“A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold and demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems. No promise to fight for the little guy, even as they cater to the wealthiest and most powerful. No promise to clean up corruption and then plunder away. They start undermining norms that ensure accountability and try to change the rules to entrench their power further. They appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled, if veiled at all. Sound familiar?”
—Former President Barack Obama, in a speech today at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
TRUMP’S OBSESSION WITH TARGETING FAMILIES.
Even as hundreds of children remain cruelly separated from their families, the Trump administration is moving forward with new efforts to instill terror in immigrant families.
Yesterday, the Administration announced a rule that—if implemented—will allow immigrant children to be held in indefinite detention with their parents. The rule is specifically designed to overturn the 1997 Flores Settlement, an agreement with the federal government that sets out basic standards for the treatment of children in detention.
Under the new rules, DHS will no longer be required to have its family detention centers licensed by the relevant state agency, and instead will be able to seek “alternate” licensing, to ensure that they can hold kids as young as infants in facilities which are not adequate to house and protect children. These facilities have serious problems: In July, for example, two medical experts working with the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the Senate Whistleblowing Committee reporting on the horrors they witnessed in family detention facilities, including “a sixteen-month-old baby boy who lost 31.8% of his body weight over ten days during a diarrheal disease,” and a facility that used its medical unit as “punitive segregation of families and children.”
The Trump administration says the move is to disincentivize families from coming to the U.S. to seek asylum (even though any deterrent effect from family detention has been debunked.) In reality, this is the Trump administration intentionally traumatizing immigrant children and parents and targeting those exercising their legal right to seek asylum along the southern border.
Family incarceration is not the solution to family separation. Families belong together—and not in cages.
THE PEOPLE ARE MARCHING FOR CLIMATE ACTION.
Tomorrow, on Saturday 9/8, tens of thousands of people from across the country are joining the People’s Climate Movement and marching across the country to show our elected leaders we demand meaningful action on climate change.
Join in! Find your local event here.
Then, pledge to be a #ClimateVoter, and vote for leaders who are committed to taking climate action.