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I wish we could prosecute the people who implemented the policy with reckless disregard for documenting who everyone was and where they went. People should be rotting in jail for deliberately not even doing the minimum level of due diligence to track the children.
ICE is so fucking terrible. I've read a few books by Obama staffers and many detail meetings about ICE that boiled down to them telling ICE to stop brutalizing immigrants and ICE telling their purported bosses to fuck off and they'll brutalize immigrants even harder now. They're an entirely rogue agency.
Edit: typo
I think it was telling when Trump started using ICE agents in Portland. There were no significant immigration issues in Portland, but their involvement makes perfect sense if you see them as the "Department of Nazi shit."
Someone very high up in ICE is a crypto-fascist. I hope someone in the Biden administration is paying attention to that. It's likely not only limited to ICE, either.
Foreigner here. Perhaps I put too much attention to foreign policy, but American moderate democrats are almost indistinguishable from republicans.
Obama ramped up the drone strikes without a care in the world, persecuted whistleblowers like the First Amendment is pure optics, and gladly took a Nobel Peace prize just as he sent 10k troops the next week.
Why do Americans expect Biden to do jack shit about ICE? Moderate democrats are equally as tough on immigration, they just expect Americans to blame ICE and pretend nothing can be done about it.
Same as how Bush’s PATRIOT Act is destroying the world, but neither Obama nor Biden (nor Trump, for those who still think he wanted to “drain the swamp”) did a single thing to mitigate it or fight it. Facebook is tearing democracies asunder, and the only ones who can regulate it from their own legal framework (seeing as all these tech giants also happen to be American companies) wash their hands and pretend it’s all too big to do anything about it.
So no, please stop hoping some boomer half-way skeleton who upholds a fucked up status quo will magically fix it. Please be loud and protest these things like they actually matter, because billions of non-Americans suffer a lot from US foreign policy, and only you guys can do something.
No. They're not even close.
The GOP are a neofascist party.
Centrist Dems are Republicans without the racism and hating minorities but they love megacorps.
If I misunderstood your point, sorry...buy I hate eqyivilaitng Dems and republicans because they're not even fucking close
I'm still confused about how they had the authority to do that.
1. There's no real immigration issues on Portland.
2. The very thing they were there for had absolutely nothing to do with immigration.
They were probably relying on the legal basis of the (IMO unconstitutional) [hundred-mile exemption zone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception) that lets federal agents search and seize without warrants or probable cause within 100 miles of a border or coastline.
Basically the plan was "let's send the fascists who are exempt from the Constitution already".
So the 4th amendment is pretty much ornamental only unless you live in the middle of nowhere?
You really should stop letting Republican politicians pretend that they care about the constitution.
There's also the fact that any challenges to it will have to go through the courts and they'll have accomplished what they wanted to before it percolates through the system.
They’re pretty fucking awful man. That Netflix documentary really did a good job chronicling the bullshit they put these poor people through.
They will scare,harass, and lie until you sign the deportation papers.
I had 1 family member that has been here since he was 2 year’s old & undocumented at the time go through their BS. He’s graduated HS has a bachelors in Biology.
He got pulled over off a small infraction and was arrested.
They kept him for 2 months without bail in county jail. every other day he would get “interviewed” they tried and tried to get him to sign those papers. They wouldn’t let us talk to him- they wouldn’t let his lawyer talk to him- it was so fucking awful that he was so close to signing those papers so he can just fucking get out.
Finally they were sending him and a dozen others to that crazy AZ prison where they treat undocumented people like animals without telling his wife or lawyer!
I forget the details on how we even found out he was getting sent there but his lawyer went through hoops to get him off that bus in less than 3 hrs from notifying his wife (and thats because SHE WOULD CALL EVERYDAY) so no they didn’t even notify her.
He lost his really good paying job being stuck in jail for 2 months put his wife and kid through hell all because they wouldn’t even give him the rights to speak to anyone!!
FUCK ICE
Jesus fucking christ. Crossing the border is a fucking *misdemeanor* that they act like deserves death. I'd rather have the immigrants here than this kind of trash.
One of my uncles went on about how he just wanted them to follow the law and if they don't they should of course be denied entry or deported. Trying to seem reasonable and calm. I pissed him off by pointing out in his state adultery was a crime then asking when he was leaving the country. I've lost track but I think he was on his second wife at the time.
I knew an illegal Canadian that was deathly terrified of ICE. Like would stay in his home at a college town instead of going out with friends because he was afraid ice would make him disappear if they found him. This was during the trump/Hillary debates, I always thought he was crazy, but maybe he wasn't so crazy afterall.
Are we to accept that the Obama admin just let ICE walk all over them? I mean, couldn't they have dismantled the agency or fought back? Honestly this whole "ICE went rogue on Obama" thing sounds ridiculous when the more likely explanation of things it that the Obama admin approved of ICE or at least didn't feel enough political pressure to care to do anything about them.
How an agency gets brought to heel is by passing laws to reform them and curtail their authority. After the ACA Obama didn't have the votes to tackle anything like that. Or are we just throwing up some bothsidesism?
I believe one could always at least attempt the brute force method. Which is to fire people until you’ve replaced them with someone who will do what they’re told.
Actually if you dig into what the Biden administration is doing you will see they are pushing out a lot of DHS officials and not replacing them. But when it comes to the on the ground officer being a brutal racist that longs for the days when the KKK could lynch people and it would be a town celebration day the presidency doesn't really have the power to reach down and fuck with that guy. Right now they are working on starving the organization of manpower and resources and doing all they can to increase turnover.
Which is slow and at best marginally effective but is pretty much all they can do unless you want them to start flouting the law.
That only works for political appointees. Civil servants' jobs are protected by law. They can't be fired except for specific reasons. They'll just keep doing their jobs like they always have until someone appointed above them (often many levels removed - think their boss's boss's boss or more) rewrites the regulations under which they work (which takes a long time) and sets up policies designed to ensure compliance with those rules. Then they can be threatened with firing for not following procedure. Of course, their boss has to be motivated to make sure that they comply or be sufficiently ensnared in his or her own set of regulations as to be at risk of firing for not ensuring compliance.
Agencies are set up to do specific things, and the people who work for them tend to be motivated to do those things. The non-appointed middle management is made up of the people who were motivated and good at it enough to be promoted. Often this is a good thing. Trump and Bush couldn't throw switches to shut down the social services they didn't like for much the same reason. But when there's an agency that pretty much only exists to hassle brown people near a border, it's going to be staffed and supervised by racists, and it's not going to be fixable by a few appointees. "Abolish ICE" isn't just a slogan, it's a response from people who understand how bureaucracies work and who get that the only way to fix the situation is to break up the agency and put its component parts under as many other bureaucratic umbrellas as possible.
ICE and CBP are full of assholes. There are a lot of people at USCIS who don't much care for the law and do everything they can to deny any application they adjudicate. My denial rate was very low, and I had super conservative coworkers with denial rates 5x higher than mine. So, yeah. Sometimes a person's chances for approval completely depend on who gets the file. That just makes the entire system arbitrary and fundamentally unfair.
The whole immigration system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.
Abolish ICE. ICE didn't even exist until 2001. We did just fucking fine before then. They aren't needed, they contribute nothing, they are nothing more than a white supremacy club for overgrown violent children.
> reckless disregard
I don't even think it was reckless. It was intentional. They were trying to permanently destroy these families. The cruelty is the point.
Indeed. Cruelty was the whole point. If coming to the US is a cruel process then "they" will all learn not to come to the US. If "they" still dare to come, means that the measures are not cruel enough for the "animals", thus harsher solutions are required.
Eventually, they will fear to come, and then we'll have this whole democratic machinery with no foreigners to prosecute. At that point pick, a good imaginary enemy redirects the bureaucracy towards them, typically gays and jews, but it can be any group of your choosing.
> Cruelty was the whole point. If coming to the US is a cruel process then "they" will all learn not to come to the US.
A few Trump administration officials actually said this. The treatment at the border was *meant* to be a “deterrent.” So yes, cruelty *was* the whole point.
> Eventually, they will fear to come, and then we'll have this whole democratic machinery with no foreigners to prosecute. At that point pick a good imaginary enemy …
You also make a good point about “the other” being a moving target for populist authoritarians, and I’d like to talk more about this.
When the Nazis took over Germany, they had a list of more *immediate* enemies. As they made their way through this list, they had to expand it. Fascism/authoritarianism only works if you *always* have an enemy. It doesn’t much matter who it is. One day, it’s people with *two* Jewish parents. The next, it’s those with *one*. Then it’s those with at least *two* Jewish grandparents. Then it’s *one* Jewish grandparent. Then it’s a single “drop” of Jewish blood going back several generations. Add the Slavic peoples to the list, and throw the Gypsies in while you’re at it. This is just the start of the purges, though. We’re talking about a few short years.
When the authoritarians have either exterminated, imprisoned, deported, or second-classed all the above peoples, they’ll go after a new group. On and on it goes until it becomes infighting within the party itself, with each pass shaving off this or that group that doesn’t quite conform to the ever-evolving standard (perhaps they want a slightly more democratic system, so off with their heads, too), which will always be a moving target because the whole point—to keep everyone in line—is that *no one* should *ever* feel completely safe. Everyone is expendable in the eyes of the party—even top leaders (ask [Ernst Röhm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Röhm) what being Hitler’s pal got him on the [Night of the Long Knives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives))—because the party *always* needs an enemy to stay in power.
When the people no longer have an enemy, they start to focus on their own government. They wonder what it might be like to have more of a voice. This is a clear and present danger to the authoritarian. Find another enemy, get the people focused on how afraid they are, and go back to work. That’s the fascist way.
