Children are being detained in record numbers, sometimes alone and where lawyers and family cannot find them
The image of immigration officers arresting five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos – in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack – in January sparked outrage across the country.
Celebrities from Ms Rachel to Madonna called for the closure of the Dilley immigration processing center, the Texas immigrant camp that held Ramos and many children like him. Lawyers filed complaints about contaminated food and shoddy healthcare, and hundreds of activists protested outside the detention camp. Within months, the government began sending fewer children to Dilley.
But the arrests of immigrant children did not stop. Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested more than twice as many children this year through July as it did in the same period last year. Thus far in Donald Trump’s second term, ICE has arrested more than 8,500 children. Many of those children have been detained in locations where lawyers and family members couldn’t find them, such as hotels and hold rooms in office buildings.
Apart from the obvious cruelty and unnecessary trauma, there’s this:
In February, a woman in Long Island, New York, went with her two children to a scheduled check-in with ICE, planning to go to a favorite restaurant after the appointment. Instead, officers detained them. The mother, who asked to be identified only by her initials, MSP, because she fears retaliation from the government, said the family was taken far from New York, where they’d lived for nine years, and jailed in a hotel in Texas.
For nine days, she said they were not allowed to leave the room, or even look out the windows. MSP said two guards were in the hotel room at all times, including sitting outside the bathroom door, making them uncomfortable using the toilet or sleeping.
Our tax dollars at work folks! Paying to employ a couple of chuds to watch a family 24/7 that didn’t even need to be detained. So much for eliminating government waste.
From the article and for the “BoTh SiDeS aRe ThE sAmE!!1!” crowd:
Kids are obviously getting trafficked, yet all of you Amerikkkans do nothing about it.
Frankly I’m happy the elections will be rigged and the red wave will take you all.
Fight, or you’re one of them.
