Trump admin to end separation policy

[*bfine32*]

(06-21-2018, 08:51 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Good point, maybe we should eliminate cash bail, as well, and come up with alternative solutions for our citizens to navigate the judicial process as well.

Also, I often don't go back to read and respond to every post after I've been away fro a few hours.

Sure, perhaps we should make that a priority over folks that enter the country illegally.

Meh, you should go back and read the responses, I do. It allows to be more in tuned with the conversation.

[Dill]

(06-21-2018, 10:49 AM)bfine32 Wrote: This sound almost like you are suggesting the illegal immigrant deserves preferential treatment over a US citizen. They children are treated the exact same in either situation and the person that committed a crime is responsible for the situation the child is in.

I just cannot wrap my head around the mentality of we must blame someone other than the law breaker for this situation.

Speaking of accountability . . .

In the modern international system, all human beings have human rights, called "universal human rights," regardless of citizenship.  Under current national and international law, not to mention the supposed values of the dominant religion in the US, we cannot deflect responsibility for unnecessarily separating children from parents by framing the issue as one of "preferential treatment" to rationalize cruel handling of the undocumented children we are abusing. And people who  commit misdemeanors in the US are NOT separated from their children, and when parents must go to jail, their children do not "disappear," distributed in some hidden system of child incarceration and held incommunicado from the parents. And where caretakers are forbidden to physically hug or otherwise comfort crying children. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/facing-outcry-over-family-separations-dhs-chief-says-we-will-not-apologize/2018/06/18/d1e85466-7305-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html?utm_term=.306ee953e40a.  How is this being "humane as possible" when two months ago we were not doing this at all?

Nor can we simply cast the parents as "law breakers" to exonerate the US from responsibility for inhumane treatment. In non-democratic, illiberal societies, where people have no say in determining what is law, only law breakers are ever to blame--never law makers.  In contrast, in democracies, where the people ultimately decide what laws are just and how they are to be applied, the question of whether someone other that "the law breaker" is to blame for a crime is a social and legal constant. E.g., that is how the Civil Rights movement rolled back segregation--by determining that LAW MAKERS, NOT THE LAWBREAKERS, were in the wrong.

Your argument also reminds me of the logic of zero tolerance, an illiberal experiment adopted by US schools in the '90s when they switched from the standard of making student punishment fit the level of offense to using the most extreme punishment--expulsion--for minor offenses, like a student bringing Tylenol to school.  When people pointed out how this went against traditional conceptions of school responsibility for the well being and education of children, school boards defended the practice by "blaming the lawbreaker" (the student) rather than the extreme and unnecessary law.

I also note that the black and white, authoritarian clarity attributed to immigration law and law breakers becomes considerably fuzzy when Trump defenders turn from the border to their leader, whose scofflaw behavior is daily applauded, as he blames Democrats for the effects of a policy he put into place in April.

[Dill]

(06-21-2018, 02:18 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: "You were doing 36mph in a 35 zone. I'm gonna need to take your kids."

Either we are a nation of laws or we are not!  Until the Democrats change the speeding laws, nothing can be done.

[Dill]

(06-21-2018, 02:24 PM)Griever Wrote:

"The Left" is coaching these children to cry. Or so I heard.

[Bengalzona]

(06-22-2018, 12:20 AM)Dill Wrote: "The Left" is coaching these children to cry. Or so I heard.

Don't be weak and given in to the children's crying or screams of terror, brother!

Stand strong for the Trump!!!

[Belsnickel]

(06-21-2018, 10:26 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Sure, perhaps we should make that a priority over folks that enter the country illegally.

Or, and I'm just spitballing here, we could do them both because there are enough people dealing with policy in this country that we should be able to do more than one thing at once.

(06-21-2018, 10:26 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Meh, you should go back and read the responses, I do. It allows to be more in tuned with the conversation.

Maybe I like non sequitors.

[Arturo Bandini]

(06-22-2018, 12:20 AM)Dill Wrote: "The Left" is coaching these children to cry. Or so I heard.

