if it wanted.

From here [By Ben Shapiro]

I suggest you don't read Shapiro, he's a chronic liar, as this article demonstrates.

[rogue06]

Are you speculating it's hypothetically possibly that she might treat her charity as a personal bank account, like Trump and his children are currently being prosecuted for actually doing?

Being sued and being prosecuted are hardly the same.


So why do you think Hillary would tell people to give her money claiming that it'll go to groups seeking to fix the problem like "Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project," and "La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)" rather than sending it directly to these groups? Don't you think if it was sent directly they would get it much faster (not to mention they'd get all of it without any "expenses" being deducted)?

[Mountain Man]

Separating families who entered the country illegally happened all throughout the Obama administration, and by all accounts, the children were kept in worse conditions. So why is this only considered a scandal now?

[firstfloor]

Separating families who entered the country illegally happened all throughout the Obama administration, and by all accounts, the children were kept in worse conditions. So why is this only considered a scandal now?

"Obama generally refrained from prosecution in cases involving adults who crossed the border with their kids," said Peter Margulies, an immigration law and national security law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. "In contrast, the current administration has chosen to prosecute adult border-crossers, even when they have kids. That's a choice — one fundamentally different from the choice made by both Obama and previous presidents of both parties."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April announced a "zero-tolerance" policy, meaning every person caught crossing the border illegally would be referred for federal prosecution.

A good number of these people are adult migrants traveling with children. By law, when adults are detained and criminally prosecuted, their children cannot be housed with them in jail. Instead, kids are placed in a Department of Health and Human Services shelter until they can be released to a legal guardian.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...-families-was/

Jeff Sessions gets his cruelty from his religion.

[Starlight]

Being sued and being prosecuted are hardly the same.

Eh? Is this some weird Americanism? My father is a prosecutor here and always uses them interchangeably. Checking the dictionary defines both words identically as "institute or conduct legal proceedings against".

So why do you think Hillary would tell people to give her money claiming that it'll go to groups seeking to fix the problem like "Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project," and "La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)" rather than sending it directly to these groups?

Probably because she likes to maintain personal political influence, and by being the person who actually carries the donor money through their door, she can get her own foot in the door. Getting other people to directly donate keeps her too much out of the loop, and it's not a route to building personal political power like she wants to do. I don't personally approve of that, but that's a bit different to her having some of the money fall into her own pocket on the way past.

Don't you think if it was sent directly they would get it much faster (not to mention they'd get all of it without any "expenses" being deducted)?

Its possible the charities have overheads at their end associated with numbers of donors - e.g. staff processing the sending out of receipts, processing donor lists etc. It might actually be cheaper for those charities if Hillary manages the mass load of donors for them and then just hands over the check at the end as if it came from her. So I think for each of your wild speculations it's possible to have an equal and opposite wild speculation.

[rogue06]

From a headline in the March 11, 2015 of the Washington Post: Mexican kids held for months as punishment for border-crossing

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that nearly two months before Trump even announced his intention to run for President? And roughly one year and ten months before he was sworn in. So who then was president at this time?

[Starlight]

From a headline in the March 11, 2015... So who then was president at this time?

Putin was president in 2015.

[rogue06]

Eh? Is this some weird Americanism?

But you're always telling everyone how you know so much more about the U.S. and how things work than those who live here.

[carpedm9587]

Separating families who entered the country illegally happened all throughout the Obama administration, and by all accounts, the children were kept in worse conditions. So why is this only considered a scandal now?

Because you're claim is not true...?

I've been digging into this on and off all day. The more I read, the more I find a distinct difference between the Obama policy and the Trump policy. The pictures being floated around of kids in cages from the Obama years are pretty much all (as best I can tell) from a short period when unaccompanied children overwhelmed the system and they were desperate for shelters/resources. It was fairly quickly set to rights, but that doesn't stop the right from using the pictures to make their case. It's kind of like Fox putting out the pictures of the Philadelphia NFL players kneeling to pray and positioning them as "taking a knee" during the flag ceremony.

The problem is that illegal immigrants held for prosecution require kids to be housed separately (that part is true, I have found). That is why the Obama administration's policy was to NOT prosecute parents with children, specifically so they wouldn't have to separate them. Separation did happen, but it was apparently rare (though the right jumped on each and every one, of course), and is now highlighting those rare instances to claim it was "Obama's policy."

Trump, on the other hand, is explicitly prosecuting ALL adults, with or without children, legally forcing the separation. This could be reversed at the stroke of a pen, and parents allowed to stay with their children in the shelters. Republicans in Congress apparently know this and are talking action.

[Starlight]

But you're always telling everyone how you know so much more about the U.S. and how things work than those who live here.

It doesn't stop me mocking Americans for using multiple different words for irrelevant nuances on the same thing. Like how you break what other countries call "murder" into all sorts of degrees and names like 'justifiable homicide' etc. Or how you distinguish 'jail' and 'prison' etc.

[Cow Poke]

Eh? Is this some weird Americanism? My father is a prosecutor here and always uses them interchangeably. Checking the dictionary defines both words identically as "institute or conduct legal proceedings against".

To sue somebody is generally civil, and to charge somebody is generally criminal. You can be cleared of a crime, and still be sued in civil court.

[rogue06]

B-b-but, it's all your fault that I'm woefully ignorant when I arrogantly claim to know far more about America and how it works than those who live there

FIFY n/c