What is #WhereAreTheChildren

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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 21, 2018 9:26 pm

Trump Is Trying to Find a Legal Way to Lock Up Even More Immigrant Families

The White House paves the way for more “baby jails.”

Madison Pauly

Jun. 21, 2018 6:10 PM

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Detained immigrant children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in 2014.Eric Gay/AP



There’s still widespread uncertainty about how exactly the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday will change his policy of separating and detaining immigrant families. But one thing is clear: If the White House can’t deter or deport families arriving at the US-Mexico border, it wants to put them behind bars.

According to Trump’s June 20 executive order, the Department of Homeland Security will detain families while adults are prosecuted for illegal entry or as they wait for asylum claims to be processed. Due to a federal ruling known as the Flores settlement, which prohibits the government from locking up migrant children for more than 20 days, it’s probably impossible for Trump to keep families in detention indefinitely right now. So the executive order also pushes Congress and the attorney general to try to find a way around Flores—which Jeff Sessions is already trying to do.

If they succeed, immigrant rights advocates warn, families could be kept together but held as long as their cases are pending—a policy that could continue to harm kids psychologically. “Changing one form of trauma for another is not a solution,” says Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

Family detention centers, sometimes known as “baby jails,” aren’t new. The Obama and Bush administrations held migrant families in detention centers for months on end, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement still keeps around 2,500 parents and children in three facilities. Those include two large facilities run by private prison companies in tiny south Texas towns, plus a publicly operated detention center in a former nursing home in Pennsylvania. Family detention centers must meet higher standards than adult-only detention centers and cost taxpayers more than $300 per detainee per day.

Together, ICE’s family detention centers have the capacity to hold approximately 3,650 people. As of June 4, those family detention centers were about 70 percent full, according to ICE. With Border Patrol agents apprehending roughly 9,000 “family units” per month along the US-Mexico border since March, Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy could fill up the existing family detention centers quickly.

“This is not going to be some family residential center. It’s going to be prisons. It’s going to be military bases and other prison-like facilities.”
That’s why Trump’s executive order paves the way for DHS to hold families in other federal facilities and on military bases. It even authorizes the Defense Department to construct new detention centers for immigrant families if necessary. On Thursday, a Customs and Border Patrol official told the Washington Post that the agency is seeking to “accelerate resource capability” to allow ICE to “maintain custody” of families, while the Defense Department said it would hold up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases in the coming months. And Congress is playing along: The so-called “compromise bill” being considered by House Republicans would free up $7 billion for family detention.

“This is not going to be some family residential center,” says Kerri Talbot, legislative director for The Immigration Hub, a pro-immigration strategy group. “It’s going to be prisons. It’s going to be military bases and other prison-like facilities.”

There’s some precedent for using military facilities to detain immigrant children and families on the border. In the summer of 2014, during a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement sent thousands of children to temporary shelters at military bases in California, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Around the same time, the Obama administration opened a temporary detention center for migrant families at a federal law enforcement training center in Artesia, New Mexico—part of what then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson called an “aggressive deterrence strategy.” The Artesia camp promptly faced a torrent of complaints: a lack of child care, inappropriate food for children, limited access to telephones, and violations of due-process rights.

“I remember how I felt sick to my stomach when we walked through the cafeteria and I saw nothing but a line of high chairs as far as I could see,” recalls Karen Tumlin, director of legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, who was one of the first attorneys to visit the camp. She remembers being surrounded by mothers desperate for help with their asylum cases but unable to see their lawyers in the rural New Mexico town where they were held. “They thought they had finally left behind a life of constant fear,” Tumlin says. “And when they got to the United States they were living a new nightmare.”

Artesia closed after five months, but it was succeeded by the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, run by CoreCivic, the country’s second-largest private prison company. It wasn’t CoreCivic’s first time locking up immigrant families. During the Bush administration’s post-9/11 crackdown on immigrants, the company—then known as the Corrections Corporation of America—opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center on the site of a former medium-security state prison in Texas. There, according to the ACLU, kids were put in prison uniforms, families were kept in cells 12 hours a day, and children couldn’t keep pencils, stuffed animals, or crayons in their cells.

ICE stopped sending families to Hutto in 2009. CoreCivic’s detention center in Dilley still holds families—about 2,000 people as of June 4, according to an ICE spokesperson. DHS currently pays CoreCivic roughly $200 million per year for the facility. It also pays the GEO Group—the country’s largest private prison company, which holds about 32 percent of all immigration detainees—to hold families at the 1,158-bed Karnes County Residential Center in Texas.

Perhaps the only winners amid the crisis sparked by Trump’s family separation policy are CoreCivic and GEO, which saw a 3.5 and 1.8 percent bump in their respective stock prices after the president signed his executive order on Wednesday.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ion-trump/



Where are the migrant child facilities?

Scattered across America

June 21, 2018

This is a developing story. This page will be updated.

President Trump has signed an executive order to halt the family separation process he created, but at least 2,500 children have already been taken from their parents and sent to shelters in at least 13 states. Some are as young as a few months old. Hundreds have been apart from distraught parents for several weeks. The system for reuniting these children with parents arrested for crossing the border illegally is chaotic, so the humanitarian crisis could persist for months.


Locations of facilities holding child migrants

Image


Seattle
WASH.
Portland
ORE.
Minneapolis
N.Y.
MICH.
CONN.
Detroit
New York
PENN.
Chicago
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
ILL.
Denver
Washington, D.C.
San Francisco
Kansas City
St. Louis
VA.
CALIF.
KANSAS
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Nashville
ARIZ.
San Diego
Phoenix
Atlanta
Dallas
El Paso
TEXAS
Houston
FLA.
San Antonio
Miami
—Brownsville


Help us map where children are being sent around the U.S.


The Post is continuing to report on where migrant children were sent after they were separated from their parents. Do you know of a facility where these children may be?

Submit a location

Across the United States, the federal government is responsible for the care of more than 11,200 migrant children in about 100 shelters, which includes the 2,500 removed from their parents in the past five weeks. The rest are youngsters who came across the border alone. It’s a billion-dollar industry that has grown rapidly under the Trump administration’s push to close the border.


Entrance to Casa Padre, where as many as 1,400 boys are being housed. (Loren Elliott/Reuters)

Immigrant children walk in a line outside a Homestead, Fla. temporary shelter that was a Job Corps site, on June 20, 2018 (Brynn Anderson/AP)
In Texas, 32 licensed facilities shelter migrant children. Southwest Key is the largest operator in the state, housing almost 4,000 children as of mid-May in 17 facilities, according to the Texas Tribune. The nonprofit organization has grown apace with surges in Central American youth seeking refuge. So, too, has annual compensation for its chief executive, Juan Sanchez; IRS filings indicate he earned nearly $1.5 million in 2016.


