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Eight Year Old Boy Dies In Immigrant Detention On Christmas Day

December 26, 2018 Nomaan Merchant, Apnews.com , , , ,
HOUSTON (AP) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection ordered medical checks on every child in its custody Tuesday after an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died, marking the second death of an immigrant child in the agency’s care this month. The death came during an ongoing dispute over border security and with a partial government shutdown underway over President Donald Trump’s request for border wall funding. The boy, identified by Guatemalan authorities as Felipe Gómez Alonzo, had been in CBP’s custody with his father, Agustin Gomez, since Dec. 18. CBP said in a statement late Tuesday that an agent first noticed the boy had a cough and “glossy eyes” at about 9 a.m. Monday.

Tomorrow Is Far Away: An Anarchist Intervention Against The Construction Of The Migrant Prison In Laval

December 22, 2018 Montreal Counterinfo, Itsgoingdown.org , , ,
Citizenship can only exist and be valued if there is also a category of others, those without status. For this distinction to exist, it must be enforced by the state, which has a number of tools to do so. Deportation is one such tool. Deportation is a violent process in which the state removes all agency from an individual in order to exclude them from the territory over which it asserts its authority. To accomplish this task, the state uses different tactics, one of which is detention centers or migrant prisons. Migrant prisons are used as holding centers prior to deportation. People without status can be arrested and imprisoned while they wait to be flown out of the country, sometimes to far-away lands that they have no relationship to.

Don’t Protect Mueller, Microscopic Effects Of Inequality & Combating Detention

November 15, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com , ,
It might sound like common sense that poverty affects our overall health – but did you know that income inequality catalyzes wear and tear on a micro molecular level? Science has a disturbing new scoop. Next up, please please PLEASE don't go to these kinds of protests. And finally, a local grassroots initiative to address an often overlooked aspect of our immigration crisis.

The Billion Dollar Companies In The Business Of Imprisoning Children

November 10, 2018 By Emily Ludolf, Occupy.com , , , ,
Revelations that the United States is conducting widespread detention of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the border sparked national outrage. Reports of the inhumane conditions and treatment drew shocked criticism, and the images of children in cages as well as the recordings of children screaming for their mothers resulted in the majority of the public disapproving of the cruel and unnecessary treatment of immigrants. Much of the criticism has been aimed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with rising calls to abolish the agency in its entirety. #AbolishICE has become a movement as people have reacted to the horrific behavior overseen by ICE officials.

Protests Hit Mass Detention Of Immigrant Children In Texas Tent Camp

October 2, 2018 Bill Van Auken, Wsws.org , , , , , ,
Scores of protesters gathered outside the Tornillo border crossing about 35 miles southeast of El Paso, Texas over the weekend to protest the mass incarceration of immigrant children there in a barren tent camp in the desert on the Mexican border. The demonstrators demanded the immediate release of the children as well as that of their parents. The protest came amid reports that over 1,600 children have been relocated to the camp as part of a brutal immigration policy involving what amounts to midnight raids on shelters and foster care homes throughout the country. Children are literally being dragged from their beds in the middle of the night without warning in order to prevent them from escaping, according to a report Sunday by the New York Times.

HHS Cuts Funds For Cancer Research, HEAD Start & Women’s Shelters For Child Detention

September 21, 2018 Caitlin Dickson, Yahoo.com , , , , ,
The Department of Health and Human Services is diverting millions of dollars in funding from a number of programs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, to pay for housing for the growing population of detained immigrant children. In a letter sent to Sen. Patty Murray, D.-Wash., and obtained by Yahoo News, HHS Secretary Alex Azar outlined his plan to reallocate up to $266 million in funding for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Nearly $80 million of that money will come from other refugee support programs within ORR, which have seen their needs significantly diminished as the Trump administration makes drastic cuts to the annual refugee numbers.

Trump Administration Plans To Detain Immigrant Minors Indefinitely

September 8, 2018 Ilana Novick, Truthdig.com , , ,
NBC reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new regulation that will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrant minors and their parents indefinitely, flouting 20 years of precedent that mandates a limit of 20 days. The rule goes into effect in 60 days, NBC explains, and allows ICE to keep migrant parents with their children as their asylum cases wind through the court system. An unnamed official who spoke to NBC explained that “the purpose of the rulemaking is to terminate the 1997 Flores settlement agreement that said children could not be held in detention longer than 20 days.”

Abused Asylum-Seekers Launch Legal Battle Against ICE And Its “Concentration Camp” Prisons

August 27, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com , , , ,
ADELANTO, CALIFORNIA – A group of refugees from Central America, who faced beatings and abuse while detained at a California detention center last year, are pursuing legal action in hopes of drawing attention to the systematic abuse of migrants who are being confined in a growing network of concentration camp-style facilities across the United States. The civil rights lawsuit alleges that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau, for-profit prison operator GEO Group, and the City of Adelanto are responsible for “considerable damages” inflicted on the group of eight asylum-seekers, one of whom remains imprisoned. The notorious GEO Group — a multinational for-profit prison operator with nearly 150 prisons across the globe, and one of the largest contractors for ICE...