I heard they were actors ...

[SunsetBengal]

Let's see how the nice Canadiens handle the migrant children. Perhaps we should follow their example? They do have one obvious advantage over us in the US, as they can give the children pot brownies to keep them calm from squalling.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/canada-also-detains-migrant-children-sometimes-for-months-at-a-time/ar-AAyTmbe

Quote:The holding centres, which are off limits to the public, resemble medium-security prisons. They are surrounded by razor-wire fences and surveilled by guards.
There are three such facilities across Canada, in Vancouver, Toronto, and Laval, Que. In some provinces, asylum seekers are detained in prisons.
A recent McGill University study found that detention can be a "frightening experience" for children, leaving them with "psychiatric and academic difficulties long after detention."
Inside, boredom is "pervasive," as children are often left "idle, sleeping or lying on the couches for long periods during the day."

[Bengalzona]

(06-22-2018, 08:14 AM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: I heard they were actors ...

Indeed. The Left will stop at nothing to embarrass the Don. They try to make it look as if this was his fault, when it clearly was Obummers fault that the president had to separate children from their parents. He HAD to do it! They shouldn't be bringing their kids here anyway. What are they thinking?!?!?! If I had my way, we'd deport them before they even get to the Wall!

Obummer just let them waltz right over the border and come into America, you know. Now, we have a crisis!! I see Mexican people. They're everywhere! Sometimes they don't even know they're Mexican!!

[*PhilHos*]

(06-22-2018, 09:02 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Let's see how the nice Canadiens handle the migrant children.  Perhaps we should follow their example?  They do have one obvious advantage over us in the US, as they can give the children pot brownies to keep them calm from squalling.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/canada-also-detains-migrant-children-sometimes-for-months-at-a-time/ar-AAyTmbe

Heck, as of 2016 there were still 80 prisons for kids in America!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/03/there-are-still-80-youth-prisons-in-the-u-s-here-are-five-things-to-know-about-them

[SunsetBengal]

(06-22-2018, 11:59 AM)PhilHos Wrote: Heck, as of 2016 there were still 80 prisons for kids in America!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/03/there-are-still-80-youth-prisons-in-the-u-s-here-are-five-things-to-know-about-them

The article speaks of States moving away from the large, prison like institutions, to smaller local facilities.  My son works at one of those smaller, State owned facilities, near Cincinnati.  The place has "rehabilitation center" in it's official title, but all of the "clients" are court ordered to be there, per their sentencing by the Juvenile Court in their home County.

[XenoMorph]

(06-22-2018, 11:59 AM)PhilHos Wrote: Heck, as of 2016 there were still 80 prisons for kids in America!

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/03/there-are-still-80-youth-prisons-in-the-u-s-here-are-five-things-to-know-about-them

kids commit crimes too... and shouldn't be housed with adults (some of which are in prision for violating kids)

[Bengalzona]

(06-22-2018, 09:02 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Let's see how the nice Canadiens handle the migrant children.  Perhaps we should follow their example?  They do have one obvious advantage over us in the US, as they can give the children pot brownies to keep them calm from squalling.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/canada-also-detains-migrant-children-sometimes-for-months-at-a-time/ar-AAyTmbe

Is the furor over children being detained, or over the fact that they were being detained separate from their parents when their parents were with them crossing the border?

My understanding is that it is the latter.

[XenoMorph]

(06-22-2018, 12:20 AM)Dill Wrote: "The Left" is coaching these children to cry. Or so I heard.

child being used as the poster child was never even separated from her mother.

[Bengalzona]

(06-22-2018, 12:37 PM)XenoMorph Wrote: child being used as the poster child was never even separated from her mother.

Yes. That is correct. They were detained together.

[fredtoast]

(06-22-2018, 12:34 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: The article speaks of States moving away from the large, prison like institutions, to smaller local facilities.  My son works at one of those smaller, State owned facilities, near Cincinnati.  The place has "rehabilitation center" in it's official title, but all of the "clients" are court ordered to be there, per their sentencing by the Juvenile Court in their home County.