Immigrant children in Texas shelters as of May 16
1,000
10
100
—Fort Worth
8
El Paso
84—
—Tornillo, 73
TEXAS
—178
184—
San Antonio—
Houston
Corpus Christi
104
In mid-May, there were 1,006 children in the Casa Padre shelter in Brownsville. Today it is reported that there are more than 1,400.
June 19 satellite image of the Department of
Health and Human Services tent city in Tornillo, Texas
U.S. Customs and
Border Protection
Tornillo Port of Entry
Car
entry
Secondary detention
camp building
18 tent shelters
Primary detention
camp building
10 tent
shelters
To Mexico
200 FEET
Satellite image provided by Planet Labs.
The temporary tent city at Tornillo, east of El Paso, houses migrant children and had been expected to expand to receive youngsters forcibly separated from their families.

Inside Southwest Key’s Casa Padre shelter
The secretive shelter in Brownsville houses more than 1,400 immigrant boys, many who crossed the border by themselves and dozens who were separated from their parents when picked up by border agents, under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy targeting illegal border crossings. The original capacity for the facility was 1186.

[Inside Casa Padre, the converted Walmart where the U.S. is holding nearly 1,500 immigrant children]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... ba2bf5851f




Polly Sigh

After @AmericanAir employees expressed concerns & the pilot tried to prevent the kids from being put on the plane, ICE told them the kids were being reunited w/ family living in the US.
“They lied to us. It’s disgusting what they did,” an attendant said.

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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:02 pm

Navy documents show plan to erect “austere” camps for 117,000 immigrants

CONCENTRATION CAMPS


Zero Tolerance Policy Could Lead to Navy Detainment Centers | Time

The U.S. Navy is preparing plans to construct sprawling detention centers for tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases in California, Alabama and Arizona, escalating the military’s task in implementing President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy for people caught crossing the Southern border, according to a copy of a draft memo obtained by TIME.

The internal document, drafted for the Navy Secretary’s approval, signals how the military is anticipating its role in Trump’s immigration crackdown. The planning document indicates a potential growing military responsibility in an administration caught flat-footed in having to house waves of migrants awaiting civilian criminal proceedings.

The Navy memo outlines plans to build “temporary and austere” tent cities to house 25,000 migrants at abandoned airfields just outside the Florida panhandle near Mobile, Alabama, at Navy Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach, Alabama, and nearby Navy Outlying Field Silverhill.

The memo also proposes a camp for as many as 47,000 people at former Naval Weapons Station Concord, near San Francisco; and another facility that could house as many as 47,000 people at Camp Pendleton, the Marines’ largest training facility located along the Southern California coast. The planning memo proposes further study of housing an undetermined number of migrants at the Marine Corps Air Station near Yuma, Arizona.

The planning document estimates that the Navy would spend about $233 million to construct and operate a facility for 25,000 people for a six-month time period. The proposal suggests these tent cities be built to last between six months and one year.

Capt. Greg Hicks, Navy’s chief spokesman, declined to provide details on the matter. “It would be inappropriate to discuss internal deliberative planning documents,” he told TIME.

Although the military has not yet been ordered to construct these new detention facilities, it is clear it bracing to join a policy challenge that is ricocheting throughout the whole of government. What began as a crackdown on immigrants crossing the border illegally has now spread to the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense and Health and Human Services.

TIME Photo-Illustration. Photographs by Getty Images

In the Navy document, military officials propose a 60-day timeline to build the first temporary tent facility for 5,000 adults. After that, military officials suggest they could add room for 10,000 additional individuals each month.

The memo was written by Phyllis L. Bayer, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, in anticipation for a request from the Department of Homeland Security. It recommends Navy Secretary Richard Spencer sign off on the plan, which allocates roughly 450 square feet per immigrant held for housing, support staff and security, and send it to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Mattis’ office declined to comment on the proposed plan obtained by TIME.

Trump on Wednesday ordered the Pentagon to work with the Department of Homeland Security to house the tens of thousands of immigrants currently being held awaiting criminal proceedings for crossing the U.S.-Mexican border illegally. Under the administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, current facilities are at their breaking point and the immigration courts face deep backlogs. At the same time, children who previously had been separated from their parents are now going to be held with the adults, further straining the system.

Read More: U.S. Attorney in West Texas Drops ‘Zero-Tolerance’ Charges Against Migrants Who Came With Children

The Pentagon has been asked make preparations on military bases to house as many as 20,000 house immigrant children who are apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border without an adult relative or separated from parents, U.S. military officials said. Department of Health and Human Services completed assessments this week at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Dyess Air Force Base, Fort Bliss in Texas and Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas for potential use for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program.

“While four bases (3 in Texas and 1 in Arkansas) have been visited by HHS for possible housing, it doesn’t mean any or all children would be housed there,” Army Lt. Col. Jaime Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Mattis deferred questions on the matter to the Department of Homeland Security but did acknowledge the military’s willingness to help with the Trump Administration’s latest crisis. “We have housed refugees,” he told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. “We have housed people thrown out of their homes by earthquakes and hurricanes. We do whatever is in the best interest of the country.”

Currently, migrant children are being held in facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services. One facility, a converted Walmart in Texas, was recently opened to reporters, igniting a media firestorm.

Using military bases in this way is not new. In 2014, the Obama Administration placed around 7,700 migrant children on bases in Texas, California and Oklahoma. The temporary shelters were shuttered after four months.
http://time.com/5319334/navy-detainment ... on-policy/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby RocketMan » Fri Jun 22, 2018 6:31 pm

Hasn't he national security elite had a hard-on for detaining immigrants for a long long time, like from the 80s at least? I seem to remember Rumsfeld and Cheney and others in/out of government attending Continuity of Government exercises with scenarios involving mass exodus of populations from across the Southern border? And those FEMA camps are already out there, amirite?

This gleeful rush to fence people in concentration camps is disgusting/scary.

And the prospect of creating a whole sub-population of rootless, paperless children taken from their parents and spread out in facilities across the US is positively chilling... A goddamn smorgasbord for a certain class of elites. Man, I hate sounding like a fucking Infowars reader these days. They feature this kind of talk on Right Wing Watch these days, goddamit.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:56 pm

It's all so unnecessary. I agree, RocketMan. The families could be kept together. Ankle bracelets would keep track of the adults. No one need be incarcerated. Cruelty, will be this president's legacy.

Trump complains illegal aliens commit murders, how many I do not know, but surely, there cannot be nearly as many as will be killed by the rollback and mooting of environmental regulations that most companies not only agreed to prior to their being enacted, but honor.

