(still, remember why we fought so hard against this when you vote in the midterms! and VOTE IN THE MIDTERMS.)
This… is not a victory, at least not for who you might think. The executive order states that they can detain families together INDEFINITELY. We’re focusing so much on the “together” that we’re overlooking the “indefinitely.”
The outrage against child separation has been used as a tool for Trump to be able to do whatever he wants, so long as he gives the kids back. It’s successful hostage bargaining.
The White House is Lying About the “Compromise” Immigration Bill
This week, the House will be voting on two immigration bills – one is being dubbed “the compromise bill” and the other is the conservative immigration plan. The compromise bill is the more likely bill to get votes because the GOP are promising that the plan will make it illegal to separate families at the border. This is a lie. Not only does the bill do nothing of this sort, but it could make the situation much more.
IT WILL NOT MAKE FAMILY SEPARATIONS ILLEGAL!
Republicans issued a summary of the bill and claim in it that “Accompanied alien minors apprehended at the border must not be separated from their parent or legal guardian while in DHS custody.” However, nothing in the 300-page draft states this, instead it changes provisions that protect children and families and make it so children can be held indefinitely.
The Republican bill doesn’t outlaw family separation. It doesn’t stop the Trump administration from choosing to prosecute asylum seekers who enter the US between ports of entry (official border crossings) for illegal entry, which results in parents being sent into criminal custody without their children. And it doesn’t even force the government not to separate parents who do present themselves legally for asylum from their children — something that has also been happening, though isn’t as widespread.
What the House bill does is get rid of the extra legal protections that children and families have in immigration detention: a requirement that children be kept in the “least restrictive” conditions possible, and that they not be detained any longer than necessary. This means that if the family is kept together, their parents must be released with them. The Trump administration calls those protections “loopholes,” and blames them for “forcing” the administration to keep asylum-seekers in custody by separating families.
If the House bill passed, the Trump administration probably would stop separating families. Instead, it would be able to keep children and parents in ICE detention until their cases were resolved — that is, they could be in held in detention indefinitely. (source)
Holding immigrants detained at the border indefinitely is a practice that Trump has suggested in the past and he’s already taken measures to end “catch and release” and prepared for the increased detention needed to hold this many people, including children, including toddlers.
What Else the Bill Does
Other provisions in “the compromise bill” include:
Creates a “conditional nonimmigrant” status for DACA recipients that can be renewed after 6 years. The requirements for DACA status mostly remain the same as the original requirements but there will be stricter requirements for those who have never applied including information on criminal history and income.
DACA recipients and other “legalized immigrants” will be able to apply for a green card and become eligible for citizenship after 3 or 5 years. HOWEVER, there is no guarantee one will get a green card as they will be sorted based off a points system that rates them based off English-language tests, having advanced college degrees, and lengths of employment.
Ending the immigration pathway for adult children and siblings of US citizens, this will also include those who have currently been waiting years for their applications to be processed under current visa restrictions.
Eliminates the diversity visa, which is often the only chance many people have at immigrating to the US.
Raises the requirements to pursue asylum in the US.
Allows the US to deny and send back asylum seekers if they travel through Mexico. They will now be required to stay in Mexico and seek asylum there.
Will allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain children and parents indefinitely.
Promises that Congress must commit to funding $25 BILLION for Trump’s border wall. It also allows the halting of immigrants applying for green cards if Congress doesn’t come through.
The conservative bill, chillingly called the “Securing America’s Future Act” is much stricter. It does not provide a possible pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, makes it easier to deport and punish those on overstayed visas, cuts overall immigration by 25% (260,000 fewer a year), eliminates the diversity visa lottery, and most family-based immigration.
Who to Contact
Trump has promised to vote on either bill if it gets to his desk. There is pressure on democrats and republicans to vote on the compromise bill based off the lie that it makes family separations unlawful. No democrat has currently agreed to vote on the bill, and the Freedom Caucus is hesitant to vote on the compromise bill due to the possibility of a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. However, the White House (who personally helped draft this bill to cater to Trump’s requests) has been working to sell this bill to the GOP in the hopes of getting enough votes.
No matter what’s being said, there will be a vote within the next couple days and it’s possible that one of this bills could be voted in and move on to the Senate. If it gets past the Senate then Trump WILL sign it. He has promised to sign either of these bills.
If you would like to try and make sure these bills don’t make it to Trump’s desk then I’d suggest contacting your representatives and let them know what you think of these bills, what’s in them, and what’s happening at the border. Don’t let them sell you these lies. Also, if this does pass in the House this week, don’t worry just yet because it will still have to go through the Senate and you will still have the chance to contact your senators to put pressure on them.
since i posted that thing yesterday lamenting the lack of direct action i’ve seen in the news regarding the ICE child prisons, here’s an update on two great things that happened today carried out by activists
also tonight in d.c., metro d.c. DSA members protested inside of a mexican restaurant where homeland security secretary kirstjen nielsen was eating dinner and forced her to leave. You can watch the full video here. DSA members on twitter said that the majority of the other customers in the restaurant were supportive and cheered and high-fived them as they left.