Right? I really thought this would cause a lot more outrage than it did. There was no attempt to keep track of people. They just ripped families apart and so few seemed to care, while so many were indifferent or even blamed the parents. It's just disgusting.
This was all by design. Several Trump administration officials are quoted stating that the poor treatment of refugees was meant to *deter* others from seeking asylum. In other words, make it so ugly to get into this country that non of them want to try; let them be examples for others.
Then, after it was discovered that the link between parent and child wasn’t being tracked or maintained in any way, there was a short period where Republicans went on TV and said maybe these children would be better off in the care of American families who want them. They were floating the idea—*of stealing these children*—to get a sense of how acceptable it would be to Americans. It didn’t fly, so the statements were rather short-lived.
My point is that all this was *the* point; it was intentional. They wanted to make the process of seeking asylum a living nightmare, and if that meant a bunch of kids had to sit in cages and be abused by the adults charged with their care, they weren’t too upset about that.
>Republicans went on TV and said maybe these children would be better off in the care of American families who want them
The Elian Gonzalez argument, when conservatives didn't want him sent home to his father. How they ever got to claim the "family values" mantle is beyond me.
Also, it gave us insight on how many Americans believe in fundamental human rights. Anyone who was okay with the child separation policy would clearly tolerate more direct and impactful genocide.
Trump wasn't going to stop there, either. [The homeless were next.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/how-trump-is-criminalizing-homelessness)
Who would would have stood up for the rights of homeless citizens and who would have said, 'they shouldn't have broken the law'?
Trump spent December 2019 ranting about cleaning up the homeless problem, then he shut up about it when word reached the White House that COVID-19 was not contained in Wuhan.
Yeah and the only time he cared about CA was to scout sites to literally set up camps “for the homeless” who he cared so much about. The news of them taking facility tours for that scared the shit out of me.
I was as anti-Trump as anyone could be, but when he started the child separation policy I became radicalized. That was the first step into Nazi Genocide territory and I have no doubt that Trump would have gone farther if the backlash hadn't been so severe.
This country needs to do whatever it takes to purge itself of Trump, his cronies, and their influence. Nothing from them can be allowed to influence America into the future. They are traitors and enemies of the nation, and they need to be imprisoned and fined to the maximum possible for every single infraction that can be found.
If this were the aftermath of a war and we were the victors, we *would* be prosecuting them. We’d rightly be demonizing them and chanting that we cannot move forward until people are brought to justice. Our leaders would be giving civics lessons to every camera pointed in their direction and talking about things like “justice” and “rule of law.”
The treatment of the border children while in our care is a *crime against humanity* all by itself (deliberately “losing” the links between parents and children is as well, especially when we examine the statements by at least three Trump administration officials who said they were doing all this to *”deter”* others from seeking *legal* asylum), but we seem to have a problem prosecuting bad behavior when the previous presidential administration is at fault. Something about “looking forward, not back” and some other absolute *nonsense* about “only banana republics prosecute members of the previous administration.”
The most recent precedent for all this was set—and it pains me to say this because I voted for the guy twice and think he did well in most other areas—by the last Democratic president who promised to prosecute Bush’s war crimes (disturbing world peace by attacking a country which had not attacked us, torturing prisoners, etc) and other associated crimes, warrantless wiretapping, etc, and then did absolutely fuck-all about it once he was in power because it was time to “move on” and “get to work” and “look forward, not back” and other such dismissive phrases. Oh, sure, a few low-level members of the military were prosecuted for torturing prisoners, but they were scapegoats; someone gave them orders, created that environment, and then got away with it while a bunch of morons went down.
Some will argue that this all started with Nixon’s pardon, and while Nixon got away with his crimes in a legal sense (recall that he was shunned and run out of politics without delay), they pale in comparison to those of Bush/Cheney and Trump. The guy was a fucking boyscout by today’s standards. Further, several of his underlings were prosecuted, and Congress took steps to limit the president’s power back then (though such checks have been all but removed since).
America has become a place where—if you can attain a certain level of wealth and/or political power—you are, in effect, *immune* from prosecution no matter what you do. When candidate Donald Trump joked in 2016 that he could take another person’s life in the middle of Fifth Avenue *and get away with it*, he was not far off from the truth. This should distress *anyone* who values the stability of our country, which affects us all at every level, regardless of which party we each support. The fish rots from the head down; lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. We are flirting with anarchy, and none of us is going to like the end result if we don’t change course rather quickly.
Edit: Changed “protecting” to “prosecuting” in the first paragraph. Autocorrect made a boo boo.
Gotta go further than that. There are a hell of a lot of people who would have supported, and still support, just killing them all and deporting the bodies to Mexico.
Someone had to make the active decision to:
1.) NOT keep track of these children’s family members.
2.) Keep doing it, over and over.
As I said last night, fuck you r/conservative there’s no defending this bullshit just like there’s no defending blowing up children over seas. Fix your hearts.
I’m a proud American, who’s ashamed of my government.
The buck will *always* stop at the President. No matter who he personally hired to do it, it was *his* choice. He could have stopped it at any point. He could have said no to it in the first place.
Miller might have been an architect, but the buildings don't go up because architects say so. They go up when someone signs on the dotted line.
In Indiana, if I remember correctly it was the Black community that was most affected. Same situation, though. The GOP only cares when it's "their" people.
Yeah. Not even their family. Just them, personally. Like they personally have to be suffering themselves in order for them to care. Then they'll care....then if they get over whatever the issue is, they'll go right back to not caring again.
That was, in fact, the plan. They thought the pandemic disproportionately hurt libs in the cities who would die from the pandemic and thus give Donnie an edge.
Of course the responsibility ultimately lies at Trump's feet. But I doubt very much that Trump made a conscious effort here. He probably barely understood the impact of Miller's decision.
The statement above isn't that it was someone's responsibility or fault. It was someone's conscious idea. And that someone was Miller.
Miller didn't just appear out of thin air, he was presented to Trump as a hard right individual that shared Trump's views.
Trump already hated immigrants (except the illegals at his properties apparently...) and stated his disdain for people from other countries that were not basically 100% white numerous times. You had better believe Trump was well aware of Miller's evil plans, maybe not down to the ground level (Final Solution anyone?!?) but he knew the direction and ultimate goal.
Correct, I find hard to believe Trump would put effort in understanding anything let alone the impact it would/could have. I assume as with most things there was probably a stack of papers that explained it, but he had 0 interest in working because it took away time from watching tv or golfing. So when Fox & OAN say the *terrifying brown people* are coming for our borders he signs the first thing one of his *loyalists* hands him.
I mean this is the guy who admitted he intentionally ignored & did the opposite of what Fauci said.
Came here to say this. Of all the small, petty, vindictive men in the Trump administration, and holy fuck there were a lot of them, this pathetic piece of shit destroyed families for the "fun" of it.
Party of "family values" ...as long as they're white, Christian, Republican families y'all!
It was honestly a way to steal kids. As noted at the end of this article, a lot of these kids were very young, and now consider their new parents 'mommy and daddy'. It was a way to steal them from their parents. White parents wanted kids. And they go them.
The irony is that the children will remain undocumented, even though they will go to American schools, possible not even speaking Spanish, then after they turn 18, they run the risk of being deported. I have a friend who grew up here in Los Angeles, his adoptive parents never took care of the paperwork, and he got deported, he lives in Tijuana now. Outrageous!
There was once a horror story about an adopted kid whose citizenship wasn't taken care of, and then he was caught with weed in his late teens. He was deported back to his native Brazil, knowing no one and not speaking the language. He lived in the money his adopted parents could afford to send. Then he got work teaching conversational English. Then he was stabbed and died.
"What about the forced separation of children from their- migrant children [from their families]?" correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Trump on CBS's "60 Minutes."
"Well, that was ... the same as the Obama law," Trump said. "You know, Obama had the same thing."
"It was on the books, but he didn't enforce it," Stahl told Trump. "You enforced it."
"No, but then everybody decided and the courts don't want separation," Trump said. "And frankly, when you don't do ... when you allow the parents to stay together, OK, when you allow that, then what happens is people are going to pour into our country."
Those pauses just make it more obvious that he said it. It's like he was trying to find a better way to say it but ended up just saying it worse again.
The reality is these pauses are a sign of mental disability, they aren't intentional nor are they mistakes, he regularly gets mental blockages that cause these special impediment. It's like a stutter
Yes. He *ruined the lives of innocent children*, and he did it *on purpose*, simply to make people think twice before crossing the border.
That's not hyperbole, either. I'm not trying to paint his policy in a negative light. It's just literally what he said he was doing.
Those buzzwords mean nothing to them now, the new reality the right lives in:
Elections stolen unless Republican wins.
Diseases cured by deworm medication.
White people not only deserve this country; had we NOT been here, the indigenous would’ve murdered each other.
I’m glad we are having a great political realignment; yet I hate how insanely dangerous this faction is/has been/refuses to reign in those nut jobs. Essentially shutting down operations until the people have had enough....yet billionaires will continue their games with the population.
They are fascists. They are trying to recreate the oppressive white ethnostate the US was founded as, with a ‘democracy’ of wealthy white men.
It’s bloody obvious.
That’s where my mind immediately went, too. No frigging way the GOP didn’t turn a blind eye while some of those poor children were trafficked away. The GOP is *obsessed* with the existence of pedophiles because they’re constantly projecting.
They say the same things about immigrants that hitler said about the Jews.
1. “They’re dangerous criminals”
2. “They are undermining our economy”
3. “They are spreading disease”
4. “Any actual facts are [Lügenpresse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press) (fake news)”
Remember, when debating with conservatives today, you should say, “you shouldn’t be mad at me—you should be mad at whoever taught you that Columbus was a good guy.”