You know, Donald, just like the ankle bracelet your pal Manafort was wearing just before he was sent to prison.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby Cordelia » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:54 am

First Lady Melania Trump Visits Border Detention Facility In Texas

June 21, 20181:15 PM ET

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/21/62225075 ... facilities


I really don't believe she'd flaunt this while traveling to meet people who are suffering.

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Someone must have bribed her personal dressers to set her up.

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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jul 29, 2018 8:38 pm

Trujillo left the boy’s room, but returned a short time later and lifted the child’s blanket again. He resumed the tickling, but this time he also rubbed M.A.C.’s penis through his clothing, court records show. The boy moved Trujillo’s hand.

“I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” Trujillo told the boy, according to police records.


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Immigrant Youth Shelters: “If You’re a Predator, It’s a Gold Mine”

We obtained police reports and call logs from more than two-thirds of the shelters housing immigrant children. Here’s what they show.

by Michael Grabell and Topher SandersJuly 27, 12:19 p.m. EDT

Southwest Key Programs’ Estrella del Norte facility in Tucson (David Sanders for ProPublica)
Update, July 27, 2018: This story has been updated to include responses from St. PJ’s Children’s Home and BCFS International Children’s Shelter.

Just five days after he reached the United States, the 15-year-old Honduran boy awoke in his Tucson, Arizona, immigrant shelter one morning in 2015 to find a youth care worker in his room, tickling his chest and stomach.

When he asked the man, who was 46, what he was doing, the man left. But he returned two more times, rubbing the teen’s penis through his clothing and then trying to reach under his boxers. “I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” said the worker, who was later convicted of molestation.

In 2017, a 17-year-old from Honduras was recovering from surgery at the shelter when he woke up to find a male staff member standing by his bed. “You have it very big,” the man said, referring to the teen’s penis. Days later, that same employee brushed the teen with his hand while he was playing video games. When the staff member approached him again, the boy locked himself in a bathroom.

And in January of this year, a security guard at the shelter found notes in a minor’s jacket that suggested an inappropriate relationship with a staff member.

Pulled from police reports, incidents like these at Southwest Key’s Tucson shelter provide a snapshot of what has largely been kept from the public as well as members of Congress — a view, uncolored by politics, of troubling incidents inside the facilities housing immigrant children.

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Using state public records laws, ProPublica has obtained police reports and call logs concerning more than 70 of the approximately 100 immigrant youth shelters run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. While not a comprehensive assessment of the conditions at these shelters, the records challenge the Trump administration’s assertion that the shelters are safe havens for children. The reports document hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights and missing children.

The recently discontinued practice of separating children from their parents has thrust the youth shelters into the national spotlight. But, with little public scrutiny, they have long cared for thousands of immigrant children, most of them teenagers, although last year 17 percent were under 13. On any given day, the shelters in 17 states across the country house around 10,000 adolescents.

The more than 1,000 pages of police reports and logs detail incidents dating back to the surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America in 2014 during the Obama administration. But immigrant advocates, psychologists and officials who formerly oversaw the shelters say the Trump administration’s harsh new policies have only increased pressures on the facilities, which often are hard-pressed to provide adequate staffing for kids who suffer from untold traumas and who now exist in a legal limbo that could shape the rest of their lives.

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. “You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

Southwest Key wouldn’t discuss specific incidents, but said in a statement that the company has a strict policy on abuse and neglect and takes every allegation seriously. HHS declined ProPublica’s requests to interview the refugee resettlement program’s director, Scott Lloyd. The agency released a statement saying it “treats its responsibility for each child with the utmost care” and has a “zero-tolerance policy for all forms of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior” at the shelters.

But the reports collected by ProPublica so far show that in the past five years, police have responded to at least 125 calls reporting sex offenses at shelters that primarily serve immigrant children. That number doesn’t include another 200 such calls from more than a dozen shelters that also care for at-risk youth residing in the U.S. Call records for those facilities don’t distinguish which reports related to unaccompanied immigrants and which to other youth housed on the property.

Psychologists who’ve worked with immigrant youth said the records likely undercount the problems because many kids might not report abuse for fear of affecting their immigration cases.

It’s unclear whether any of the children mentioned as victims in the reports were separated from their parents at the border, but the reports include several children as young as 6 years old. The government faced a court deadline Thursday to reunite the nearly 3,000 children who were separated from their parents. But the administration told the court that more than 700 of those children remain in shelters or foster care because their parents have already been deported or have been deemed ineligible for reunification for various reasons.

Not all the reports reveal abuse. The shelters are required to report any sexual allegation to the police and many reports detail minor incidents and horseplay not uncommon in American schools. For example, the BCFS International Children’s Shelter in Harlingen, Texas, called the police in February after one minor entered another’s room and rubbed a small styrofoam ball on the juvenile’s buttocks.

And, once secure in the shelters, some immigrant children report assaults that occurred not at the shelters, but in their home countries. Last November, a 14-year-old girl staying in a shelter in Irvington, New York, told staff she had been raped in Honduras by a man who was now in immigration custody.

But the reports show that the allegations of staff abuse and inappropriate relationships that occurred in Tucson aren’t isolated. In February, a 24-year-old youth care worker at KidsPeace in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was placed on administrative leave after kissing a teenage boy in the laundry room. Just over a year earlier, a 21-year-old staff member there was accused of kissing a 16-year-old girl in the hallway. The BCFS shelter in Harlingen was written up by state regulators in 2017 after a staff member flew to New York to visit a former resident. And at a Southwest Key shelter outside San Diego, reports show, a female employee who had been accused of kissing a juvenile quit after being confronted with information that the teenager had the woman’s Snapchat account written on a piece of paper.

KidsPeace wouldn’t discuss personnel matters but said “the safety and well-being of our young clients are our top priority.”

BCFS said the staff member was terminated for violating agency policy and that it has "very strict and clear boundaries for our staff."

The reports also reveal dozens of incidents of unwanted groping and indecent exposure among children and teenagers at the facilities. Some kids fleeing threats and violence in their home countries arrived in the United States only to be placed in shelters where they faced similar dangers. In March, a 15-year-old boy at the Southwest Key shelter in Tucson reported that his roommate lifted up his legs as he was trying to go to sleep, made thrusting motions and said, “I’m going rape you.” And in late 2016, a 15-year-old at KidsPeace told police that another boy there had been forcing him to have oral sex. After an investigation, one teen was transferred to a more secure facility. (KidsPeace said it wouldn’t discuss specific information about kids in its care.)

While it’s difficult to get a complete count, the police reports show that children go missing or run away from the shelters roughly once a week. Several shelters, including Southwest Key's Tucson facility, have seen a significant increase in missing person and runaway calls since the start of 2018. St. PJ’s Children’s Home in San Antonio, which primarily cares for immigrant children, has had 26 such calls in the first half of the year, records show, compared to 14 for all of last year and nine for 2016.

