July 4, 2019
By Mickey Friedman
Had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used words other than “concentration camps” to describe immigrant detention centers would the hypocritical Republicans have stopped dead in their tracks and said: “Oh my God! Children in cages is a humanitarian outrage! Adults sleeping in the cold without blankets is immoral. Let’s do something! Right now!
They chose to slam her for conjuring up Nazi death camps. Because there’s evil and evil-evil. But that’s a distinction for critics and academics to make. Slaves dragged from their ancestral African homes; native Americans driven from their lands into pathetic reservations; Chinese critics of Mao, Russian critics of Stalin found themselves starved and worked to death in labor camps. Their prisons varied. But their liberties were lost.
I frankly don’t care what word you use to describe the cages. I have no use for parsing the relative inhumanity of wrenching children from their parents. This is something those free to live their lives love to speculate about in their spare time.
And, of course, Republican co-conspirators like Lindsay Graham and Lynn Cheney have the greatest gall when they go after Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez instead of President Trump, the Imprisoner-in-Chief. Because, she at least, is speaking out for the mistreated families.
You can believe from the bottom of your heart that we have a major immigration problem and you can advocate for a border wall. But there is no reason for this:
“EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they’ve been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there’s inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station.
“The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government. Data obtained by The Associated Press showed that on Wednesday there were three infants in the station, all with their teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old. There are dozens more under 12. Fifteen have the flu, and 10 more are quarantined.”
So how much energy do you want to put toward criticizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz? Perhaps she chose an impolitic word. But she knows cruelty when she sees it.
Meanwhile, Department of Justice attorney Sarah Fabian argued against District Judge Dolly Gee’s ruling that the government breached the terms of the landmark Flores case. Which required the government to provide detainees safe and sanitary conditions. Instead we’re denying them adequate food, clean drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, towels and blankets. Gee noted that these children were deprived of sleep and access to bathrooms, and were subjected to near-freezing temperatures.
On Tuesday, Sarah Fabian – please remember her name – asked the Ninth Circuit to reverse Gee’s findings because the Flores agreement never specifically required those items.
Courthouse News described the scene: “The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.
“All three judges appeared incredulous during the hearing in San Francisco, in which the Trump administration challenged previous legal findings that it is violating a landmark class action settlement by mistreating undocumented immigrant children at U.S. detention facilities.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?’” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.
“U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher also questioned the government’s interpretation of the settlement agreement. ‘Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
It’s one thing to lie about our deliberate misguided deterrence policy of family separation, but this? It was a pathetic performance. And every one of us ought to be profoundly embarrassed by our government.
So now we’re punishing innocent children. Hoping somehow these cages will deter the parents of other children from coming to request sanctuary. Hoping they’ll stay in Honduras and Guatemala. There is gang violence and domestic abuse. Here is freezing floors and child abuse. So while these may not be concentration camps, they are camps of cruelty.