Trump admin defends inhumane conditions for children at its concentration camps

[Badger]

They can't just immediately turn them over to foster families.  They need to place them somewhere in the meantime.  Which means they need a place to stay, food, medicine, etc. Which means the government needs to give CBP/ICE and HHS the $$$ to provide this.

here's the situation:

The Trump administration definitely has made a choice to keep single adults in detention, even if it could release them. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost has told Congress that “if we lose (the ability to keep and deport) single adults, we lose the border.” That does raise questions about whether the overcrowding in adult facilities could be avoided.

But it doesn’t address the issue of unaccompanied children, who can’t simply be released with a notice to appear in immigration court. While children with parents in the US could theoretically be placed with those parents, the government is supposed to vet potential sponsors to make sure it’s not placing children with traffickers — but that’s the job of HHS, and the vetting doesn’t begin until children are released from Border Patrol custody.

Observers and policymakers agree that HHS simply doesn’t have the capacity to take migrant kids in. One Democratic Hill staffer compared it to a “jigsaw puzzle”: Not only are there only so many spaces available to place a child, but the facilities available might not match the child’s particular needs. (You can’t put an infant in an HHS shelter for teens, for example.) But another Hill staffer told Vox that HHS claims it’s never refused a transfer for space reasons, muddying the waters.

Read the whole article.  Maybe since it's at Vox you won't reflexively dismiss it as apologetics for the Trump administration, but either way Dara Lind is the best reporter on immigration issues I've come across.

Um, Did YOU actually read the whole article?

What fevered imagination could Interpret this as other than a stinging indictment of the Trump Administration's immigration policies?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Badger...

Not everything is about Trump!

Please read this post of mine again that you criticized and tell me exactly what is inaccurate based on that article.

The American taxpayers can take the financial hit, sure.  But they haven't, because DC is dysfunctional and delinquent on this issue, has been for years, when it comes to providing the resources necessary for the number of asylum seekers that increase year after year. Refugees are staying in facilities that were never meant to hold people overnight, because that's what's available. The Trump administration owns the lion share of the blame for the current situation, but Congress and the Obama administration are not blameless either.

[Indy Texas]

Badger...

Not everything is about Trump!

Please read this post of mine again that you criticized and tell me exactly what is inaccurate based on that article.

The American taxpayers can take the financial hit, sure.  But they haven't, because DC is dysfunctional and delinquent on this issue, has been for years, when it comes to providing the resources necessary for the number of asylum seekers that increase year after year. Refugees are staying in facilities that were never meant to hold people overnight, because that's what's available. The Trump administration owns the lion share of the blame for the current situation, but Congress and the Obama administration are not blameless either.

There have never been this many asylum seekers at the border before. The past several months have been unprecedented. Don't blame Barack Obama for failing to predict the future and building a bunch of dormitories in 2014 for people who would come here in 2018.

Why didn't the Republicans appropriate more money during the TWO YEARS that they controlled all branches of government?

Trump's actions - his refusal to provide assistance to Central American countries, his irrational fixation on a physical border wall - are what have made this problem as acutely bad as it is right now.

[Badger]

Badger...

Not everything is about Trump!

Please read this post of mine again that you criticized and tell me exactly what is inaccurate based on that article.

The American taxpayers can take the financial hit, sure.  But they haven't, because DC is dysfunctional and delinquent on this issue, has been for years, when it comes to providing the resources necessary for the number of asylum seekers that increase year after year. Refugees are staying in facilities that were never meant to hold people overnight, because that's what's available. The Trump administration owns the lion share of the blame for the current situation, but Congress and the Obama administration are not blameless either.

There have never been this many asylum seekers at the border before. The past several months have been unprecedented. Don't blame Barack Obama for failing to predict the future and building a bunch of dormitories in 2014 for people who would come here in 2018.

Why didn't the Republicans appropriate more money during the TWO YEARS that they controlled all branches of government?

Trump's actions - his refusal to provide assistance to Central American countries, his irrational fixation on a physical border wall - are what have made this problem as acutely bad as it is right now.

And again, Trump has been VERY explicit and vocal about it; he WANTS tbe suffering publicized as a deterrant to other asylum seekers (from rapist infested s#!thole countries only, of course.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Badger...

Not everything is about Trump!

Please read this post of mine again that you criticized and tell me exactly what is inaccurate based on that article.

The American taxpayers can take the financial hit, sure.  But they haven't, because DC is dysfunctional and delinquent on this issue, has been for years, when it comes to providing the resources necessary for the number of asylum seekers that increase year after year. Refugees are staying in facilities that were never meant to hold people overnight, because that's what's available. The Trump administration owns the lion share of the blame for the current situation, but Congress and the Obama administration are not blameless either.

There have never been this many asylum seekers at the border before. The past several months have been unprecedented. Don't blame Barack Obama for failing to predict the future and building a bunch of dormitories in 2014 for people who would come here in 2018.

Why didn't the Republicans appropriate more money during the TWO YEARS that they controlled all branches of government?

Trump's actions - his refusal to provide assistance to Central American countries, his irrational fixation on a physical border wall - are what have made this problem as acutely bad as it is right now.