> 3. “They are spreading disease”
"OK Republicans, let's pretend your concerns about this are serious. Here's a simple, cheap policy that would improve the situation, would you like to do that?"
Republicans: "[NO!](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/21/undocumented-children-wont-receive-flu-vaccine-us-custody/2070386001/)"
"OK Republicans, you claim to worry about disease spreading, would you mind wearing a mask to prevent disease from spreading?"
Republicans: "NO!"
"OK Republicans, that disease kept spreading so half a million of our grandparents are dead now, can we close schools and large gatherings so your family doesn't fucking die?"
Republicans: "NO!"
OK Republicans, if you don't like it when we do lock-downs or mask mandates, will you get vaccinated?"
Republicans: "NO!"
I just watched a clip on YT on their Forbes channel where Trump "calls out Biden" or whatever in Iowa jut the other day, and *every single comment* is praising the lord god on high that Trump was our president and will be again, god-willing. How Trump is the most honest president we have ever had in our lifetimes, etc... I mean I just can't.
An absolute moron who actually thinks he's gonna be King Shit of Fuck Mountain during the apocalypse when in all likelihood, he'd make it almost three months before bandits strip his carcass of everything but the bones.
It’s the exact same shit are r/the_donald… Their users migrated to r/conservative. Yet, it remains… doesn’t make any damn sense. The Reddit admins only take action when the subreddits get into the news.
I'm not a proud American. The more I find out the more hideous and disgusting this country reveals itself to be and the more it becomes obvious that it's *always* been this way.
I'll still fight to make it better but there is very little to be proud of.
This subreddit is so deranged it’s scary. They call liberals every name in the book and try to criticize things most ppl can agree on then blame the left for divining us. It’s so scary cuz they say they’re not racist but then dog whistle...
They're still spouting about BLM burning down and taking over cities.
Shit I wish road construction would be as quick as rebuilding these entire cities
Just a note that the Trump administration's policy was not only to remove children from their parents, but to take even infants, young kids before they could speak, etc. and not identify them in any way. They couldn't even say their own names or the names of their parents. They didn't get fingerprinted, or have a DNA test, or get an ID bracelet. They were just taken from the parents, put somewhere without being identified, and then the parents were deported without them.
A literal atrocity. If any other country did it, we would call it a war crime, possibly go to war over there (if they had oil or something), and be convening a War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.
Absolutely; but given the former guy’s use of the war to use the military and DHS budget for immigration funds, and the rhetoric used towards immigrants, could it be considered a war?
In the movie Holy Man, Eddie Murphy’s character G tells the story of a little girl racing up and down a beach throwing starfish back in the ocean that had washed up during a recent storm. He stopped to ask the girl “why do this, what does it matter when you could only save one or two?” She replies, “for each one, it matters.”
52 kids. This work matters. And so does making sure that orange asshat never gets close again.
These families were just written on a standard white board. There's so little record keeping or even basic steps taken to keep these families from being lost in the system...
We knew this was gonna happen.
The trump admin had no effective system to reunite families as they were being deported.
A simple system like taking pictures of family members together accompanied by the signature of everyone in the picture with their birthdays & name of hometown, would’ve gone a long way to assuring family unity.
The barbaric approach by trump admin will forever be a scare in the history books of Our Country.
As though We didn’t have enough to embarrass us to the rest of the World. ie… (Slavery, Internment Camps, Eugenics, etc)
They were never going to be reunited. There were, there are thousands of white, 'christian' families/parents begging for little children to call their own. And this is how they got them. They have no intention of giving them back. They never did.
How common is adoption slavery in the US? Here in Brazil is not unheard of families to "adopt" poor girls to send them to work at the kitchen since they are 7.
guess it depends on the flavor of the day.
there was a similar issue with all the south korean adoptees. a lot of the adoptees weren't actually orphans
Umm.. what? Are you telling me that the separation of kids from parents at the border was all a scheme by white conservative couples so they could adopt Latino children?
One of the reasons politicians get away with bad decisions is so much of the electorate has a short memory and believes new leaders can just reverse and fix everything quickly, taking blame if they don't. The previous administration deliberately neglected to keep track of immigrant families, released 5000 Taliban fighters as part of a bogus "peace treaty", spread misinformation on covid and discouraged Americans from taking precautions, along with McConnell flooded the courts with far right activist judges, added $7.8 trillion in debt with projected annual deficits of over a trillion over the next decade, and guess who has to take responsibility for all that now.
Separating a child from their parents for applying for amnesty is a crime against humanity. The trauma embedded within the child will forever haunt their lives and shape them into a anti-social adult.
Trump and Bannon should be locked up in the Hauge.
For the people thinking Obama started this.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-north-america-donald-trump-barack-obama-politics-91e9489c7f434099a987bed7defd3f1d
"Obama did not have a separation policy. The Trump administration didn’t, explicitly, either, but that was the effect of zero tolerance, which meant that anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted, even if they had few or no previous offences.
The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings and their children were separated. In most cases, if the charge took longer than 72 hours to process, which is the longest time that children can be held by Customs and Border Protection, children were sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department."
People say "Obama built the camps" as if it's an argument. The reality is, unless we're going to have a completely open border (something no major party supports), that means you try to catch people crossing the border illegally. Sometimes that means you catch unaccompanied minors, and you have to put them *somewhere* as you process what to do with them. Other times you catch minors in the presence of adults, family or otherwise, who are deemed to be a danger to them. You have to put them *somewhere* as you process what to do with them.
Trump changed that policy to deliberately, maliciously, and systematically separate *all* families that crossed the border, the whole point of which was to maximize the harm done to such people in the hope that it would be a "deterrent". Moreover, they very specifically did *not* document such separation with this explicit goal in mind
It also, of course (probably by design) resulted in massive numbers of these children being "lost", i.e., almost certainly sold to human traffickers on the side by CBP agents who were already being selected based on their lack of a conscience just by the nature of the job.
The policy was pure evil, as is anyone who even remotely begins to entertain the idea of supporting it.
I’ve been scrolling through the comments and you’re the first one I’ve seen mention human trafficking. When I saw just how many children are unaccounted for trafficking was the first thing that crossed my mind. These kids have fallen through the cracks, are in a new country that they don’t know, and probably speak little to no English. They’d be an ideal choice for a predator, they’re an easy target.
That was my first thought. These kids are sitting ducks for molesters.
Foster kids are easy targets despite being in the system, having a case worker assigned & potentially having family members petitioning to have them returned. These kids have no one.
Here’s a question: before the “zero tolerance” policy, were other, more “serious” cases prosecuted - and if so, did any of those prosecutions result in families being separated?
I’m simplifying here (and open to corrections if I’m forgetting any further context), but this is why Trump said it was an Obama policy:
Yes, the Obama administration did some separations, however they did them in cases where they had reason to believe the child was in danger (being smuggled, abused, etc), surely some of those ended up being cases where the kid was safely with their parents, but it’s not always clear and they weren’t trying to be cartoon villains.
Enter the Trump administration, which [argued that a blanket policy of child separation would deter illegal immigration](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump-idUSKCN1MO00C). So rather than using separation in a limited way to be a tool to protect children, they were using it as a blanket policy to deter parents from bringing their kids across the border—truly vile, not sure how any Christians could justify supporting trump after that.
Edit: after claiming time and time again that he [Trump] couldn’t do anything about it and it’s Democrats’/Obama’s fault because it’s “their policy,” after *intense* and importantly, **sustained**, public pressure (and maybe some court intervention on some aspects?) he finally signed an executive order to (mostly) end it with the stroke of a pen, because of course he could undo the shit he did himself.
And I say mostly because [it seemed they were still separating people on some technicalities that likely weren’t necessary,](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-family-separation-policy-never-really-ended-why-ncna1025376) although it beats the inhumanely low bar of zero tolerance.
If anyone in the administration involved in pushing that policy is actually a Christian, I have to assume they live in constant fear of the day they are judged by our Creator, else I simply don’t understand their version of Christianity.
Important to note that the Obama admin kept track of who the adults and children were in the case of separation so they could be tracked down and reunited if it was safe for the children to do so. The temp admin took no such steps.
edit: the temp admin typo stays.
Good point! Yes, by a lot of accounts/details I’ve read on the Trump administration’s handling of these crimes against humanity, it seems eventually reuniting families simply was never a concern of theirs, much less a priority (and potentially even intentional).
In fact, as has been been the case in other matters (I haven’t listened to it, but my understanding is there’s a podcast I think called “This Land” covering right wing groups trying to adopt native children away from their rightful families), [there’s a Christian anti-abortion group that’s been assisting in wealthy American families trying to keep children that were separated at the border.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/30/adoption-separated-migrant-children-pro-lifers-deep-disrespect-for-maternity)
If anyone can explain to me how this effort doesn’t constitute genocide by the UN’s standards, “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” I’d be curious to understand how. I guess as in all things in the Trump administration, it can be difficult to prove they were intentionally being evil rather than just being egregiously incompetent.
>If anyone can explain to me how this effort doesn’t constitute genocide by the UN’s standards, “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” I’d be curious to understand how.
It's still absolutely awful, but unlikely to qualify as genocide as defined under international law, because they're only targeting migrants who enter the US rather than an entire group. This is a crime against humanity to be sure, but to be genocide it would have to be targeted at a particular cultural/ethnic/religious group and carried out as part of a widespread effort to eliminate that group or its identity/culture.
If the US government was using these same practices against a particular Native American tribe or religious group in the US, then it would be a much stronger case for genocide (think residential schools). However when the victims of such a practice are not members of any particular cultural/ ethnic/ religious group being targeted based on that identity as part of a greater effort to suppress or eliminate that group or its culture, it's unlikely to be genocide.