There are different levels of facilities for juveniles.

I know there used to be a juvenile detention center in Lebanon that was for the hard cases.  But that was many years ago.

Today here in Tennessee there are a very few high security "prisons" but a lot of them are more like boarding schools.

[Bengalzona]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/21/trumps-zero-tolerance-border-prosecutions-led-time-served-and-10-fee/722237002/

Quote:Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' border prosecutions led to time served, $10 fees

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration border crackdown that has separated thousands of children from their parents is built on a mountain of small-time criminal prosecutions that typically end with people sentenced to spend no additional time in jail and pay a $10 fee, according to a USA TODAY analysis of thousands of cases.

The “zero tolerance” push along the U.S. border with Mexico was meant to deter migrants by bringing criminal charges against everyone caught entering the United States illegally. In addition, it served as the legal machinery for splitting children from parents who were accompanying them across the border. Since the crackdown began in May, border agents have separated about 2,300 children from their families.

The administration gave little sign that it would ease that stance Thursday despite an international backlash so intense that even some of the president's allies had threatened to break with the White House. The Justice Department said there would be "no change" in its enforcement push, and Trump insisted the government must to maintain "a very tough policy" along the border.

The crackdown has produced a high-velocity assembly line of prosecutions that has sped thousands of migrants through crowded federal courtrooms to answer for the misdemeanor of having entered the United States illegally.

Anexamination of thousands of pages of federal court records show that those cases are seldom more than a symbolic undertaking. In many cases, migrants are taken from an immigration holding facility, bused to federal court, quickly plead guilty to having entered the country illegally, and are sentenced to whatever time they have already spent in the government’s custody and a $10 court fee. Then they're returned to immigration authorities to be processed for deportation.



“There is no reason for the government to do this other than to be cruel and send the message that you are not welcome,” said Marjorie Meyers, the chief federal public defender in southern Texas. “The thing that’s just horrible is that they’re using it to take the children.”

USA TODAY examined 2,598 written judgments in border-crossing cases filed in federal courts along the border since mid-May. In nearly 70 percent of those cases, migrants pleaded guilty and immediately received a sentence of time served, meaning they would spend no additional time in jail. Another 13 percent were sentenced to unsupervised probation, including a condition that they not illegally re-enter the United States. In both cases, that meant they would immediately be returned to immigration officials to be processed for deportation, leaving them in essentially the same position as if they had not been prosecuted.

Still, Meyers and other defense lawyers said that by the time some of their clients returned to the immigration facilities where they had been held, their children were gone.

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order instructing officials to attempt to keep children with their parents. But he also left in place the zero-tolerance policy that pushed the parents into federal court.

“We don’t like to see families separated,” Trump said after signing it. “At the same time, we don’t want people coming into our country illegally. This takes care of the problem.”

Exactly how it would take care of the problem remained unclear Thursday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it "will continue to refer for prosecution adults who cross the border illegally." And a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement there had been “no change” in its policy of prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally.

Still, defense lawyers said Thursday there were hints the government might have softened its position. Border agents bused 17 people to court in McAllen, Texas on Thursday, then abruptly returned them to an immigration facility without filing charges, assistant U.S. attorney James Sturgis said during a hearing. Meyers said the Border Patrol told her staff that they were taking people who had been caught along with their children off of the docket.

It wasn't clear whether the government might charge them in the future.

"They were not prosecuted today but they are still separated from their children. They're still having to endure the pain of being separated," said Azalea Aleman-Bendiks, a public defender. "Every day that goes by, these children are continuing to suffer the pain of being separated from their parents."

Since the beginning of June, authorities have brought criminal charges against at least 4,174 people for entering the U.S. illegally along the southwest border. Hundreds of others were charged with the more serious crime of re-entering the country after having been deported.

Justice Department officials did not respond to questions about why the government pursues such minor cases so vigorously. Last month, when he announced the crackdown to a gathering of police officials in San Diego, Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered this explanation: “We are not going to let this country be overwhelmed. People are not going to caravan or otherwise stampede our border,” he said.