St. PJ’s Children’s Home responded after publication and said its spike in runaways involves U.S. children, not immigrant youth.

The police reports also raise questions about how Southwest Key, the largest operator of immigrant shelters, handles such incidents. In the molestation case involving the 46-year-old staffer, police had obtained edited surveillance footage but later sought a complete, unedited version. Southwest Key, however, had taped over the footage. And in another case, police noted that Southwest Key refused to give officers records from an internal investigation.

Southwest Key CEO Juan Sánchez declined an interview. The Texas-based nonprofit has received more than $1.3 billion in federal grants and contracts in the past five years for the shelters and other services. Jeff Eller, a spokesman, said, “We cooperate with all investigations.”

Government officials and advocates say most immigrant youth shelters were never intended to house children long-term. But in recent weeks, the average length of stay has climbed to 57 days from 34 days just two years ago.

Maria Cancian, deputy assistant secretary for policy at HHS’s Administration for Children and Families from 2015 to 2016, said typically the shelters only housed immigrant kids for the “honeymoon period” when they first arrived in the U.S.

“The kids didn’t have a chance to get bored and ornery,” she said. “The longer kids are there, the more trouble you’re going to have, and the more opportunities there are for relationships to evolve in ways that are more challenging.”

Cancian, who served under President Obama, said the shelters were well run when she was there. “But if you’re serving 65,000 children in a year,” she said, “there are going to be some bad incidents.”

The network of federally funded shelters sprang up after HHS took over the responsibility of caring for unaccompanied children arriving at the border in 2003. For most of their existence, the shelters received little attention, serving fewer than 8,000 children a year. But in 2014, that number surged to nearly 60,000 as a flood of teenagers fleeing gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador sought asylum in the U.S.

The shelters — whose operators have been paid about $4 billion over the past five years — were designed as temporary way stations, where new arrivals could get acclimated while staffers tried to locate family members who could care for them while their immigration cases wound through the courts.

There are now approximately 100 shelters scattered from Seattle to suburban New York, but concentrated in Texas and Arizona. They range from old motels to stand-alone homes, from a converted Walmart to a former estate set amid mansions, where on a recent day a deer could be seen prancing through the leafy grounds.

The children arrive with a host of needs, said Nayeli Chavez-Dueñas, a clinical psychologist who helped develop shelter guidelines on behalf of the National Latina/o Psychological Association.

Many children have experienced traumatic events in their home countries, are desperate for stability after the long journey, and have little understanding of American laws — all things that make them particularly vulnerable.

“When a perpetrator is trying to pick a victim they’re picking somebody that they think is less likely to report the abuse,” Chavez-Dueñas said. “Children and youth that are coming from outside of the country, that have no legal status here, that don’t speak English, that don’t have access to lawyers or people who can protect them — they already might think they’re not going to be believed.”

In the back of their minds, she said, is the fear that speaking up could ultimately hurt their immigration case.

The worker who was convicted of molesting the boy in Tucson isn’t the only shelter employee to face criminal charges. Last year, according to court records, a youth care worker at a Homestead, Florida, shelter was sentenced to 10 years in prison after she sent nude photos of herself to a 15-year-old boy who had recently left the shelter and asked him for sex. In 2012, a case manager at a Fullerton, California, shelter was convicted of molesting several teenage boys when they went into his office for regular calls with family, court records show.

The shelters must complete background checks complying with both federal standards and state licensing requirements. They are overseen by an overlapping system of regulators that ostensibly provides a lot of enforcement tools. When incidents occur, shelters are required to alert the police and the ORR. They may also have to notify state agencies that license child-care facilities.

Bob Carey, who was director of ORR from 2015 to 2017, said each week he read through a stack of significant incident reports submitted by the shelters, summarizing everything from behavior problems to allegations of sex between staff and minors. Looking at them over several years, he said, there weren’t many serious incidents that stood out.

“When I was there, the overwhelming majority of what was reported was one kid slapping the butt of another kid in the cafeteria line,” he said. “But you want to make sure that when the more serious incident does happen, that people know what do.”

When there were serious problems, he said, the agency would initiate an investigation that could result in “corrective actions,” ranging from increased monitoring to the termination of the grant. Field staff assigned to the regions where the shelters are located can make unannounced visits day or night. In Texas, licensing officials can also issue fines, order shelters to make changes and ultimately revoke a shelter’s operating license. But in practice, the harshest tools have rarely been used.

Monitoring the shelters can be extremely difficult as the number of unaccompanied children can fluctuate wildly from year to year.

The rise and fall means the shelters are in a constant state of flux, making it difficult to retain and train staff. Last spring, Southwest Key laid off almost 1,000 employees — only to have to ramp up several months later. Current and former employees describe a stressful environment where overstretched and underpaid care workers do the best they can with little training to handle kids in crisis.

“It’s really hard to imagine how difficult it is to quickly ramp up appropriate care for children,” Cancian said. “The more people you have to bring in fast and the less experienced your staff, the more challenges there are to maintain standards.”

In response to the influx in 2014, Carey and other officials developed a plan to restructure the ORR to improve oversight of the unaccompanied minor program by increasing staff and supervision, shifting field employees to regions where new shelters had popped up and trying to resolve longstanding data problems. The plan began to take shape at the end of 2016.

But it’s unclear what happened when the Trump administration took over and initiated a hiring freeze. An HHS spokeswoman would only say that the plan “was never implemented by the last administration” and that “today, operations are constantly reviewed and improved on an ongoing basis.”

Several police reports obtained by ProPublica raise questions about how serious incidents were handled by shelters.

In one case in Tucson in 2015, two female employees told managers that a maintenance supervisor had groped them, tried to pull one of them into a room, and then made a sexual gesture with a broom handle. When no action was taken, an assistant shift leader notified the police.

The employees told police that the assistant program director said he had lost one of women’s statements while another manager told them to “drop it and leave it alone.” The assistant director told police that the company held a sexual harassment class and suspended the maintenance supervisor while it investigated, but couldn’t prove or disprove the allegations because the supervisor denied them. When a police detective asked for copies of the employees’ statements, police records say, a lawyer for Southwest Key refused to provide them.

According to the police report, the employees said they feared that if the maintenance supervisor was “doing this to female employees, who’s to say he’s not doing this or worse to the several hundred female refugees staying at the center.” The man had full access to the building, they told police, and the minors might be hesitant to speak up.


KidsPeace Family Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (Michelle Gustafson for ProPublica)
The reports also show that when inappropriate touching or abuse occurred among residents at the Tucson shelter, the staff and police often left it up to minor victims to decide whether to file charges against other children.

The process for reporting and investigating incidents was inconsistent at other shelters as well.