If they had fully put the resources to where they needed to be back then during the Obama administration, things wouldn't be so bad now.  If you can't take care of 5000 immigrants humanely and efficiently, you sure as hell can't do it with 10,000.  I don't know why that's so hard to understand.

The idea I'm hearing on this forum is that everything was fine with our refugee services and border patrols and immigration courts until Stephen Miller whispered in Trump's ear and made all the career civil servants into psychopaths.  It's absolutely preposterous.

[Indy Texas]

Badger...

Not everything is about Trump!

Please read this post of mine again that you criticized and tell me exactly what is inaccurate based on that article.

The American taxpayers can take the financial hit, sure.  But they haven't, because DC is dysfunctional and delinquent on this issue, has been for years, when it comes to providing the resources necessary for the number of asylum seekers that increase year after year. Refugees are staying in facilities that were never meant to hold people overnight, because that's what's available. The Trump administration owns the lion share of the blame for the current situation, but Congress and the Obama administration are not blameless either.

There have never been this many asylum seekers at the border before. The past several months have been unprecedented. Don't blame Barack Obama for failing to predict the future and building a bunch of dormitories in 2014 for people who would come here in 2018.

Why didn't the Republicans appropriate more money during the TWO YEARS that they controlled all branches of government?

Trump's actions - his refusal to provide assistance to Central American countries, his irrational fixation on a physical border wall - are what have made this problem as acutely bad as it is right now.

If they had fully put the resources to where they needed to be back then during the Obama administration, things wouldn't be so bad now.  If you can't take care of 5000 immigrants humanely and efficiently, you sure as hell can't do it with 10,000.  I don't know why that's so hard to understand.

The idea I'm hearing on this forum is that everything was fine with our refugee services and border patrols and immigration courts until Stephen Miller whispered in Trump's ear and made all the career civil servants into psychopaths.  It's absolutely preposterous.

How can we take care of anyone humanely and efficiently when Republicans aren't willing to do anything about immigration at all that doesn't involve engineering a white majority America?

Obama tried in good faith to step up enforcement with the expectation that Republicans would get serious about immigration reform. They didn't.

If you want to take care of them humanely and efficiently, then you don't keep them locked up in the middle of the desert. You connect them with HHS and settle them somewhere. If they're a minor child, you place them with relatives, or if there are none, then you put them in the foster care system.

There is no reason they should be staying at the border or in ICE/DHS custody as long as they are to begin with.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/RepJudyChu/status/1145779501080743939
https://twitter.com/RepJoeKennedy/status/1145791291986460672
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1145762201619357696

[Fuzzy Bear]

I think we should avoid the Holocaust comparisons.

 the Japanese internment camp comparison is absolutely appropriate and thus more compelling.

That too was, "just enforcing the law".

Japanese-American internment was an active policy of removing people from their homes.  The present situation is a passive policy of not providing adequately for people who have left their homes and are seeking asylum.  These are very different situations.  "Close the camps" is not an appropriate response here, it's not a solution to anything.  Resources need to be put forward to create something better for asylum seekers.

This is what happened with our "illegal" refugees, "queue-jumpers", "boat-people" and other associated terms.

The only real solution that worked was off-shore detention.

When you offer refuge, the successful applicants ring their relatives and 10 more come to the USA.

When you detain people en-mass, they ring their relatives and 0 more attempt to come to the USA.

Fact of life.

But the real change is a political one. Once you no longer offer a path to citizenship and they realise they will be in a camp, then you will get zero illegal refugees.

Since Australia changed this policy in 2013, number of illegal boat arrivals has plummeted to zero.

They don't even bother anymore.

If Donald Trump can quell the influx, and it becomes a screaming success, the Democrats will have a hard time repealing it when they get back in in 2028.

(What happened to my signature?)

We are not the only nation; indeed, we are not the only "liberal" nation that has enforcement of immigration laws for the protection and welfare of its citizens.

Austrailia is correct in asserting its sovereignty and acting in the interest of the Austrailian citizen in this manner by enacting policies to DETER and DISCOURAGE attempts at illegal immigration.

That this is remarkable boggles the rational mind.

[Former President tack50]

If they are genuine refugees/Asylum seekers, I wonder if an easy solution would be to allow asylum seekers and refugees to apply at any American embassy or consulate.

For a random refugee in say Central America, it is almost certainly much easier to go to the capital of their country and the American embassy, than all the way to the border.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

If they are genuine refugees/Asylum seekers, I wonder if an easy solution would be to allow asylum seekers and refugees to apply at any American embassy or consulate.

For a random refugee in say Central America, it is almost certainly much easier to go to the capital of their country and the American embassy, than all the way to the border.

Where they can then wait - in the middle of the very situation that makes them fear for their lives - while the Republican Administration slow-tracks their application.

The existing, on-the-books laws regarding refugees and those seeking asylum are (much like the process than resulted in Mr. Trump having the opportunity to take the Oath of Office in bad faith) still  the law. If the Republicans did not deem it satisfactory, they had two years in which to change it. That they proved incapable of doing so and are now unhappy with that result gives them no right whatsoever to violate or ignore the law themselves.