And he was clear on the consequences of that plan: “If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”

More: Immigrant children: Here's what we still don't know after Trump's executive order

More: President Trump's order leaves fate of 2,000 detained children unclear

More: Separated migrant children may be housed in quiet buildings on your block

More: First lady Melania Trump steps in again on migrant kids crisis in surprise trip to Texas

Stephen McCue, the chief federal public defender in New Mexico said he doubted the threat of a misdemeanor conviction would be much of a deterrent. “It’s a life or death decision for people,” he said. “No one brings their kids up here just for the heck of it. They come because they have to.”

Federal prosecutors have been bringing those charges against some border-crossers for more than a decade, but seldom did so in cases involving children because of the risk of breaking up families. Even when they didn’t end in much of a sentence, prosecutors used them as a way to identify repeat offenders. “It’s graduated punishment,” said Kenneth Magidson, who was the U.S. attorney in Houston during the Obama administration. “You have to start at square one. Next time it’s going to be more.”

Still, he said, until the start of the administration’s zero-tolerance push, prosecutors had the ability to decline to bring charges if they thought the harm would outweigh the benefit. “When you have a zero tolerance policy on any kind of crime, you take away the discretion that allows us to look at cases individually, to balance the scales of justice,” Magidson said.

The zero-tolerance push has brought a swift increase in the number of minor criminal cases filed in federal courts along the border. The number of criminal filings in some the courthouses in Brownsville, Laredo and McAllen, Texas more than doubled, court records show.

Those records seldom reflect whether the migrants charged with crimes were arrested with their child, let alone whether they were separated or where the child ended up. Defense lawyers said they try to alert judges when people have been separated, but in many cases, the assembly line moves so fast that there’s no record on the courts’ public docket. In at least a few cases, however, judges have ordered the government to do more.

On Monday, agents brought a Honduran man, Mariano Torres-Perdomo, into court to face a misdemeanor charge of entering the country illegally. Border agents had caught him two days earlier crossing into Texas with his 6-year-old son. He quickly pleaded guilty. But court records show that before Magistrate Judge Ignacio Torteya would sentence the man, he demanded to know what had happened to his child. A prosecutor replied that he thought the boy was in San Diego, but couldn’t be sure whether he was in California or Texas.

It took the government until the next day to notify the judge that the boy was in a detention facility in El Cajon, Calif., 1,400 miles away. Torteya sentenced the man to time served and a $10 fee.

In El Paso on Thursday, Josue Saul Aguilar-Sanchez waited in a federal courtroom in handcuffs and a blue jail uniform to find out what had happened to his 16-year-old daughter, who crossed the border with him last week.

His lawyer, Alex Almanzan, peppered a Border Patrol agent with questions abut what had happened to the girl. The agent replied that he did not know anything about where she was being kept.

Contributing: Trevor Hughes in McAllen, Texas; Aaron Martinez of the El Paso Times in El Paso, Texas.

[*bfine32*]

(06-22-2018, 08:14 AM)Arturo Bandini Wrote: I heard they were actors ...

You heard correctly:

[Dill]

(06-22-2018, 12:37 PM)XenoMorph Wrote: child being used as the poster child was never even separated from her mother.

How 'bout these: refugee kids separated from parents--or actors?

[Dill]

(06-22-2018, 10:20 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: Indeed. The Left will stop at nothing to embarrass the Don. They try to make it look as if this was his fault, when it clearly was Obummers fault that the president had to separate children from their parents. He HAD to do it! They shouldn't be bringing their kids here anyway. What are they thinking?!?!?! If I had my way, we'd deport them before they even get to the Wall!

Obummer just let them waltz right over the border and come into America, you know. Now, we have a crisis!! I see Mexican people. They're everywhere! Sometimes they don't even know they're Mexican!!

I am thinking along those lines too. I have to ask myself--are these leftist children really crying because they are separated from their parents, or do they just hate Trump?

I know what the fake news wants you to believe.