A former employee at KidsPeace in Pennsylvania said that staff members frequently attended police interviews of residents who reported misconduct, potentially creating a conflict of interest. KidsPeace spokesman Bob Martin said the agency’s interactions with police and other governmental entities are “scrupulously conducted” to ensure that neither kids’ “personal well-being nor their legal rights are put at risk while they are in our care.”

At a Southwest Key shelter in Conroe, Texas, in May, a boy told a youth care worker that his mental health counselor brushed his shoulders, rubbed his arm and caressed his face while continually peeking out of the office’s blinds “as if he was checking to see if someone was coming.” The counselor began to unbuckle his own pants, but stopped, the police report said.

The boy later repeated the story to a state child welfare worker. The counselor was suspended during the investigation. But a more formal forensic interview didn’t take place until six days after the incident.

At that point, the police report said, the boy “made no outcry regarding any criminal offense” and the case was closed.

Waiting six days for a forensic interview is not on its face unusual, said David Palmiter, a psychology professor at Marywood University who has conducted forensic interviews of abused children. But he noted that the interview should be done sooner rather than later.

“Everything from legitimate confusion to some calculation of what the consequences could be or whether they would please or hurt the adults around them could impact the child,” he said. “There could be any number of reasons why the story changes.”

A large part of the current pressure on the shelters stems from a series of changes made by the Trump administration in how it handles unaccompanied minors, immigrant advocates say.

As part of an information-sharing agreement, the ORR is now required to provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement with potential sponsors’ names, dates of birth, addresses and fingerprints so that ICE can pull criminal and immigration history information on the sponsor, usually a family member, and all adult members of the sponsor’s household.

Officials say the vetting is being done to protect children. In one case a few years ago, the agency unintentionally turned teenagers over to a smuggling network that forced them to work on an egg farm to pay off their debts.

But immigrant advocates say the policy is deterring family members who are often undocumented from coming forward, leaving children to languish in shelters where they may become increasingly desperate.

The police reports detail repeated calls about runaways.

“It wouldn’t be that difficult for kids to run away from these facilities if they really wanted to,” said Carey, the former ORR director. “But they were expecting to be pretty quickly reunited with a parent or sponsor. That didn’t create a big incentive for them to try to run away.”

As the lengths of stay increase with sponsors less likely to come forward, he said, “that might conceivably create an incentive to voluntarily depart.”

For many of the teens, who may have already run away from gangs in their home countries, as well as predators along the route and the Border Patrol, bolting from the shelters is unsurprising.

In February, a recent arrival at Southwest Key’s Tucson shelter, whom staff and ICE believed was older than he claimed, jumped off a second-floor balcony into the parking lot, climbed a light pole and bounded over the fence.

At the Lincoln Hall Boys’ Haven in the New York suburbs, four boys disappeared in 2016 after being taken to a clinic for X-rays and other medical treatment. Last summer, two boys who were awaiting deportation at the Southwest Key shelter in Conroe, Texas, took off running as a large group of students was being escorted to a class.

According to ORR’s policy guide, agency staff are supposed to assess whether a child is an “escape risk” in deciding whether to place him or her in a more secure setting.

But in most facilities, the kids can’t be forcibly restrained from leaving.

“We are not a detention center,” said Eller, the Southwest Key spokesman. “If a child leaves the property, we cannot force them to stay, but we talk to them and we work with law enforcement to ensure their continued safety.”

Court records describe the Honduran teen by the initials M.A.C. He’d crossed the border in McAllen, Texas, and was taken to the Southwest Key facility in Tucson, where he was told caseworkers would help reunite him with his father in South Carolina. He’d been in the U.S. just five days and the next day was his 16th birthday.

In the dim morning hours that Saturday, a man M.A.C. knew only as Oscar walked into his room, wearing a Southwest Key T-shirt that read “I Love My Job.”

Oscar Trujillo, 46, was one of the first people M.A.C. met when he arrived at the facility on Friday, April 10, 2015. He viewed Oscar as an adult he could trust.

Standing at the boy’s bedside, Trujillo lifted M.A.C.’s blanket and began tickling him on the chest and stomach, according to transcripts of his 2017 trial. The boy testified that he was confused, but he didn’t shout or pull away because he saw Trujillo as a grownup and a teacher.

M.A.C. didn’t know that Trujillo had already violated one of Southwest Key’s major rules by entering the child’s room alone.

“That is something that is instilled in our minds day one,” said Jeff Cotton, a former Southwest Key employee who was the shift supervisor the day Trujillo entered the boy’s room. “Do not be alone with these kids because there could be an instance where you are accused and if you are accused, you want to have a witness.”

Trujillo left the boy’s room, but returned a short time later and lifted the child’s blanket again. He resumed the tickling, but this time he also rubbed M.A.C.’s penis through his clothing, court records show. The boy moved Trujillo’s hand.

“I know what you want, I can give you anything you need,” Trujillo told the boy, according to police records.


Oscar P. Trujillo (Tucson Police Department)
Trujillo left the room, and again returned a short time later. Surveillance cameras caught Trujillo entering and exiting M.A.C.’s room alone each time. On his third trip into the boy’s room, Trujillo attempted to lift the child’s boxers and slip his hand in the boy’s underwear, according to trial records.

This time M.A.C. pulled away. Trujillo asked the child not to tell anyone or else his job could be at risk, the records show. The boy, feeling violated and confused, got dressed and stood in line at the cafeteria.

“I felt uncomfortable over everything that had happened,” M.A.C. told a jury last year. “I knew it was something that shouldn’t be happening in a place like that, and I knew that I needed to say something to someone about that, because it was something that was serious. So I asked to speak to my counselor.”

After M.A.C. was interviewed by police and a psychologist, Trujillo was arrested and never returned to the Southwest Key facility.

Trujillo could not be reached for this story, but in court he testified that he went in and out of M.A.C.’s room to give him toiletries and to teach him how to make his bed. Trujillo’s attorneys also claimed that M.A.C. concocted the abuse claim in order to become a candidate for a U-Visa, which allows immigrants who are victims of crimes to remain in the country.

The jury wasn’t convinced. Trujillo was convicted of one count of molestation and sentenced to three years of probation.

“It’s hard for me to imagine that children and youth that are coming from other countries are arriving here and trying to play the system and apply for things that even people that have been here for years don’t know about,” said Chavez-Dueñas, the clinical psychologist, who is also an associate professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Arthur Evans, CEO of the American Psychological Association, said the problems revealed in the police and court records are to be expected given the “very significant needs” of the children and the staff’s lack of specialized training. His organization has offered its membership’s expertise to assist the facilities.

With such a mismatch in needs and capacity, he said, “You’re more likely to have kids running away. You’re more likely to have incidents of sexual and physical abuse.”

Such a result, Evans said, is “not surprising.”

