by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Yesterday was the deadline - the day by which all of the immigrant children who were forcibly removed from their parents by the American government were to be returned. D-Day. Get-it-done day. The day that District Judge Dana Sabraw set to officially end this national disgrace that the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has foisted upon us.
The first thing we learned as the deadline drew near was that the government, so efficient a snatching children from their parents, was incompetent when it came to tracking those children - and could not even cough up a definitive list of who the kids were or where they were being kept. Then we learned that some of the parents were being deported before they got their children back. Some, in fact, were being told that they had to leave as a prerequisite for reunification with their children. You must go home now if you want to get your kids back later.
We heard stories of milestones being missed - babies who took their first steps or said their first words while being kept away from their loved ones. We saw pictures of children in cages and heard about three-year-olds representing themselves in court proceedings. We saw tear-stained faces - of young parents, and children, and babies. They were sobbing over this evil that had swamped their lives, and decent Americans were sobbing with them.
During this rolling horror we saw members of Congress and other public officials being denied access to detention centers as petty government bureaucrats hustled to control the story and limit photo ops. If Americans could not see it, then it obviously did not exist.
But it did exist - and it was a nightmare that would have frightened Lovecraft.
Yesterday was the deadline for it all to end, and, of course, it did not.
The government is patting itself on the back for managing to get 1,400 children back to family members - for correcting a problem that should have never happened in the first place. But the government is also saying that 711 others still remain in some form of non-family care.
Seven hundred and eleven children still being kept away from their families in direct violation of a court order. In the several weeks since Judge Sabra issued his order, there should have been no higher priority of our government than getting those kids back with their parents. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Justice Department should have had that as their only focus. But those were other peoples' children, the brown spawn of "animals," an "infestation," and they were not the priority they should have been.
It was a mission failure for 711 young people and their families.
Secretary Nielsen of Homeland Security, Director Homan of ICE, and Attorney General Sessions didn't care enough to do what Judge Sabraw directed, and for that they should be jailed. Nielsen, Homan, and Sessions have no shame, so we must step up and be ashamed for them. The shame is ours.
It is now officially past time to free those children and reunite the families. That time has come and gone. Now it's time to let decency prevail - for a change - and end this moral outrage!
Citizen Journalist
Yesterday was the deadline - the day by which all of the immigrant children who were forcibly removed from their parents by the American government were to be returned. D-Day. Get-it-done day. The day that District Judge Dana Sabraw set to officially end this national disgrace that the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has foisted upon us.
The first thing we learned as the deadline drew near was that the government, so efficient a snatching children from their parents, was incompetent when it came to tracking those children - and could not even cough up a definitive list of who the kids were or where they were being kept. Then we learned that some of the parents were being deported before they got their children back. Some, in fact, were being told that they had to leave as a prerequisite for reunification with their children. You must go home now if you want to get your kids back later.
We heard stories of milestones being missed - babies who took their first steps or said their first words while being kept away from their loved ones. We saw pictures of children in cages and heard about three-year-olds representing themselves in court proceedings. We saw tear-stained faces - of young parents, and children, and babies. They were sobbing over this evil that had swamped their lives, and decent Americans were sobbing with them.
During this rolling horror we saw members of Congress and other public officials being denied access to detention centers as petty government bureaucrats hustled to control the story and limit photo ops. If Americans could not see it, then it obviously did not exist.
But it did exist - and it was a nightmare that would have frightened Lovecraft.
Yesterday was the deadline for it all to end, and, of course, it did not.
The government is patting itself on the back for managing to get 1,400 children back to family members - for correcting a problem that should have never happened in the first place. But the government is also saying that 711 others still remain in some form of non-family care.
Seven hundred and eleven children still being kept away from their families in direct violation of a court order. In the several weeks since Judge Sabra issued his order, there should have been no higher priority of our government than getting those kids back with their parents. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and the Justice Department should have had that as their only focus. But those were other peoples' children, the brown spawn of "animals," an "infestation," and they were not the priority they should have been.
It was a mission failure for 711 young people and their families.
Secretary Nielsen of Homeland Security, Director Homan of ICE, and Attorney General Sessions didn't care enough to do what Judge Sabraw directed, and for that they should be jailed. Nielsen, Homan, and Sessions have no shame, so we must step up and be ashamed for them. The shame is ours.
It is now officially past time to free those children and reunite the families. That time has come and gone. Now it's time to let decency prevail - for a change - and end this moral outrage!
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