[ image is screenshot of facebook post by Mia Frances Yamamoto that says, “If you get arrested trying to free innocent children from unjust separation and imprisonment, i will represent you for free.” ]
I’m avoiding the thing about Trump’s family separation policy as much as possible because it literally makes me want to melt down in a rage the moment I think about it almost at all, and as a Canadian there’s an incredibly limited amount I can do when I have to keep my own precarious mental health functioning
but I just want you to know that a lot of the field of Attachment Theory in psychology began after WWII, when psychologists examined the physical and psychological health of children sent away from their parents for their own “safety”
and what we found about the psychological results of broken child-caregiver attachment has led us to conclude that it is literally MORE HUMANE to leave families intact in refugee camps in warzones, than to separate the children from their parents, even if those children are sent to the best of all possible environments.
Speaking as a fucking psychologist I just want you to know that if you want to fuck someone up FOR FUCKING LIFE, the BEST possible way to do it, is to abruptly separate them from the adults who love and care for them. For maximum fuckery do it before the age of 3, 5 is pretty damn good at fucking them up for life too, but honestly any time before adulthood is pretty effective. You will fuck them up in a way we just DON’T know how to heal yet. You don’t just leave them catastrophically more at risk for mental illness, learning disorders, addictions, abuse, and future trauma, you also put them at much higher risk of things like diabetes, heart attack, and suicide.
and then I thought about what kind of environments those kids ARE being sent into and I need to throw up now
Op do you have any links to papers or anything? Preferably not paywalled?
Honestly the field is so huge and so broad that I have too many sources rather than too few. The harder thing is pointing to a concise, targeted, tailored-to-be-relevant summary. (But if child trauma experts in the US aren’t working on producing one at this very instant, I’ll eat my hat.)
additionally both of those have twitter accounts which are LIT UP with this issue, and responses to it – CTA has their official one and then their founder and senior fellow Bruce Perry has his own twitter which likewise is heavily dominated by this issue. From their twitter pages you can also find the NCTSN’s twitter and related ones and at that point you can basically drown people in the cites!
Together Rising Love Flash Mob. Organized by best-selling author and blogger Glennon Doyle through her non-profit organization, the fundraising effort will go to provide bilingual legal and advocacy assistance for 60 children, aged 12 months to 10 years, currently separated from their parents in an Arizona detention center. Their first priority will be to establish and maintain contact between children and their parents, with the ultimate goal of reunification and safety and rehabilitation for the children.
• The ACLU is litigating this policy in California.
• If you’re an immigration lawyer, the American Immigration Lawyers Association will be sending around a volunteer list for you to help represent the women and men with their asylum screening, bond hearings, ongoing asylum representation, etc. Please sign up.
• Al Otro Lado is a binational organization that works to offer legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S.
• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.
• Human Rights First is a national organization with roots in Houston that needs help from lawyers too.
• Kids in Need of Defense works to ensure that kids do not appear in immigration court without representation, and to lobby for policies that advocate for children’s legal interests. Donate here.
• The Legal Aid Justice Center is a Virginia-based center providing unaccompanied minors legal services and representation.
• Pueblo Sin Fronteras is an organization that provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S.
• RAICES is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas offering free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate here and sign up as a volunteer here.
• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”
• Together Rising is another Virginia-based organization that’s helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona.
This list isn’t comprehensive, so let us know what else is happening. And please call your elected officials, stay tuned for demonstrations, hug your children, and be grateful if you are not currently dependent on the basic humanity of U.S. policy.
I keep wondering how you reunite a 4-year-old who doesn’t speak English with a deported parent who doesn’t know where their kid is. The only answer I can think of is: you don’t.
Yep. After a while, they’ll slip them into foster care or group homes, most likely. The most accurate comparison right now to me in terms of tactics seems to be residential schools, as it fits the pattern of separating children from parents ostensibly for “their own good”, followed by forced americanization. If I’m off-base I hope my Native mutuals will tell me, but the similarity on this front really stood out to me.
If you are all feeling lost and nauseous about Italian Interior Minister Salvini’s despicable Roma census proposal, please consider donating to/signal boosting the European Roma Rights Centre. They actively pursue legal action against discriminatory policies/human rights abuses within the international courts, as well as carry out advocacy and research.
Dr. Michelle Martin is a researcher and professor at California State University, Fullerton. She has a Masters of Social Work, Masters in Global Policy, and a Ph.D. in Peace Studies (Political Science). She teaches Social Welfare Policy in the Master of Social Work program.
The following is her write-up on the separation of families at the border. She dispells a lot of common myths going around and provides sources which are linked. This might be helpful in your personal debates and discussions.
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There is so much misinformation out there about the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy that requires criminal prosecution, which then warrants the separating of parents and children at the southern border. Before responding to a post defending this policy, please do your research…As a professor at a local Cal State, I research and write about these issues, so here, I wrote the following to make it easier for you:
Myth: This is not a new policy and was practiced under Obama and Clinton.
FALSE. The policy to separate parents and children is new and was instituted on 4/6/2018. It was the “brainchild” of John Kelly and Stephen Miller to serve as a deterrent for undocumented immigration, and some allege to be used as a bargaining chip. The policy was approved by Trump, and adopted by Sessions. Prior administrations detained migrant families, but didn’t have a practice of forcibly separating parents from their children unless the adults were deemed unfit.