ProPublica reporters Caroline Chen, Justin Elliott, Lisa Song, Talia Buford, Kavitha Surana, Jodi S. Cohen and Duaa Eldeib and researchers Claire Perlman, Decca Muldowney and Alex Mierjeski contributed to this report.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immi ... 1532709136


Judge orders Trump administration to help lawyers find 'missing parents' of migrant kids

LOS ANGELES — The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents ordered the Trump administration to provide detailed information in order to locate hundreds of what he called “missing parents” the government had deemed ineligible for reunification.

Image

Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California on Friday mandated that the Trump administration turn over a list by Wednesday of all parents deemed "ineligible" for reunification by the government, including those who have been deported, those who have been released into the United States and those who were not reunited because of criminal history.

The government on Friday said 650 children remained separated because their parents had been deemed ineligible.

The ruling was a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had argued that the government has not given complete information about those parents. In the case of those deported or released, the ACLU has offered to provide pro-bono attorneys to help track down parents whose whereabouts are unknown and provide them legal counsel.

“The judge’s order requiring the government to provide us with information about missing or deported parents leaves no doubt that the court expects the remaining reunifications to get done promptly,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt.


Previously the ACLU had requested information such as as identification numbers, known as "A-numbers," but the government has only now been ordered to comply.

Before the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security claimed there had been reunification of around 1,440 children with their parents — about half of the overall total — by the mandated Friday deadline for children older than 5. But the department has not committed to reuniting those with parents deemed ineligible, citing "red flags" in their background, waivers signed to deport without their children or leaving ICE custody to deport or await a hearing inside the United States.

Image: Judge Dana Sabraw
Judge Dana SabrawU.S. District Court
In court, government lawyer Scott Stewart argued to the judge that detailed information would actually hinder reunifications.

"I just would be concerned that there is very burdensome data efforts that would detract from reunification,” Stewart said.

Sabraw is expected to issue a separate order as soon as Monday about a temporary seven-day ban on deportations for reunited families, of which the government said Friday there are about 1,000.

In all, the government either reunified around 1,820 children with their parents or put them in the care of other family members or sponsors, government lawyers told Sabraw on Friday.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigr ... nt-n895596



Advocates Say Immigrant Children Separated From Their Parents Spoke Of Being Kicked By Guards

"The children I've spoken to who describe their experiences while they were separated describe absolute horror."

Amber Jamieson01:11 AM - 27 Jul 2018
Map of Dilley, Texas
Reporting From

Dilley, Texas

Posted on July 28, 2018, at 5:12 p.m. ET

Border Patrol agents taking a father and son from Honduras into custody near the US–Mexico border on June 12.
John Moore / Getty Images
Border Patrol agents taking a father and son from Honduras into custody near the US–Mexico border on June 12.

DILLEY, Texas — Lawyers and advocates working at a Texas detention center where hundreds of immigrant families have been detained in recent weeks say they were horrified to hear stories from child detainees of abuse they allegedly endured at the hands of authorities while separated from their parents at other facilities.

Child detainees at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley told stories of Customs and Border Protection officers at other facilities kicking and hitting them, social workers declaring they were to be adopted by American families, and being forced to sweep floors in the shelters they were staying in, according to the activists.

"The children I've spoken to who describe their experiences while they were separated describe absolute horror," said Cameron Carcelén, 34, an architect from Connecticut volunteering as a translator. "The type of abuse that would make any parent sick."

The alleged abuse occurred before they were transferred to the Dilley detention center, stressed the lawyers and advocates. They said they could not provide specific details of the alleged incidents due to privacy concerns over their clients, all of whom are currently seeking asylum.

A CBP spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that without specific details regarding the time, location, and date of allegations, it was not possible for CBP to investigate the claims.

They added that detainees are treated humanely and that anonymous claims should not be regarded as fact.

"CBP disagrees with these unsubstantiated allegations. The alleged incidents do not equate to what we know to be common practice at our facilities," said a CBP spokesperson.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which cares for children separated from their parents, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


Eric Gay / AP
Carcelén was part of a group of 30 volunteers — mainly lawyers but also teachers, translators, and other professionals — who spent a week volunteering for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, 70 miles southwest of San Antonio.

The project offers free legal aid to detainees at the South Texas Family Residential Center and has been running since the detention center opened in 2014. Earlier in the summer around 2,000 detainees were staying in the Dilley center but this week around 600 people were there, according to the Dilley Pro Bono Project.

Several volunteers said children spoke of guards at other facilities kicking and hitting them and serving them frozen food, including raw meat.

"They were kicked, repeatedly kicked, over and over," said Carcelén, who also said she heard stories of children being repeatedly woken up throughout the night while kept in custody.

"A lot of the abuse was emotional," said Catherine Powers, a 47-year-old dual language teacher from Boulder, Colorado, who was volunteering as a translator.

"There's a guard who said, 'Oh, what's your mom's name? I'll go get her,' and then he'd never come back. Can you imagine?" said Powers.

"The guards would come and scream and yell and bang on the cages, 'You’re never going to see your parents again,'" said Brittany Bonner, 35, a criminal lawyer from Miami who often works in child welfare.

Some of the Dilley Pro Bono Project volunteers. Bonner is second from the right.
Brittany Bonner
Some of the Dilley Pro Bono Project volunteers. Bonner is second from the right.

Bonner, a mother of two, felt compelled to come to Texas and use her legal knowledge after feeling deeply moved by the news of the family separation policy implemented by the Trump administration.

"My husband would yell at me, 'Brittany, put the phone down' — I was reading constantly. I wasn't able to sleep. It really was killing me," said Bonner.

Many of the 30 volunteers were mothers, who said after seeing the separated families on television that they felt they had to come and help.

"A lot of this resonates with moms," said Anne Gordon, a law professor from Duke University who specializes in criminal law and who also volunteered in Dilley this week. "Every time my 3-year-old would cry, I'd think of a 3-year-old crying without their mother. It was affecting everything I was doing as a parent."

Volunteers are given five hours of training on immigration law before they started seeing clients in the detention center. Gordon notes that many of the skills were the same she'd use in criminal law: fact-gathering, interviewing traumatized people, and finding gaps or holes in a story that officials might seize upon.

This week she'd been helping prep mothers for their initial credible fear interview, one of the first steps in the process for seeking asylum in the United States, pointing out what they should emphasize.

For example, Gordon said most women shared horrific stories of domestic abuse, both sexual and physical, from husbands and male relatives. "Unfortunately we don't grant asylum for that," noted Gordon, saying she encourages clients to not focus on those aspects of their history and instead find other reasons that did fit under the government's new tighter regulations: "Three months ago, you were targeted for your religious group and fired at and people were shouting 'negra!' That's a 'real' reason."