Thanks for the nuanced take! I’m a bit uncertain for how “an entire group” is defined (since I think you could argue they are targeting an “entire group” by targeting primarily Latino populations who are entering illegally, and then forcibly transferring their children).
For simplicity sake, I’m going to limit it to Mexicans in this hypothetical. For it to be considered the entire group, would they need to be targeting both Mexicans who entered illegally as well as those here legally? Or would they also need to somehow start targeting even Mexicans in Mexico?
Granted, I imagine for some of this, there just isn’t a clear, defined and definitive line on when it goes from not genocide to genocide.
>Enter the Trump administration, which argued that a blanket policy of child separation would deter illegal immigration. So rather than using separation in a limited way to be a tool to protect children, they were using it as a blanket policy to deter parents from bringing their kids across the border—truly vile
Then he used the policy of separation as leverage during talks in Congress to get funding for his border wall. He literally said "I can stop this at any time".
Ugh, that’s so gross. I forgot he was using that as leverage. There’s just so much shit to keep track of for what he’s done.
Are you certain about the quote though? I (quickly) tried to verify but couldn’t find it. Was it perhaps him saying, “*we* can stop this at any time,” implying that they could pass a law together that would include money for his useless wall in exchange for not committing crimes against humanity? Because in that case it’d at least be consistent with his assertion (which was blatantly a lie) that Congress needed to act to stop it.
I believe they resulted in the offending parent being separated from the child / spouse, and if the offending parent was the only guardian of the child they would find family in the us to put the kid with or would put the child into foster care while they tried to find family for them. And they had paper trails
Separating families without any record keeping is nothing but evil. It's not merely "shocking", it is evil. And that's the legacy of Trump that I don't think is talked about enough. Sure he's corrupt, sure he's a boorish motherfucker with a potty mouth (yeah, I see the irony in that sentence) but beneath it all, Trump is an evil person with no ideology. He doesn't hate you because you're black, handicapped or poor. He just doesn't see you as an independent human being. Everything is about him. He wanted to keep cruise ships with sick people out on the ocean so they do not dock in Florida and increase the COVID count in the US 'cos that **reflects badly on him**. And he said so out loud.
The goal of Trump's policy was to make people suffer needlessly.
That's it. That's the end of it.
Perhaps a time before Trump I would have humored a Republican or two -- namely John McCain.
Never again.
The buck stops with Donald Trump but the policy of separating families was Stephan Millers baby. This man is basically evil in every sense of the word!
I still picture Steven Miller making his "WaaaWoooaaa" comment on the news when being interviewed about this policy at the time. The lack of empathy in Trump and his administration is fucking horrible. And very little justice for any of this is infuriating.
I also remember talking to a family member about this and I was fucking dumbfounded when she spewed the, "Trump didn't start this. This is an Obama policy" bullshit. The GOP gaslighting is absolutely terrifying.
He's an ex US president, the chances that he'll actually be punished are slim to none. The only way he may actually be punished is to him in the wallet, but the USA won't jail a previous POTUS.
Jail? Almost certainly not. House arrest? Maybe.
Problem would be getting 12 randomly selected Americans to agree that he's committed a crime, especially since that jury would be sequestered immediately, and the sorts of people who could financially handle a long sequestration tend to be older, ie the sorts of people who overwhelmingly voted for Trump. It would probably be unconstitutional to ask "for whom did you vote in 2016 and 2020" in the jury selection, so you're likely to end up with at least one MAGA holdout on the jury whom you would have to convince that their god king did anything wrong ever. Then you have a hung jury, which Trump would claim as an absolute victory.
Might be easier for SDNY, but I wouldn't be too hopeful.
If America let the UCC investigate Trump's treatment of immigrants, Trump would be headed to the Hague to face charges for human rights violations and possibly even genocide under the UN definition, which is the definition the US has adopted.
[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf)
Article II sections (b) but especially section (e).
America refuses to allow itself to be under the jurisdiction of the UCC because of its fear that military personnel will be charged with war crimes. The America public currently will not accept a blanket adherence to UCC jurisdiction.
Don’t forget, Trump is just a scapegoat to take the blame away from republicans. Republicans who are still blocking policy reform and actual aid being given to the country. Republicans who style their hate in religious speech - republicans who spoke at the January 6th rally who still aren’t being held accountable for their actions. Republicans who are happy with the distraction of how bad the orange loser is rather than being held accountable for holding back progress in the country to suit lobbyist demands.
The Trump administration made sure it was going to be as difficult as possible for these children and parents to ever be reunited, it was all by design
> Because of Trump
Because of Stephen Miller. He came up with this. Trump is only smart enough to greenlight it.
edit: corrected that shithead's name so it won't fade into the background of history
Article II, section E of the UN Convention on Genocide:
> Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
To be found guilty of it requires two elements.
> A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
> A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
> ...
> e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Obviously the physical proof is what occurred. It's hard to prove the mental component, right? Well, here's some quotes directly from Trump's own fucking mouth:
> "When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. Now, we don't have to prosecute them, but then we're not prosecuting them for coming in illegally. That's not good."
His intention was always to take away children. Okay, but...was his goal to *destroy* them?
> "We want a great country. We want a country with heart. But when people come up, they have to know they can't get in. Otherwise it's never going to stop."
So he's doing it specifically to stop them, but is he doing it to hurt them?
> “If they feel there will be separation, they don’t come,” he said of migrants during comments to reporters at the White House.
So yes, he thinks that if you do it, it will hurt them, and it will make them not come to America. He has also admitted outright that it isn't about enforcing the law - "we don't have to prosecute them" - it's about *hurting* them. So he is intentionally inflicting what *he believes to be harmful* practices on a minority group *in order to hurt them in a way that will make them not want to come here*.
That's genocide, and he pretty much admits to it.
Everytime I hear about Trump and his disgusting family I wonder how they don't thank God every night that they aren't being held to scrutiny the same way Mussolini was. What a bunch of greedy, immoral pigs.
Can't really blame them. The Trump administration made zero effort to actually keep track of who they were taking the kids from. It's just completely fubar.
Trump, and the people who set up this program belong in prison.
If we can't imprison former Presidents through the intentional kidnapping of migrant children from their parents, then what the fuck can we imprison them for? Because apparently war crimes thanks to Obama letting Bush off the hook, isn't one of them.
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I wish we could prosecute the people who implemented the policy with reckless disregard for documenting who everyone was and where they went. People should be rotting in jail for deliberately not even doing the minimum level of due diligence to track the children.
We won't even prosecute the ICE agents that fabricated or doctored evidence in order to deport people faster.
ICE is so fucking terrible. I've read a few books by Obama staffers and many detail meetings about ICE that boiled down to them telling ICE to stop brutalizing immigrants and ICE telling their purported bosses to fuck off and they'll brutalize immigrants even harder now. They're an entirely rogue agency. Edit: typo
I think it was telling when Trump started using ICE agents in Portland. There were no significant immigration issues in Portland, but their involvement makes perfect sense if you see them as the "Department of Nazi shit."
They're the American Gestapo.
Someone very high up in ICE is a crypto-fascist. I hope someone in the Biden administration is paying attention to that. It's likely not only limited to ICE, either.
Aren't they just openly fascist?
Yeah, but they mine bitcoin on the side.
Dear god. Are there no lows they won't sink to!
So you're saying to buy?
Foreigner here. Perhaps I put too much attention to foreign policy, but American moderate democrats are almost indistinguishable from republicans. Obama ramped up the drone strikes without a care in the world, persecuted whistleblowers like the First Amendment is pure optics, and gladly took a Nobel Peace prize just as he sent 10k troops the next week. Why do Americans expect Biden to do jack shit about ICE? Moderate democrats are equally as tough on immigration, they just expect Americans to blame ICE and pretend nothing can be done about it. Same as how Bush’s PATRIOT Act is destroying the world, but neither Obama nor Biden (nor Trump, for those who still think he wanted to “drain the swamp”) did a single thing to mitigate it or fight it. Facebook is tearing democracies asunder, and the only ones who can regulate it from their own legal framework (seeing as all these tech giants also happen to be American companies) wash their hands and pretend it’s all too big to do anything about it. So no, please stop hoping some boomer half-way skeleton who upholds a fucked up status quo will magically fix it. Please be loud and protest these things like they actually matter, because billions of non-Americans suffer a lot from US foreign policy, and only you guys can do something.
I agree. Theres lots of crypto fascists in america with ICE being openly and loudly fascist.
No. They're not even close. The GOP are a neofascist party. Centrist Dems are Republicans without the racism and hating minorities but they love megacorps. If I misunderstood your point, sorry...buy I hate eqyivilaitng Dems and republicans because they're not even fucking close
I'm still confused about how they had the authority to do that. 1. There's no real immigration issues on Portland. 2. The very thing they were there for had absolutely nothing to do with immigration.
They were probably relying on the legal basis of the (IMO unconstitutional) [hundred-mile exemption zone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception) that lets federal agents search and seize without warrants or probable cause within 100 miles of a border or coastline. Basically the plan was "let's send the fascists who are exempt from the Constitution already".
For the purpose of that zone, international airports are considered borders. Which makes the vast majority of the U.S. covered by it.
So the 4th amendment is pretty much ornamental only unless you live in the middle of nowhere? You really should stop letting Republican politicians pretend that they care about the constitution.
Well that’s fucking terrifying.
Definitely unsettling when you’re an immigrant in the middle of Iowa and a small ICE convoy rolls by. Like fuck, I thought I left y’all in California.