Abused Asylum-Seekers Launch Legal Battle Against ICE And Its “Concentration Camp” Prisons

August 14, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com , , , , ,
ADELANTO, CALIFORNIA – A group of refugees from Central America, who faced beatings and abuse while detained at a California detention center last year, are pursuing legal action in hopes of drawing attention to the systematic abuse of migrants who are being confined in a growing network of concentration camp-style facilities across the United States. The civil rights lawsuit alleges that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau, for-profit prison operator GEO Group, and the City of Adelanto are responsible for “considerable damages” inflicted on the group of eight asylum-seekers, one of whom remains imprisoned. The notorious GEO Group — a multinational for-profit prison operator with nearly 150 prisons across the globe, and one of the largest contractors for ICE — has long been accused by human rights monitors of utterly neglecting the well-being of their detainees as they rake in billions in revenue.

US Military Ordered To Host Massive Immigrant Concentration Camps

August 12, 2018 Courage to Resist. , ,
This isn’t the first time in US history that facilities are being constructed and used to imprison large numbers of a persecuted minority in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities (the definition of a concentration camp). Previous examples of this are now infamous, such as the so-called Japanese internment camps. We’re now on the brink of adding a new chapter to this dark history. Military officials, in response to pressured deadlines from the White House, have stated that these camps can begin to be operational by mid-August.

Let Me Tell You What Forced Separation Feels Like

July 26, 2018 By Nicole Braun, Otherwords.org , , ,
The recent images of immigrant children in cages are incredibly painful to digest. Still, many people seem to forget that the U.S. has a long track record of forcibly separating families, whether it was African Americans during slavery, the Japanese during World War II, Native Americans during colonization, or poor children whose “unfit” single mothers have lost custody today. Another common way families are forcibly separated? Juvenile detention. Tens of thousands of teens and pre-teens — most often the poor and people of color — are locked up in substandard, often privatized penal facilities. Children who go through these forced family separations often wind up experiencing trauma, grief, shame, and dehumanization.

Prison Contracts Regularly Come Up For Reconsideration

July 23, 2018 By Beryl Lipton, Muckrock.com , , ,
Today’s immigration policies won’t necessarily keep detention centers in your community tomorrow. Over 200 privately-owned or privately-managed correctional facilities - jails, prisons, and immigrant detention centers - currently operate in the United States. They’re the sites of an ongoing argument between capitalist-backed “practicality” and public principles opposed to “prison for profit,” and they’re tethered to their government employers through a series of contracts of varying terms and frequent reconsideration. According to GEO Group’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the year 2018, 51 of their facilities are scheduled to hit the end of their current contracts...

Immigrant Mothers Are Staging Hunger Strikes To Demand Calls With Their Separated Children

July 20, 2018 Debbie Nathan, Theintercept.com , , , ,
AS THE JULY 26 deadline approaches for the government to reunite some 3,000 immigrant parents and children separated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” program, one immigrant detention center in South Texas has been releasing a few people weekly, after they pass their “credible fear” interviews, in which they describe why they are afraid to return to their countries and need asylum. Those who remain have begun resisting the hurtful and disordered conditions of their captivity, some with extreme measures such as hunger strikes. The Port Isabel Service Processing Center is located about 35 miles from Brownsville and minutes from the Gulf of Mexico, on lonely potholed roads.

Report: Major Risks For ICE Officers In Migrant Detention

July 13, 2018 By Alexander Stern, Attorneyio.com , , ,
Yesterday marked the first deadline for the Trump administration to reunify migrant children under five with their families. Yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has failed to return even half of the children by the deadline. This has sparked a legal debate as to what consequences there are for administration officials who disobey judicial rulings designed to prevent serious harms to migrant children and their parents. We consulted with top law professors from around the country to assess what penalties there may be for ICE officers. We also explore what impact the nomination by Trump of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court could have.

A Tale Of Two Protests

July 6, 2018 Robert Feuer, Counterpunch.org , , ,
This past week I traveled to El Paso, Texas with the Albuquerque Teachers Federation to protest the detaining of children from immigrant families. The first day’s events featured speakers from all the Abrahamic religions. Quoting passages from holy text, the theological speakers denounced inhumane policies that were designed to traumatize their victims in what appears to be cruelty for cruelty sake. The aim was clear for the righteous representatives of their faith, that they have the moral high ground; all supported by the words of God or any one of the many prophets. The fence to the facility was open and members of the group that had come to the rally were conversing with the guards. It was a kumbaya moment as the establishment figures from both sides could see eye to eye.
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