La hielerra: the icebox. Freezing rooms with concrete walls (where you’re seeing photos of kids with silver blankets). Some kids arrive with sopping wet clothes from the river, and get stuck in la hielerra for days with no dry clothes – no wonder a bunch of kids come here sick.

La perrera: the dog cage. The large chain link fence rooms you've also seen in photos. One client has a story of guards coming by and throwing biscuits into the center of the room so people would scramble for them.

01:12 AM - 27 Jul 2018
Thirteen of the 30 volunteers this week came as a cohort organized by Carolina Rubio-MacWright, 36, an immigration lawyer and artist from New York, who used her social networks to organize volunteers and raise money to send them to Dilley shortly after the family separation policy made headlines.

"I was in a complete panic," said Rubio-MacWright. "I've never left my kids for seven days, but I felt like we couldn't just abandon the other kids who wouldn't be in that situation if they were white."

Instagram
View this photo on Instagram

Instagram: @carustol
A drawing by one of the children in detention.

Of the 30 volunteers signed up this week, two of them were men. Next week, 28 volunteers are signed up, six or fewer are men.

"This gender imbalance has been true of the project for at least the year plus I have been here," said Katy Murdza, an advocacy coordinator at the Dilley Pro Bono Project, which is run by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Council Immigration Justice Campaign.

Rubio-MacWright said she specifically chose a wide group of women, many of them white, so that they would go home and share their stories with their communities and continue to work in the immigration advocate space.

"A lot of these women are in circles that are not necessarily talking about immigration," said Rubio-MacWright.

She said she wants the women to continue to talk about immigration and their experiences in Dilley "because we have elections coming up."
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/am ... use-kicked
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby Elvis » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:54 am

Holy fuck. And where is the "pizzagate" brigade now??
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby liminalOyster » Tue Jul 31, 2018 9:19 am

Elvis » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:54 am wrote:Holy fuck. And where is the "pizzagate" brigade now??


Fear not, I came across some awhile back on Reddit who were claiming that Trump should be given credit for protecting these kids.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:00 pm

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Aug 01, 2018 11:49 am

A Judge Just Told the Government to Stop Medicating Immigrant Kids Without Consent

And to release many of them from high-security juvenile halls.

Samantha Michaels
Jul. 31, 2018 6:02 PM

Unaccompanied minors sleep in a holding cell at a US Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Brownsville, Texas in 2014. Eric Gay/Associated Press

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A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to stop medicating detained immigrant children without consent and to release some of them from a psychiatric center and high-security juvenile halls where they have allegedly been held in abusive conditions.

US District Court Judge Dolly Gee in California ruled that their detention in these facilities violated the Flores settlement, a 1997 federal court decision that requires immigrant kids in government custody to be held in the “least restrictive setting” possible. As I reported earlier this month following an investigation by Reveal, children at the Shiloh psychiatric center in Texas claimed they had been forcibly held down and injected with powerful psychotropic drugs that made them dizzy or incapacitated. Kids at juvenile halls in Virginia accused guards of beating them while they were handcuffed, strapping them to chairs with bags over their heads, or isolating them for long periods in solitary confinement. It’s unclear how many of these children were separated from their parents at the border and how many were put in government custody after arriving to the country without an adult.

Kids at juvenile halls in Virginia accused guards of beating them while they were handcuffed, strapping them to chairs with bags over their heads, or isolating them for long periods in solitary confinement.
In recent years, kids were sent to these facilities for a range of reasons, including for expressing sadness and anxiety after being separated from family members, or for acting out at low-security shelters as they dealt with earlier trauma. In her decision on Monday, Judge Gee told the government to transfer all immigrant children out of the Shiloh psychiatric center except for those who have been found by a psychiatrist or psychologist to pose a danger to themselves or others. Going forward, she wrote, the government must get “informed written consent” from a parent, family member, or sponsor—or a court order—before medicating kids in nonemergency situations. The center must also stop using “security measures that are not necessary for the protection of minors or others, such as the denial of access to drinking water.” A child named Julio Z. had testified that he was injured when a staff member threw him to the ground after he tried to quench his thirst. (In a statement, Shiloh psychiatric center has denied allegations of abuse.)

The Office of Refugee Resettlement must also release some immigrant children from juvenile halls in California and Virginia. This includes kids who have been sent to these facilities solely because they “may be chargeable” with a crime (but are not currently chargeable), as well as those who were targeted just because they said they were in a gang or displayed gang affiliation but have not committed any other offense. The government may continue to hold immigrant kids in juvenile hall who are charged with or convicted of a crime or the subject of delinquency proceedings, or who have threatened violence or engaged in dangerous behavior at low-security government shelters.

But these children must be given better notice of why they are being transferred, the judge ordered. Kids in the past reported being awakened in the early hours of morning and sent in shackles to juvenile halls without any warning or explanation of the accusations leveled against them. Some were detained there for three or four months without receiving written notice of the reason for their transfer—a delay that the judge said violated the terms of the Flores settlement. She also called for changes that would allow parents or other relatives to resume custody of their children from juvenile halls more quickly, after family members reported long delays.
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justi ... t-consent/
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 02, 2018 8:49 am

Phoenix Southwest Key staff member accused of touching minor, police say
abc15.com staff
10:18 AM, Aug 1, 2018
6:33 PM, Aug 1, 2018



PHOENIX - Police are investigating after an underage girl was reportedly touched inappropriately at a Southwest Key facility in Phoenix.

According to the Phoenix Police Department, 32-year-old Fernando Magaz Negrete, who works at the facility near 27th and Campbell avenues, was seen by a juvenile witness touching a 14-year-old victim inappropriately on June 27.

Court documents say a 16-year-old saw Negrete touching her roommate in their bedroom in June.

The witness says she allegedly saw Negrete touching the girl's genitals and kissing her, court documents said. Additionally, Negrete was seen on surveillance video entering the girl's bedroom several times throughout the night.

Negrete was contacted by police on Tuesday and made statements regarding his involvement. He was booked into jail on charges of molestation, sexual abuse, and aggravated assault.

Arizona Representative Ruben Gallego wrote a letter on Wednesday, asking for the Department of Health and Human Services' Inspector General to do an investigation of widespread reports of sexual abuse involving migrant children in federal custody. He also asked about their policies and whether they're following childcare regulations.

The incidents include physical and sexual abuse suffered by a 6-year-old girl at a Southwest Key facility in Glendale, according to Gallego's office.

Tucson police have also investigated multiple molestations at local Southwest Key locations. According to police reports obtained from ProPublica, police investigated molestation claims dating to 2014.

Around the country, migrant children have reported abuse, neglect and assault at immigrant detention facilities.

The Phoenix Southwest Key facility where Negrete worked is the same location First Lady Melania Trump visited in June.

