The Beat Goes On
(a sixth graders “band” with a chord organ playing Sonny – we needed a Cher!)
I spent much of yesterday watching the Kavanaugh hearings. The Judge has proven to be adept at avoiding the landmines in confirmation: he never says what he believes, nor what he would do, he only quotes what the precedents are now. When given the opportunity to discuss what his own precedents might be on the high court, he refuses to give an inch. The only insight we have is his past, and that seems pretty clear.
Yesterday also was the less than tremendous fallout from the New York Times “cry for help” message from inside the Trump Administration. While the President was threatening the expected lie detector tests and purges; the reaction from the one body that could actually do anything about this, Congress, was almost nil.
But as we all again are distracted, on the border the Department of Homeland Security continues their draconian efforts to stop “brown people” from entering the country. After the epic disaster of the “child separation” program, they are quietly moving to a program of building internment camps and holding migrants indefinitely.
The “child separation” disaster was triggered by a series of badly considered decisions. The first: that those crossing the border with children should be held in custody for the misdemeanor crime of the actual crossing until claims for asylum were adjudicated. They immediately ran afoul of the “Flores Settlement,” a legal agreement that controlled what happened to minor children at the border. The Settlement required that ICE release children within twenty days, forcing the agency to turn them over to the Department of Health and Human Services presumably to go into foster care. The kids were shipped all over the country, and many were left behind when the parents were finally judged and returned to their home countries. More than 500 are held today, still separated from their parents (Washington Post.)
In the past, the parents were placed on probation to await their legally guaranteed hearings into claims for asylum. As the parents were free from custody, the children were able to stay with them and not a problem for the ill suited ICE, or the highly paid contractors they employed. Since those parents were not held, the children weren’t an issue.
At the height of the crisis, the focus was rightly on what happened to the children. But even at that time, it was announced that billions of dollars were to be spent building detention centers to hold whole families. Much of this money was going to companies that were already used to feeding at the government trough, such as defense giant General Dynamics. Sites were being developed, including one perilously close to an historic internment camp from World War II (those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.)
But the outrage over the children put the government on hold. Now, when “only” five hundred children remain in custody, and the hyperactive focus of American life has moved onto other issues, ICE has issued a “new” policy. There will be no more child separation. Whole families will now be placed in “detention centers” and held until their cases are settled. The US is back in the internment camp business.
The government argues that by keeping the children with their parents, the Federal courts won’t have a problem. The immigrant advocates counter that children are still being held in custody even with their parents, therefore keeping innocents in custody without charge. Certainly the Federal Court, currently the District Court in San Diego, will have its say.
The issue really is the relentless determination of the Trump Administration to incarcerate those who cross the border. In the past those folks have been set free while awaiting adjudication, free to live and care for their children, and free to work and pay their own way. Now they will become a financial burden on the US, and the fate of their children will rest again with the courts.
The Trump Administration has determined that internment camps will serve as a deterrent to prevent further migrants from Central America. They are ignoring the facts, that conditions are so bad in some Central American countries that even the possibility of internment is better than the risks of staying home. If tearing children away from their mothers didn’t do it, incarceration certainly won’t. But the Stephen Miller led policy continues to try to make “America White Again.” And the beat goes on.