Myth: This is the only way to deter undocumented immigration.
FALSE. Annual trends show that arrests for undocumented entry are at a 46 year low, and undocumented crossings dropped in 2007, with a net loss (more people leaving than arriving). Deportations have increased steadily though (spiking in 1996 and more recently), because several laws that were passed since 1996 have made it more difficult to gain legal status for people already here, and thus increased their deportations (I address this later under the myth that it’s the Democrats’ fault). What we mostly have now are people crossing the border illegally because they’ve already been hired by a US company, or because they are seeking political asylum. Economic migrants come to this country because our country has kept the demand going. But again, many of these people impacted by Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy appear to be political asylum-seekers.
Myth: Most of the people coming across the border are just trying to take advantage of our country by taking our jobs.
FALSE. Most of the parents who have been impacted by Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy have presented themselves as political asylum-seekers at a U.S. port-of-entry, from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Rather than processing their claims, according to witness accounts, it appears as though they have been taken into custody on the spot and had their children ripped from their arms. The ACLU alleges that this practice violates the US Asylum Act, and the UN asserts that it violates the UN Treaty on the State of Refugees, one of the few treaties the US has ratified. The ACLU asserts that this policy is an illegal act on the part of the United States government, not to mention morally and ethically reprehensible.
Myth: We’re a country that respects the Rule of Law, and if people break the law, this is what they get.
FALSE. We are a country that has an above-ground system of immigration and an underground system. Our government (under both parties) has always been aware that US companies recruit workers in the poorest parts of Mexico for cheap labor, and ICE (and its predecessor INS) has looked the other way because this underground economy benefits our country to the tune of billions of dollars annually. Thus, even though many of the people crossing the border now are asylum-seekers, those who are economic migrants (migrant workers) likely have been recruited here to do jobs Americans will not do.
Myth: The children have to be separated from their parents because the parents must be arrested and it would be cruel to put children in jail with their parents.
FALSE. First, in the case of economic migrants crossing the border illegally, criminal prosecution has not been the legal norm, and families have historically been kept together at all cost. Also, crossing the border without documentation is typically a misdemeanor not requiring arrest, but rather has been handled in a civil proceeding. Additionally, parents who have been detained have historically been detained with their children in ICE “family residential centers,” again, for civil processing. The Trump administration’s shift in policy is for political purposes only, not legal ones.
Myth: We have rampant fraud in our asylum process, the proof of which is the significant increase we have in the number of people applying for asylum.
FALSE. The increase in asylum seekers is a direct result of the increase in civil conflict and violence across the globe. While some people may believe that we shouldn’t allow any refugees into our country because “it’s not our problem,” neither our current asylum law, nor our ideological foundation as a country support such an isolationist approach. There is very little evidence to support Sessions’ claim that abuse of our asylum-seeking policies is rampant. Also, what Sessions failed to mention is that the majority of asylum seekers are from China, not South of the border.
Here is a very fair and balanced assessment of his statements: [ source ]
Myth: The Democrats caused this, “it’s their law.“
FALSE. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats caused this, the Trump administration did (although the Republicans could fix this today, and have refused). I believe what this myth refers to is the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which were both passed under Clinton in 1996. These laws essentially made unauthorized entry into the US a crime (typically a misdemeanor for first-time offenders), but under both Republicans and Democrats, these cases were handled through civil deportation proceedings, not a criminal proceeding, which did not require separation. And again, even in cases where detainment was required, families were always kept together in family residential centers, unless the parents were deemed unfit (as mentioned above). Thus, Trump’s assertion that he hates this policy but has no choice but to separate the parents from their children, because the Democrats “gave us this law” is false and nothing more than propaganda designed to compel negotiation on bad policy.
Myth: The parents and children will be reunited shortly, once the parents’ court cases are finalized.
FALSE. Criminal court is a vastly different beast than civil court proceedings. Also, the children are being processed as unaccompanied minors (“unaccompanied alien children”), which typically means they are in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS). Under normal circumstances when a child enters the country without his or her parent, ORR attempts to locate a family member within a few weeks, and the child is then released to a family member, or if a family member cannot be located, the child is placed in a residential center (anywhere in the country), or in some cases, foster care. Prior to Trump’s new policy, ORR was operating at 95% capacity, and they simply cannot effectively manage the influx of 2000+ children, some as young as 4 months old. Also, keep in mind, these are not unaccompanied minor children, they have parents. There is great legal ambiguity on how and even whether the parents will get their children back because we are in uncharted territory right now. According to the ACLU lawsuit (see below), there is currently no easy vehicle for reuniting parents with their children. Additionally, according to a May 2018 report, numerous cases of verbal, physical and sexual abuse were found to have occurred in these residential centers.
LIKELY FALSE. The ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on 5/6/18, and a recent court ruling denied the government’s motion to dismiss the suit. The judge deciding the case stated that the Trump Administration’s policy is “brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency.” The case is moving forward because it was deemed to have legal merit.
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