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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBBC : Trump separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas
Its making front page news in the UK now.
Trump separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas
Link to tweet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44518942
Reporters and Democratic lawmakers have been allowed inside a detention centre that lies at the heart of a growing storm over a new US policy separating migrant children from their parents.
Authorities did not allow photos or videos to be taken inside the centre, but US Customs and Border Protection later released several images.
The Texas facility is known as Ursula, though immigrants are reportedly calling it La Perrara - dog kennel in Spanish - in reference to the cages used to hold children and adults who have ended up there after crossing the border from Mexico illegally.
"One cage had 20 children inside. Scattered about are bottles of water, bags of chips [crisps] and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets," the Associated Press reports.
Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley led the team of lawmakers to the site in the town of McAllen on Sunday.
He hit the headlines earlier this month when he was turned away from another facility housing some 1,500 boys in a disused Walmart store.
Speaking to CNN after the visit, he said: "In wire-mesh, chain linked cages that are about 30x30 [feet], a lot of young folks put into them.
"I must say though, far fewer than I was here two weeks ago. I was told that buses full (of children) were taken away before I arrived.
"That was one of my concerns, that essentially, when you have to give lengthy notice, you end up a little bit of a show rather than seeing what's really going on in these centres."
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen and Vermont Congressman Peter Welch expressed shock and anger over the conditions they saw:
"Those kids inside who have been separated from their parents are already being traumatised," Senator Merkley warned. "It doesn't matter whether the floor is swept and the bed-sheets tucked in tight."
A rights worker who visited the Ursula facility at the weekend told the Associated Press she had spoken to a 16-year-old girl who was left in charge of an unaccompanied toddler for three days and tasked with changing the child's nappies.
"She had to teach other kids in the cell to change her diaper," Michelle Brane, from the Women's Refugee Commission, said. The girl - who was four years old - was later reunited with her aunt, but the process took time because she did not speak Spanish but a language indigenous to Guatemala, the agency reports.
"She was so traumatised that she wasn't talking," Ms Brane said, describing the girl. "She was just curled up in a little ball."
She is not alone in voicing concerns over the long-term effects of separating adults and their children.
The American Academy of Pediatrics warned last week that "highly stressful experiences, including family separation, can cause irreparable harm to lifelong development by disrupting a child's brain architecture".
Separately, authorities have announced plans to erect tent cities that will hold hundreds more children in the Texas desert where temperatures regularly reach 40C (105F).
Local lawmaker Jose Rodriguez described the plan as "totally inhumane" and "outrageous", adding: "It should be condemned by anyone who has a moral sense of responsibility."
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The whole world are going to shame these fuckers.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)sunonmars
(8,656 posts)Cages, kennels, concentration camps, nazis.....
Negative attacks work, we must learn the lessons and fight fire with fire.
Don't be afraid to say what it really is, screw this pussyfooting around.
This is personified evil.
Stephen Miller is a Nazi, that is what he is.
Trump is a white supremacist.
Call them that, its what they are.
Chickensoup
(650 posts)Lonestarblue
(10,170 posts)The fact that these are brown people is a factor. If Russia invaded Ukraine and white Russian families fled to the U.S. with their children, they would be welcomed with open arms. They would probably be housed in the DC Trump hotel at government expensewith their children. Trumps remarks about the shithole countries and his plea for people from Norway to come here are obvious examples of his racism.
sunonmars
(8,656 posts)OhNo-Really
(3,985 posts)coined from a uder named nightwatch
Perfect title imo
Soxfan58
(3,479 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)We all know how Trump loves to slap his name on things. These are Trump Concentration Camps with a big gaudy T.
KPN
(15,679 posts)blaming Democrats for this policy Democrats need to keep saying they dont need a single Democratic vote in the Senat or House to end this new policy that the Trump Administration created. Trump could end the new policy without a single vote from anyone Democrat or Republican. He wants funding for his stupid wall and because Democrats wont give it to him, hes angry and vengefully separating children from their parents as ransom. He is holding these children as hostages. We Democrats refuse to an wont negotiate with terrorists.
Yes, brand them as concentration camps, his wall as stupid, the taking of children as hostage taking, and demands for Democratic support for the wall as terrorism.
Chickensoup
(650 posts)If you see something say something.
Ok then.
We see insanity. We see middle ages barbarism.
We recognize there is an immigration problem, but separating children from their parents is not the solution. Decent Americans from all walks of political persuasions are hitting back. Standing tall for what is right.
we do not need an apology 50 years from now for the treatment of these young children by a corrupt administration and shameful GOP. yes, Yes, Yes we can all speak now in real time. This is a basic issue of minimum decency and ethical behavior befitting a superpower.
The man in the White House is continuing his wrecking ball destruction of our core principles and values and with it our standing in the world.
ornotna
(10,810 posts)They don't care one iota what others say.
bucolic_frolic
(43,511 posts)that will create permanent separation anxiety for these kids. At their ages the foundations of their personalities are being formed. Holding kids in a cold, galvanized steel fence holding pen. That is no place to raise a kid. Even poor kids need a warm, secure, loving place to sleep, have quiet time, hold their toys and blanket. And be with their mothers and/or fathers.
Joe Stalin could not have done this any better.
OhNo-Really
(3,985 posts)FDR, Hitler & Mousilini all died April, 1945
Trump born 1946
TheBlackAdder
(28,261 posts).
You can't make this shit up.
Who the fuck would name the child detention facility Ursula, except an evil bastard?
.
Oppaloopa
(867 posts)KPN
(15,679 posts)operating these detention centers? What corporations are involved? Every one of these suckers needs to get outed and their names and other identifying info plastered all over the internet!
Luz
(772 posts)dreamland
(964 posts)The Queen especially should not conference with him at all. He only wants the photographic publicity opportunities.
bucolic_frolic
(43,511 posts)KY_EnviroGuy
(14,501 posts)I want photos of Trump, Sessions and Miller curled up in little balls in orange jump suits in the dark corner of a jail cell......
MikeJelf
(37 posts)Of course there were the African children, on plantations, and the American native children, in reservations, and in living memory the American citizen children of Japanese ancestry. FOR their ancestry.
In the case of California natives, the state legislature (as in other states) paid thousands of 19th Century dollars for the murder of children. After all, the Indians were in the way of progre$$.
Then we fought a very bloody war to end chattel slavery, belatedly.
We made some amends to Native Americans, belatedly, except where respecting their rights would block destruction of Grandmother Earth for corporate profit.
We apologized to the Japanese Americans, belatedly, for putting their childhoods inside barbed wire and machine gun posts, and paid some symbolic reparations.
Now that Central America is a hellhole of repression and death thanks in large part to U.S. Government policies (see Iran-Contra, "Freeway Ricky Ross," Maryknoll Sisters, 2009 Honduras coup, etc.) we're violating international and U.S. law by denying asylum seekers a chance to save their lives, and kidnaping their children.
This is done so people whose self-worth depends mostly on hatred -- always a substantial voting base -- will rally to the defense of a pack of thieves whose priority never was the welfare of the United States nor of its people.
The one happy fact is that we've finally found an atrocity by this neofascist regime which so shocks the conscience that even corporate media are willing to call out an official pack of lies.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)and no doubt about it!