Southwest Key spokesperson Jeff Eller released the following statement on Wednesday:

“When a child tells us of inappropriate behavior, we immediately call law enforcement and start an internal investigation as appropriate. That’s what happened in this case. Southwest Key always works with law enforcement to bring the full force of the law to bear when it is warranted.”
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoen ... hing-minor



trump is responsible for this

this was a child kidnapped by him




Stop Forcibly Separating Families at the Border

by A group of detained mothers and children
Immigration Lawyers: Avenatti & Associates, APC United States of America
A group of detained mothers and children
We are a group of mothers who have had our children taken from us at the US border. We are fighting to be reunited with them and for an immediate change in the policy.
14
days to go
$138,435
pledged by 2,548 people
Pledge now
This case is raising funds for its stretch target. Your pledge will be collected within the next 24-48 hours (and it only takes two minutes to pledge!)

About the case Comments
Please join the legal battle to reunite families and end the forced separation of migrant children from their parents.

The Trump administration speaks of making America great, but on our southern border it is now committing atrocities that we would have never thought possible. The forced separation of children from their parents runs counter to our values as a nation, the core principles our country was founded upon, and what we stand for. This is not my America. This is not our America.

We are raising funds to pay for (a) release bonds to assist mothers who are attempting to gain release from detention centers so they can be reunited with their children and (b) out-of-pocket expenses for our work reuniting families and changing the policy. No monies are going toward attorneys’ fees, and the uses of your money will be publicly disclosed.

All mothers are mothers first. Regardless of their political persuasion. And all children are simply children.

Please help us right this wrong.

Michael Avenatti, Esq.
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/stop- ... -families/
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:35 am

Image

Image
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:35 am

THEY SHOULD GO TO THE SOUTHERN U.S. BOARDER AND SEE HOW REAL PEOPLE LIVE UNDER trump

Melania Trump’s Parents Just Became Citizens Through a Process Her Husband Wants to Make Illegal

Image

The first lady sponsored her parents’ green cards years ago.

Sophie Murguia
Aug. 9, 2018 7:39 PM

Viktor and Amalija Knavs listen as their attorney makes a statement in New York on Thursday. First lady Melania Trump's parents have been sworn in as U.S. citizens. Seth Wenig/AP Photo


President Donald Trump has long demanded an end to “chain migration”—Republicans’ favorite term for the practice of legal immigrants sponsoring their relatives for green cards. But that hasn’t stopped Melania Trump’s parents, who applied for citizenship in the United States through the same process that their son-in-law hopes to make illegal.

The first lady’s Slovenian-born parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, became U.S. citizens in a brief ceremony in New York on Thursday, the New York Times reports, after Melania Trump sponsored them for green cards.

“Once they had the green card, they then applied for citizenship when they were eligible,” the family’s lawyer confirmed to the Times. The lawyer also confirmed that the Knavses had held their green cards for at least five years, as required by law.

Donald Trump has frequently railed against “chain migration” and insisted that any immigration reform bill get rid of this practice. The White House has supported a plan that would stop legal immigrants from sponsoring their parents for green cards—in other words, doing exactly what Melania has done.


In his State of the Union address this year, Trump claimed that family-based migration allows people to bring in “virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives” and said he supported “limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children.” As my colleague Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn has previously reported, it’s not exactly true that current law allows for “unlimited” migration. The White House has also made misleading claims that the practice threatens national security and hurts the economy.

Despite the president’s hostility toward “chain migration,” both he and Vice President Mike Pence are descended from European immigrants who benefited from family-based migration by joining their relatives in the U.S.


When asked if Melania Trump’s parents had come to the country via “chain migration,” their lawyer told the Times, “I suppose. It’s a dirty — a dirtier word.” He added: “It stands for a bedrock of our immigration process when it comes to family reunification.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... reen-card/
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:44 am

Judge slams Jeff Sessions for ‘outrageous’ deportation of abuse victim

August 9, 2018
The judge ordered the Trump administration to 'turn the plane around.'

Trump’s family separation atrocity has been getting much-deserved public attention, but the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are still doing other horrible things to immigrants — including deporting abuse victims seeking asylum.

Sessions recently changed U.S. policy to deny asylum to women and girls fleeing domestic violence, a despicable policy that is being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 12 migrants.

But on Wednesday, the judge handling the case learned that two of the plaintiffs, a woman named in the suit as “Carmen” and her minor daughter, had been deported while the case was still being argued, and threatened to hold Sessions in contempt:

“This is pretty outrageous,” said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The Justice Department had previously agreed to delay Carmen’s removal until the case could be heard, but the ACLU learned that the woman and her daughter were taken to the airport to be removed Wednesday morning. Judge Sullivan ordered the Trump administration to turn the plane around.

The ACLU blasted the Trump administration over the removal as well. “This disregard for commitments made to the court and the life or death circumstances that these immigrant women and children are facing is beyond unacceptable,” the organization wrote in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.

According to the lawsuit, Carmen “fled her home in El Salvador to escape two decades of horrific sexual abuse by her husband,” as well as death threats from a violent gang.

“Carmen’s husband routinely raped, stalked, and threatened her with death, treating her as his property, even after they were living apart,” the suit says. After she left her husband, the local gang tried to extort her for money at gunpoint, and threatened to kill her daughter if she did not comply.

Other plaintiffs in the suit report fleeing similar horrors, only to be denied asylum by Sessions’ cruel policy. A woman named Grace reports that she and her daughter were repeatedly sexually assaulted by her husband, and her daughter was beaten so severely that she had a miscarriage, yet Grace was denied asylum as well.

Trump’s immigration policies continue to cause incalculable suffering.

Published with permission of The American Independent.
https://shareblue.com/jeff-sessions-dep ... se-victim/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: What is #WhereAreTheChildren

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Aug 13, 2018 8:56 am

pure evil and anyone making excuses for this trump and the shit he is doing should be ashamed



U.S. IMMIGRATION
559 Children Separated at the Border Have Still Not Been Reunited With Their Parents



By GINA MARTINEZ August 10, 2018
There are 559 migrant children who have not been reunited with their parents after they were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year, according to a new court filing from the Trump Administration.

Of the 2,511 separated children, 1,569 were reunited with their parents who are in the custody of U.S. Immigration of Customs Enforcement. The Trump Administration said 386 children had not been reunited because their parents were “outside the U.S.” There have been previous instances of parents being deported without their children.

For 163 children, parents said they did not want to be reunited, though government attorneys note that a “significant number” of those parents are outside the country.

The documents were filed as part of an order by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who gave the Trump Administration a deadline a 30-day deadline to reunite families. That deadline expired on July 26. MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff first obtained the documents and posted them on Twitter Thursday night.

http://time.com/5363509/559-migrant-chi ... migration/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
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