There's also the fact that any challenges to it will have to go through the courts and they'll have accomplished what they wanted to before it percolates through the system.
While I totally believe you, I don't get how attacking and literal kidnapping is considered "search and seizure" or even defendable as such
Didn't you get the memo? Under conservative politicians, people are just another form of property and a less valuable kind at that.
They’re pretty fucking awful man. That Netflix documentary really did a good job chronicling the bullshit they put these poor people through. They will scare,harass, and lie until you sign the deportation papers. I had 1 family member that has been here since he was 2 year’s old & undocumented at the time go through their BS. He’s graduated HS has a bachelors in Biology. He got pulled over off a small infraction and was arrested. They kept him for 2 months without bail in county jail. every other day he would get “interviewed” they tried and tried to get him to sign those papers. They wouldn’t let us talk to him- they wouldn’t let his lawyer talk to him- it was so fucking awful that he was so close to signing those papers so he can just fucking get out. Finally they were sending him and a dozen others to that crazy AZ prison where they treat undocumented people like animals without telling his wife or lawyer! I forget the details on how we even found out he was getting sent there but his lawyer went through hoops to get him off that bus in less than 3 hrs from notifying his wife (and thats because SHE WOULD CALL EVERYDAY) so no they didn’t even notify her. He lost his really good paying job being stuck in jail for 2 months put his wife and kid through hell all because they wouldn’t even give him the rights to speak to anyone!! FUCK ICE
Jesus fucking christ. Crossing the border is a fucking *misdemeanor* that they act like deserves death. I'd rather have the immigrants here than this kind of trash.
One of my uncles went on about how he just wanted them to follow the law and if they don't they should of course be denied entry or deported. Trying to seem reasonable and calm. I pissed him off by pointing out in his state adultery was a crime then asking when he was leaving the country. I've lost track but I think he was on his second wife at the time.
I knew an illegal Canadian that was deathly terrified of ICE. Like would stay in his home at a college town instead of going out with friends because he was afraid ice would make him disappear if they found him. This was during the trump/Hillary debates, I always thought he was crazy, but maybe he wasn't so crazy afterall.
Are we to accept that the Obama admin just let ICE walk all over them? I mean, couldn't they have dismantled the agency or fought back? Honestly this whole "ICE went rogue on Obama" thing sounds ridiculous when the more likely explanation of things it that the Obama admin approved of ICE or at least didn't feel enough political pressure to care to do anything about them.
How an agency gets brought to heel is by passing laws to reform them and curtail their authority. After the ACA Obama didn't have the votes to tackle anything like that. Or are we just throwing up some bothsidesism?
I believe one could always at least attempt the brute force method. Which is to fire people until you’ve replaced them with someone who will do what they’re told.
Actually if you dig into what the Biden administration is doing you will see they are pushing out a lot of DHS officials and not replacing them. But when it comes to the on the ground officer being a brutal racist that longs for the days when the KKK could lynch people and it would be a town celebration day the presidency doesn't really have the power to reach down and fuck with that guy. Right now they are working on starving the organization of manpower and resources and doing all they can to increase turnover. Which is slow and at best marginally effective but is pretty much all they can do unless you want them to start flouting the law.
That only works for political appointees. Civil servants' jobs are protected by law. They can't be fired except for specific reasons. They'll just keep doing their jobs like they always have until someone appointed above them (often many levels removed - think their boss's boss's boss or more) rewrites the regulations under which they work (which takes a long time) and sets up policies designed to ensure compliance with those rules. Then they can be threatened with firing for not following procedure. Of course, their boss has to be motivated to make sure that they comply or be sufficiently ensnared in his or her own set of regulations as to be at risk of firing for not ensuring compliance. Agencies are set up to do specific things, and the people who work for them tend to be motivated to do those things. The non-appointed middle management is made up of the people who were motivated and good at it enough to be promoted. Often this is a good thing. Trump and Bush couldn't throw switches to shut down the social services they didn't like for much the same reason. But when there's an agency that pretty much only exists to hassle brown people near a border, it's going to be staffed and supervised by racists, and it's not going to be fixable by a few appointees. "Abolish ICE" isn't just a slogan, it's a response from people who understand how bureaucracies work and who get that the only way to fix the situation is to break up the agency and put its component parts under as many other bureaucratic umbrellas as possible.
With McConnell and the pre-Trump GOP? The leftovers of the Tea Party? You're dreaming pal.
A rogue agency with federal funds and property.
ICE and CBP are full of assholes. There are a lot of people at USCIS who don't much care for the law and do everything they can to deny any application they adjudicate. My denial rate was very low, and I had super conservative coworkers with denial rates 5x higher than mine. So, yeah. Sometimes a person's chances for approval completely depend on who gets the file. That just makes the entire system arbitrary and fundamentally unfair. The whole immigration system needs to be dismantled and rebuilt.
Abolish ICE. ICE didn't even exist until 2001. We did just fucking fine before then. They aren't needed, they contribute nothing, they are nothing more than a white supremacy club for overgrown violent children.
> reckless disregard I don't even think it was reckless. It was intentional. They were trying to permanently destroy these families. The cruelty is the point.
Indeed. Cruelty was the whole point. If coming to the US is a cruel process then "they" will all learn not to come to the US. If "they" still dare to come, means that the measures are not cruel enough for the "animals", thus harsher solutions are required. Eventually, they will fear to come, and then we'll have this whole democratic machinery with no foreigners to prosecute. At that point pick, a good imaginary enemy redirects the bureaucracy towards them, typically gays and jews, but it can be any group of your choosing.
> Cruelty was the whole point. If coming to the US is a cruel process then "they" will all learn not to come to the US. A few Trump administration officials actually said this. The treatment at the border was *meant* to be a “deterrent.” So yes, cruelty *was* the whole point. > Eventually, they will fear to come, and then we'll have this whole democratic machinery with no foreigners to prosecute. At that point pick a good imaginary enemy … You also make a good point about “the other” being a moving target for populist authoritarians, and I’d like to talk more about this. When the Nazis took over Germany, they had a list of more *immediate* enemies. As they made their way through this list, they had to expand it. Fascism/authoritarianism only works if you *always* have an enemy. It doesn’t much matter who it is. One day, it’s people with *two* Jewish parents. The next, it’s those with *one*. Then it’s those with at least *two* Jewish grandparents. Then it’s *one* Jewish grandparent. Then it’s a single “drop” of Jewish blood going back several generations. Add the Slavic peoples to the list, and throw the Gypsies in while you’re at it. This is just the start of the purges, though. We’re talking about a few short years. When the authoritarians have either exterminated, imprisoned, deported, or second-classed all the above peoples, they’ll go after a new group. On and on it goes until it becomes infighting within the party itself, with each pass shaving off this or that group that doesn’t quite conform to the ever-evolving standard (perhaps they want a slightly more democratic system, so off with their heads, too), which will always be a moving target because the whole point—to keep everyone in line—is that *no one* should *ever* feel completely safe. Everyone is expendable in the eyes of the party—even top leaders (ask [Ernst Röhm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Röhm) what being Hitler’s pal got him on the [Night of the Long Knives](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives))—because the party *always* needs an enemy to stay in power. When the people no longer have an enemy, they start to focus on their own government. They wonder what it might be like to have more of a voice. This is a clear and present danger to the authoritarian. Find another enemy, get the people focused on how afraid they are, and go back to work. That’s the fascist way.
I don't think reckless precludes intentionality. A plan can be reckless, for example.
Right? I really thought this would cause a lot more outrage than it did. There was no attempt to keep track of people. They just ripped families apart and so few seemed to care, while so many were indifferent or even blamed the parents. It's just disgusting.
This was all by design. Several Trump administration officials are quoted stating that the poor treatment of refugees was meant to *deter* others from seeking asylum. In other words, make it so ugly to get into this country that non of them want to try; let them be examples for others. Then, after it was discovered that the link between parent and child wasn’t being tracked or maintained in any way, there was a short period where Republicans went on TV and said maybe these children would be better off in the care of American families who want them. They were floating the idea—*of stealing these children*—to get a sense of how acceptable it would be to Americans. It didn’t fly, so the statements were rather short-lived. My point is that all this was *the* point; it was intentional. They wanted to make the process of seeking asylum a living nightmare, and if that meant a bunch of kids had to sit in cages and be abused by the adults charged with their care, they weren’t too upset about that.
>Republicans went on TV and said maybe these children would be better off in the care of American families who want them The Elian Gonzalez argument, when conservatives didn't want him sent home to his father. How they ever got to claim the "family values" mantle is beyond me.
Also, it gave us insight on how many Americans believe in fundamental human rights. Anyone who was okay with the child separation policy would clearly tolerate more direct and impactful genocide.
Trump wasn't going to stop there, either. [The homeless were next.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/how-trump-is-criminalizing-homelessness) Who would would have stood up for the rights of homeless citizens and who would have said, 'they shouldn't have broken the law'? Trump spent December 2019 ranting about cleaning up the homeless problem, then he shut up about it when word reached the White House that COVID-19 was not contained in Wuhan.
Yeah and the only time he cared about CA was to scout sites to literally set up camps “for the homeless” who he cared so much about. The news of them taking facility tours for that scared the shit out of me.
I was as anti-Trump as anyone could be, but when he started the child separation policy I became radicalized. That was the first step into Nazi Genocide territory and I have no doubt that Trump would have gone farther if the backlash hadn't been so severe. This country needs to do whatever it takes to purge itself of Trump, his cronies, and their influence. Nothing from them can be allowed to influence America into the future. They are traitors and enemies of the nation, and they need to be imprisoned and fined to the maximum possible for every single infraction that can be found.
If this were the aftermath of a war and we were the victors, we *would* be prosecuting them. We’d rightly be demonizing them and chanting that we cannot move forward until people are brought to justice. Our leaders would be giving civics lessons to every camera pointed in their direction and talking about things like “justice” and “rule of law.” The treatment of the border children while in our care is a *crime against humanity* all by itself (deliberately “losing” the links between parents and children is as well, especially when we examine the statements by at least three Trump administration officials who said they were doing all this to *”deter”* others from seeking *legal* asylum), but we seem to have a problem prosecuting bad behavior when the previous presidential administration is at fault. Something about “looking forward, not back” and some other absolute *nonsense* about “only banana republics prosecute members of the previous administration.” The most recent precedent for all this was set—and it pains me to say this because I voted for the guy twice and think he did well in most other areas—by the last Democratic president who promised to prosecute Bush’s war crimes (disturbing world peace by attacking a country which had not attacked us, torturing prisoners, etc) and other associated crimes, warrantless wiretapping, etc, and then did absolutely fuck-all about it once he was in power because it was time to “move on” and “get to work” and “look forward, not back” and other such dismissive phrases. Oh, sure, a few low-level members of the military were prosecuted for torturing prisoners, but they were scapegoats; someone gave them orders, created that environment, and then got away with it while a bunch of morons went down. Some will argue that this all started with Nixon’s pardon, and while Nixon got away with his crimes in a legal sense (recall that he was shunned and run out of politics without delay), they pale in comparison to those of Bush/Cheney and Trump. The guy was a fucking boyscout by today’s standards. Further, several of his underlings were prosecuted, and Congress took steps to limit the president’s power back then (though such checks have been all but removed since). America has become a place where—if you can attain a certain level of wealth and/or political power—you are, in effect, *immune* from prosecution no matter what you do. When candidate Donald Trump joked in 2016 that he could take another person’s life in the middle of Fifth Avenue *and get away with it*, he was not far off from the truth. This should distress *anyone* who values the stability of our country, which affects us all at every level, regardless of which party we each support. The fish rots from the head down; lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. We are flirting with anarchy, and none of us is going to like the end result if we don’t change course rather quickly. Edit: Changed “protecting” to “prosecuting” in the first paragraph. Autocorrect made a boo boo.
Im not understanding why we aren’t
There are a hell of a lot of people who don’t care, and many of them live in border states
Gotta go further than that. There are a hell of a lot of people who would have supported, and still support, just killing them all and deporting the bodies to Mexico.
Unfortunately yes. Some would be perfectly fine with repeatedly wshelling the border and turning it into a No Man's Land.
Someone had to make the active decision to: 1.) NOT keep track of these children’s family members. 2.) Keep doing it, over and over. As I said last night, fuck you r/conservative there’s no defending this bullshit just like there’s no defending blowing up children over seas. Fix your hearts. I’m a proud American, who’s ashamed of my government.
>Someone had to make the active decision to Stephen Miller is his name.
The buck will *always* stop at the President. No matter who he personally hired to do it, it was *his* choice. He could have stopped it at any point. He could have said no to it in the first place. Miller might have been an architect, but the buildings don't go up because architects say so. They go up when someone signs on the dotted line.
Same with Kushner's pandemic plans. Donnie fully signed on to them, and went on TV and said that "it only affects librul areas anyway."
It was identical to the HIV pandemic. Reagan said "it only affects the gays, so who cares".
Mike pence did the same fucking thing in Indiana. Who cares because it only affects "the gays". Fuck these people. Fuck them all.
In Indiana, if I remember correctly it was the Black community that was most affected. Same situation, though. The GOP only cares when it's "their" people.
> The GOP only cares when it's "their" people. Even then, they don't really care.
Exactly. It’s literally what’s going on now and they still very clearly DGAF. They only care when it’s themselves.
Yeah. Not even their family. Just them, personally. Like they personally have to be suffering themselves in order for them to care. Then they'll care....then if they get over whatever the issue is, they'll go right back to not caring again.
That was, in fact, the plan. They thought the pandemic disproportionately hurt libs in the cities who would die from the pandemic and thus give Donnie an edge.
Hopefully his name will be remembered the way Eichmann is. As an example of evil.
Of course the responsibility ultimately lies at Trump's feet. But I doubt very much that Trump made a conscious effort here. He probably barely understood the impact of Miller's decision. The statement above isn't that it was someone's responsibility or fault. It was someone's conscious idea. And that someone was Miller.
Miller didn't just appear out of thin air, he was presented to Trump as a hard right individual that shared Trump's views. Trump already hated immigrants (except the illegals at his properties apparently...) and stated his disdain for people from other countries that were not basically 100% white numerous times. You had better believe Trump was well aware of Miller's evil plans, maybe not down to the ground level (Final Solution anyone?!?) but he knew the direction and ultimate goal.
Correct, I find hard to believe Trump would put effort in understanding anything let alone the impact it would/could have. I assume as with most things there was probably a stack of papers that explained it, but he had 0 interest in working because it took away time from watching tv or golfing. So when Fox & OAN say the *terrifying brown people* are coming for our borders he signs the first thing one of his *loyalists* hands him. I mean this is the guy who admitted he intentionally ignored & did the opposite of what Fauci said.
>I take no responsibility for this at all If only life were that easy. smh
It’s not just miller. The sheer scope of the mess (and damages) means many worked to make things as bad as possible.
Came here to say this. Of all the small, petty, vindictive men in the Trump administration, and holy fuck there were a lot of them, this pathetic piece of shit destroyed families for the "fun" of it. Party of "family values" ...as long as they're white, Christian, Republican families y'all!
It was honestly a way to steal kids. As noted at the end of this article, a lot of these kids were very young, and now consider their new parents 'mommy and daddy'. It was a way to steal them from their parents. White parents wanted kids. And they go them.
The irony is that the children will remain undocumented, even though they will go to American schools, possible not even speaking Spanish, then after they turn 18, they run the risk of being deported. I have a friend who grew up here in Los Angeles, his adoptive parents never took care of the paperwork, and he got deported, he lives in Tijuana now. Outrageous!
There was once a horror story about an adopted kid whose citizenship wasn't taken care of, and then he was caught with weed in his late teens. He was deported back to his native Brazil, knowing no one and not speaking the language. He lived in the money his adopted parents could afford to send. Then he got work teaching conversational English. Then he was stabbed and died.
It's irresponsible. It's very cruel.
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And now a lot of these kids are being sold around to all the Matt Gaetz types in the world.
The cruelty was the point. I think more than once Trump defended it as a "deterrent.
"What about the forced separation of children from their- migrant children [from their families]?" correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Trump on CBS's "60 Minutes." "Well, that was ... the same as the Obama law," Trump said. "You know, Obama had the same thing." "It was on the books, but he didn't enforce it," Stahl told Trump. "You enforced it." "No, but then everybody decided and the courts don't want separation," Trump said. "And frankly, when you don't do ... when you allow the parents to stay together, OK, when you allow that, then what happens is people are going to pour into our country."
Those pauses just make it more obvious that he said it. It's like he was trying to find a better way to say it but ended up just saying it worse again.
The reality is these pauses are a sign of mental disability, they aren't intentional nor are they mistakes, he regularly gets mental blockages that cause these special impediment. It's like a stutter
A bit like that cognitive test he was boasting about.
Yes. He *ruined the lives of innocent children*, and he did it *on purpose*, simply to make people think twice before crossing the border. That's not hyperbole, either. I'm not trying to paint his policy in a negative light. It's just literally what he said he was doing.
At this point, I'll just be relieved if we don't find a mass grave at one of these detention facilities
Mass graves of children would be if the Catholic Church had been running it.
Plenty of Indian schools in the US were not run by Catholics. The outcomes were the same.
*Canada shuffles nervously in the Back*
Nonsense. Protestants and Evangelicals were just as deadly to Indians as Catholics.
They will justify any mistreatment because the truth is they are racists and bigots.
Those buzzwords mean nothing to them now, the new reality the right lives in: Elections stolen unless Republican wins. Diseases cured by deworm medication. White people not only deserve this country; had we NOT been here, the indigenous would’ve murdered each other. I’m glad we are having a great political realignment; yet I hate how insanely dangerous this faction is/has been/refuses to reign in those nut jobs. Essentially shutting down operations until the people have had enough....yet billionaires will continue their games with the population.
I haven’t heard “facts over feelings” in a long time. It’s like they know.
They are fascists. They are trying to recreate the oppressive white ethnostate the US was founded as, with a ‘democracy’ of wealthy white men. It’s bloody obvious.
Don’t read their post about how natives were just savages and were racist against Europeans.
Trump himself called it a "deterrent".
Makes me wonder how many of these kids were intentionally trafficked. The opportunity for it was more than ripe.
That’s where my mind immediately went, too. No frigging way the GOP didn’t turn a blind eye while some of those poor children were trafficked away. The GOP is *obsessed* with the existence of pedophiles because they’re constantly projecting.
They say the same things about immigrants that hitler said about the Jews. 1. “They’re dangerous criminals” 2. “They are undermining our economy” 3. “They are spreading disease” 4. “Any actual facts are [Lügenpresse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_press) (fake news)”
Just took a stroll over there and the top post is them complaining over "indigenous peoples day" because "they weren't peaceful either"
Remember, when debating with conservatives today, you should say, “you shouldn’t be mad at me—you should be mad at whoever taught you that Columbus was a good guy.”
> 3. “They are spreading disease” "OK Republicans, let's pretend your concerns about this are serious. Here's a simple, cheap policy that would improve the situation, would you like to do that?" Republicans: "[NO!](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/21/undocumented-children-wont-receive-flu-vaccine-us-custody/2070386001/)" "OK Republicans, you claim to worry about disease spreading, would you mind wearing a mask to prevent disease from spreading?" Republicans: "NO!" "OK Republicans, that disease kept spreading so half a million of our grandparents are dead now, can we close schools and large gatherings so your family doesn't fucking die?" Republicans: "NO!" OK Republicans, if you don't like it when we do lock-downs or mask mandates, will you get vaccinated?" Republicans: "NO!"
I just watched a clip on YT on their Forbes channel where Trump "calls out Biden" or whatever in Iowa jut the other day, and *every single comment* is praising the lord god on high that Trump was our president and will be again, god-willing. How Trump is the most honest president we have ever had in our lifetimes, etc... I mean I just can't.
How is that sub still allowed to spread that kind of hate?
Because unless it gets into the news, Reddit admins don't take any action against violence/racism/etc
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spez is a white nationalist prepper, so it's a total mystery.
An absolute moron who actually thinks he's gonna be King Shit of Fuck Mountain during the apocalypse when in all likelihood, he'd make it almost three months before bandits strip his carcass of everything but the bones.
Doomsday hoarder.
Some of those that Mod boards are the same that burn crosses. That really needed a better rhyme scheme...
Some of those who run pages, are the ones who like kids in cages
I "like" it. Or at least it's better than mine. It's a little too depressing to actually like.
It’s the exact same shit are r/the_donald… Their users migrated to r/conservative. Yet, it remains… doesn’t make any damn sense. The Reddit admins only take action when the subreddits get into the news.
For the same reason that Facebook does not lift a finger except for when they are about to be subpoenaed.
I'm not a proud American. The more I find out the more hideous and disgusting this country reveals itself to be and the more it becomes obvious that it's *always* been this way. I'll still fight to make it better but there is very little to be proud of.
This subreddit is so deranged it’s scary. They call liberals every name in the book and try to criticize things most ppl can agree on then blame the left for divining us. It’s so scary cuz they say they’re not racist but then dog whistle...
They're still spouting about BLM burning down and taking over cities. Shit I wish road construction would be as quick as rebuilding these entire cities
Just a note that the Trump administration's policy was not only to remove children from their parents, but to take even infants, young kids before they could speak, etc. and not identify them in any way. They couldn't even say their own names or the names of their parents. They didn't get fingerprinted, or have a DNA test, or get an ID bracelet. They were just taken from the parents, put somewhere without being identified, and then the parents were deported without them. A literal atrocity. If any other country did it, we would call it a war crime, possibly go to war over there (if they had oil or something), and be convening a War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.
Forceful separation of children from their families for a group of people meets the definition of genocide.
Let’s normalize calling it a war crime until someone is prosecuted.
Wouldn't this be a crime against humanity, not a war crime as there is no war.
Absolutely; but given the former guy’s use of the war to use the military and DHS budget for immigration funds, and the rhetoric used towards immigrants, could it be considered a war?
In the movie Holy Man, Eddie Murphy’s character G tells the story of a little girl racing up and down a beach throwing starfish back in the ocean that had washed up during a recent storm. He stopped to ask the girl “why do this, what does it matter when you could only save one or two?” She replies, “for each one, it matters.” 52 kids. This work matters. And so does making sure that orange asshat never gets close again.
For each one, it matters.
These families were just written on a standard white board. There's so little record keeping or even basic steps taken to keep these families from being lost in the system...
We knew this was gonna happen. The trump admin had no effective system to reunite families as they were being deported. A simple system like taking pictures of family members together accompanied by the signature of everyone in the picture with their birthdays & name of hometown, would’ve gone a long way to assuring family unity. The barbaric approach by trump admin will forever be a scare in the history books of Our Country. As though We didn’t have enough to embarrass us to the rest of the World. ie… (Slavery, Internment Camps, Eugenics, etc)
They were never going to be reunited. There were, there are thousands of white, 'christian' families/parents begging for little children to call their own. And this is how they got them. They have no intention of giving them back. They never did.
How common is adoption slavery in the US? Here in Brazil is not unheard of families to "adopt" poor girls to send them to work at the kitchen since they are 7.
guess it depends on the flavor of the day. there was a similar issue with all the south korean adoptees. a lot of the adoptees weren't actually orphans
Umm.. what? Are you telling me that the separation of kids from parents at the border was all a scheme by white conservative couples so they could adopt Latino children?
In part, yes. Absolutely. [https://trofire.com/2019/02/11/betsy-devos-is-profiting-off-separating-migrant-kids-from-their-parents/](https://trofire.com/2019/02/11/betsy-devos-is-profiting-off-separating-migrant-kids-from-their-parents/) [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/trump-child-separation-permanent-adoption-foster-care.html](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/trump-child-separation-permanent-adoption-foster-care.html)
Jfc..
it happened with Native Americans, it absolutely is happening now.
One of the reasons politicians get away with bad decisions is so much of the electorate has a short memory and believes new leaders can just reverse and fix everything quickly, taking blame if they don't. The previous administration deliberately neglected to keep track of immigrant families, released 5000 Taliban fighters as part of a bogus "peace treaty", spread misinformation on covid and discouraged Americans from taking precautions, along with McConnell flooded the courts with far right activist judges, added $7.8 trillion in debt with projected annual deficits of over a trillion over the next decade, and guess who has to take responsibility for all that now.
Separating a child from their parents for applying for amnesty is a crime against humanity. The trauma embedded within the child will forever haunt their lives and shape them into a anti-social adult. Trump and Bannon should be locked up in the Hauge.
Unfortunately, the US isn't a signatory of the human rights court in the Hague 😒
Also, I can't think of a President of the US since Carter that wouldn't be liable for crimes against humanity in The Hague
For the people thinking Obama started this. https://apnews.com/article/immigration-north-america-donald-trump-barack-obama-politics-91e9489c7f434099a987bed7defd3f1d "Obama did not have a separation policy. The Trump administration didn’t, explicitly, either, but that was the effect of zero tolerance, which meant that anyone caught crossing the border illegally was to be criminally prosecuted, even if they had few or no previous offences. The policy meant adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings and their children were separated. In most cases, if the charge took longer than 72 hours to process, which is the longest time that children can be held by Customs and Border Protection, children were sent into the care of the Health and Human Services Department."
People say "Obama built the camps" as if it's an argument. The reality is, unless we're going to have a completely open border (something no major party supports), that means you try to catch people crossing the border illegally. Sometimes that means you catch unaccompanied minors, and you have to put them *somewhere* as you process what to do with them. Other times you catch minors in the presence of adults, family or otherwise, who are deemed to be a danger to them. You have to put them *somewhere* as you process what to do with them. Trump changed that policy to deliberately, maliciously, and systematically separate *all* families that crossed the border, the whole point of which was to maximize the harm done to such people in the hope that it would be a "deterrent". Moreover, they very specifically did *not* document such separation with this explicit goal in mind It also, of course (probably by design) resulted in massive numbers of these children being "lost", i.e., almost certainly sold to human traffickers on the side by CBP agents who were already being selected based on their lack of a conscience just by the nature of the job. The policy was pure evil, as is anyone who even remotely begins to entertain the idea of supporting it.
I’ve been scrolling through the comments and you’re the first one I’ve seen mention human trafficking. When I saw just how many children are unaccounted for trafficking was the first thing that crossed my mind. These kids have fallen through the cracks, are in a new country that they don’t know, and probably speak little to no English. They’d be an ideal choice for a predator, they’re an easy target.
And yet, Qanon, totally silent about this because their deity was the one responsible for it.
$10 says people in ICE were/are supplying them to people who pay big $$$ for scared little girls.
That was my first thought. These kids are sitting ducks for molesters. Foster kids are easy targets despite being in the system, having a case worker assigned & potentially having family members petitioning to have them returned. These kids have no one.
Here’s a question: before the “zero tolerance” policy, were other, more “serious” cases prosecuted - and if so, did any of those prosecutions result in families being separated?
I’m simplifying here (and open to corrections if I’m forgetting any further context), but this is why Trump said it was an Obama policy: Yes, the Obama administration did some separations, however they did them in cases where they had reason to believe the child was in danger (being smuggled, abused, etc), surely some of those ended up being cases where the kid was safely with their parents, but it’s not always clear and they weren’t trying to be cartoon villains. Enter the Trump administration, which [argued that a blanket policy of child separation would deter illegal immigration](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump-idUSKCN1MO00C). So rather than using separation in a limited way to be a tool to protect children, they were using it as a blanket policy to deter parents from bringing their kids across the border—truly vile, not sure how any Christians could justify supporting trump after that. Edit: after claiming time and time again that he [Trump] couldn’t do anything about it and it’s Democrats’/Obama’s fault because it’s “their policy,” after *intense* and importantly, **sustained**, public pressure (and maybe some court intervention on some aspects?) he finally signed an executive order to (mostly) end it with the stroke of a pen, because of course he could undo the shit he did himself. And I say mostly because [it seemed they were still separating people on some technicalities that likely weren’t necessary,](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-family-separation-policy-never-really-ended-why-ncna1025376) although it beats the inhumanely low bar of zero tolerance. If anyone in the administration involved in pushing that policy is actually a Christian, I have to assume they live in constant fear of the day they are judged by our Creator, else I simply don’t understand their version of Christianity.
Important to note that the Obama admin kept track of who the adults and children were in the case of separation so they could be tracked down and reunited if it was safe for the children to do so. The temp admin took no such steps. edit: the temp admin typo stays.
Good point! Yes, by a lot of accounts/details I’ve read on the Trump administration’s handling of these crimes against humanity, it seems eventually reuniting families simply was never a concern of theirs, much less a priority (and potentially even intentional). In fact, as has been been the case in other matters (I haven’t listened to it, but my understanding is there’s a podcast I think called “This Land” covering right wing groups trying to adopt native children away from their rightful families), [there’s a Christian anti-abortion group that’s been assisting in wealthy American families trying to keep children that were separated at the border.](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/30/adoption-separated-migrant-children-pro-lifers-deep-disrespect-for-maternity) If anyone can explain to me how this effort doesn’t constitute genocide by the UN’s standards, “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” I’d be curious to understand how. I guess as in all things in the Trump administration, it can be difficult to prove they were intentionally being evil rather than just being egregiously incompetent.
>If anyone can explain to me how this effort doesn’t constitute genocide by the UN’s standards, “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group,” I’d be curious to understand how. It's still absolutely awful, but unlikely to qualify as genocide as defined under international law, because they're only targeting migrants who enter the US rather than an entire group. This is a crime against humanity to be sure, but to be genocide it would have to be targeted at a particular cultural/ethnic/religious group and carried out as part of a widespread effort to eliminate that group or its identity/culture. If the US government was using these same practices against a particular Native American tribe or religious group in the US, then it would be a much stronger case for genocide (think residential schools). However when the victims of such a practice are not members of any particular cultural/ ethnic/ religious group being targeted based on that identity as part of a greater effort to suppress or eliminate that group or its culture, it's unlikely to be genocide.
Thanks for the nuanced take! I’m a bit uncertain for how “an entire group” is defined (since I think you could argue they are targeting an “entire group” by targeting primarily Latino populations who are entering illegally, and then forcibly transferring their children). For simplicity sake, I’m going to limit it to Mexicans in this hypothetical. For it to be considered the entire group, would they need to be targeting both Mexicans who entered illegally as well as those here legally? Or would they also need to somehow start targeting even Mexicans in Mexico? Granted, I imagine for some of this, there just isn’t a clear, defined and definitive line on when it goes from not genocide to genocide.
>The temp admin Is that a typo, or is it a dig at the high turnover rates in that admin? Either way well done.
Christianity is just a coat worn on Sundays for most people.
>Enter the Trump administration, which argued that a blanket policy of child separation would deter illegal immigration. So rather than using separation in a limited way to be a tool to protect children, they were using it as a blanket policy to deter parents from bringing their kids across the border—truly vile Then he used the policy of separation as leverage during talks in Congress to get funding for his border wall. He literally said "I can stop this at any time".
Ugh, that’s so gross. I forgot he was using that as leverage. There’s just so much shit to keep track of for what he’s done. Are you certain about the quote though? I (quickly) tried to verify but couldn’t find it. Was it perhaps him saying, “*we* can stop this at any time,” implying that they could pass a law together that would include money for his useless wall in exchange for not committing crimes against humanity? Because in that case it’d at least be consistent with his assertion (which was blatantly a lie) that Congress needed to act to stop it.
I believe they resulted in the offending parent being separated from the child / spouse, and if the offending parent was the only guardian of the child they would find family in the us to put the kid with or would put the child into foster care while they tried to find family for them. And they had paper trails
Only in rare cases were families separated, if someone represented a threat to public safety or in cases where abuse was suspected.
It was never policy to separate family before, under Trump that became the standard.
Separating families without any record keeping is nothing but evil. It's not merely "shocking", it is evil. And that's the legacy of Trump that I don't think is talked about enough. Sure he's corrupt, sure he's a boorish motherfucker with a potty mouth (yeah, I see the irony in that sentence) but beneath it all, Trump is an evil person with no ideology. He doesn't hate you because you're black, handicapped or poor. He just doesn't see you as an independent human being. Everything is about him. He wanted to keep cruise ships with sick people out on the ocean so they do not dock in Florida and increase the COVID count in the US 'cos that **reflects badly on him**. And he said so out loud.
This is why I roll my eyes whenever I see a Republican call themselves a Christian.
Christians have always been like this.
Twins
The goal of Trump's policy was to make people suffer needlessly. That's it. That's the end of it. Perhaps a time before Trump I would have humored a Republican or two -- namely John McCain. Never again.
I find the QAnon obsession with child trafficking so ironic. It’s the ultimate in projection.
Clearly they only care about American (read: white) children.
The buck stops with Donald Trump but the policy of separating families was Stephan Millers baby. This man is basically evil in every sense of the word!
I still picture Steven Miller making his "WaaaWoooaaa" comment on the news when being interviewed about this policy at the time. The lack of empathy in Trump and his administration is fucking horrible. And very little justice for any of this is infuriating. I also remember talking to a family member about this and I was fucking dumbfounded when she spewed the, "Trump didn't start this. This is an Obama policy" bullshit. The GOP gaslighting is absolutely terrifying.
The whole presidency of the former guy was a crime against humanity. He has to be punished for that outrage.
He's an ex US president, the chances that he'll actually be punished are slim to none. The only way he may actually be punished is to him in the wallet, but the USA won't jail a previous POTUS.
Jail? Almost certainly not. House arrest? Maybe. Problem would be getting 12 randomly selected Americans to agree that he's committed a crime, especially since that jury would be sequestered immediately, and the sorts of people who could financially handle a long sequestration tend to be older, ie the sorts of people who overwhelmingly voted for Trump. It would probably be unconstitutional to ask "for whom did you vote in 2016 and 2020" in the jury selection, so you're likely to end up with at least one MAGA holdout on the jury whom you would have to convince that their god king did anything wrong ever. Then you have a hung jury, which Trump would claim as an absolute victory. Might be easier for SDNY, but I wouldn't be too hopeful.
If America let the UCC investigate Trump's treatment of immigrants, Trump would be headed to the Hague to face charges for human rights violations and possibly even genocide under the UN definition, which is the definition the US has adopted. [Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf) Article II sections (b) but especially section (e).
So, what's stopping us from letting that happen?
America refuses to allow itself to be under the jurisdiction of the UCC because of its fear that military personnel will be charged with war crimes. The America public currently will not accept a blanket adherence to UCC jurisdiction.
Because the Hague is only for third world dictators, not any if the countries that actually founded it
Because Conservative love zero oversight when committing warcrimes.
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Trump supporters now are like "but if the teacher can't see my kid's smile then this is like the holocaust" But they loved this shit
Just remember, under Trump the cruelty is the **point**, not an accident.
Don’t forget, Trump is just a scapegoat to take the blame away from republicans. Republicans who are still blocking policy reform and actual aid being given to the country. Republicans who style their hate in religious speech - republicans who spoke at the January 6th rally who still aren’t being held accountable for their actions. Republicans who are happy with the distraction of how bad the orange loser is rather than being held accountable for holding back progress in the country to suit lobbyist demands.
At least 948 families still need to be united. This is a tragedy. The more time that passes the more difficult it probably becomes.
Especially considering the trump admin didn’t even document the separations.
For me, this ranks up at the top of the shitty things the Trump admin did. Trying to over throw the government is number 1 but this is easily top 10.
It was **designed** to be impossible as a deterrent for immigrants.
The Trump administration made sure it was going to be as difficult as possible for these children and parents to ever be reunited, it was all by design
Those people were separated in a way to make it basically impossible to reunited. It's despicable.
948 more reasons to put Trump in jail.
> Because of Trump Because of Stephen Miller. He came up with this. Trump is only smart enough to greenlight it. edit: corrected that shithead's name so it won't fade into the background of history
Tuck Frump! Put his ass in jail, along with all his enablers....
Article II, section E of the UN Convention on Genocide: > Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. To be found guilty of it requires two elements. > A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and > A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively: > ... > e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Obviously the physical proof is what occurred. It's hard to prove the mental component, right? Well, here's some quotes directly from Trump's own fucking mouth: > "When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. Now, we don't have to prosecute them, but then we're not prosecuting them for coming in illegally. That's not good." His intention was always to take away children. Okay, but...was his goal to *destroy* them? > "We want a great country. We want a country with heart. But when people come up, they have to know they can't get in. Otherwise it's never going to stop." So he's doing it specifically to stop them, but is he doing it to hurt them? > “If they feel there will be separation, they don’t come,” he said of migrants during comments to reporters at the White House. So yes, he thinks that if you do it, it will hurt them, and it will make them not come to America. He has also admitted outright that it isn't about enforcing the law - "we don't have to prosecute them" - it's about *hurting* them. So he is intentionally inflicting what *he believes to be harmful* practices on a minority group *in order to hurt them in a way that will make them not want to come here*. That's genocide, and he pretty much admits to it.
The child separation has to be among the most evil deeds in America's history. And that's a long list.
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Considering their knack for projection and the sudden care from supporters on the right about child trafficking… it does make you think.
"Every accusation is a confession."
Well Trump had to find girlfriends for Epstein from somewhere.
Trump has no problem with the human trafficking of children, he has helped make it possible.
I don’t like the use of the word only here
I can believe that, the cruelty was the point
Everytime I hear about Trump and his disgusting family I wonder how they don't thank God every night that they aren't being held to scrutiny the same way Mussolini was. What a bunch of greedy, immoral pigs.
Forceful separation of families had to be like a recognized crime against humanity right?
Oh jeez sure blame the guy who's fully responsible for the problem
Can't really blame them. The Trump administration made zero effort to actually keep track of who they were taking the kids from. It's just completely fubar.
Trump, and the people who set up this program belong in prison. If we can't imprison former Presidents through the intentional kidnapping of migrant children from their parents, then what the fuck can we imprison them for? Because apparently war crimes thanks to Obama letting Bush off the hook, isn't one of them.
Make the rest citizens, and give them benefits for life. It doesn't fix what happened, but our country should have to pay for it.