463 Migrant Parents May Have Been Deported Without Their Kids, Court Filings Show | HuffPost
Aghhhhhhhh!
Category: American Injustice System,
Remains found of African-Americans forced into labor
The remains are likely those of people who worked at a plantation through a “convict leasing program” in the late 1800s and early 20th century. Archaeologists estimated the cemetery was used from 1878 to 1910. (To give that some context: The emancipation proclamation was issued in 1863, while the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865).
…The leasing program was a “system in which Southern states leased prisoners to private railways, mines and large plantations,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Though states profited from this arrangement, “prisoners earned no pay and faced inhumane, dangerous and often deadly work conditions. Thousands of black people were forced into what authors have termed ‘slavery by another name’ until the 1930s,” the school district continued.
…Between 1885 and 1887, many prisoners worked to build the Capitol building in Austin, while others worked to construct the Texas State Railroad between 1893 and 1909, according to the Texas State Historical Association.
…Out of the 95 burial sites identified thus far, 48 have been exhumed, according to a statement from the school district. All were male but one, archaeologists said. Their ages ranged from 14 to 70 years old.
In addition to finding the remains, archaeologists also uncovered rusted tools and chains laborers likely wore.
Remains found of African-Americans forced into labor
hmmmm
Woman harassed over Puerto Rican flag shirt says officer “blatantly ignored” her pleas for help
Irizarry, a veterinary technician, said Friday Trybus and two other people were sitting in a picnic shelter for which she had purchased a permit, so she approached them and asked them to leave. Trybus asked her twice if the flag on her T-shirt was a Texas flag, she said, and she replied both times that it was a Puerto Rican flag.
That’s when she said Trybus moved closer to her and stepped on a table.
…In the video, Trybus is seen telling Irizarry not to wear a T-shirt celebrating Puerto Rico if she’s an American citizen — despite the fact that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.
…Officer Connor then arrived, but the video shows he didn’t intervene even as the Trybus invaded Irizarry’s personal space and continued to harangue her as she asked for assistance.
…Her cousin, who had stepped away before the encounter, returned from the car and intervened. At that point the officer told the cousin to step back.
…Cook County Commissioner Luis Arroyo called the video of “appalling, gut-wrenching, and a real wake-up call to everyone.”
…The officer “embarrassed many of our law enforcement officers and tarnished the whole department with his failure to act,” Arroyo said.
….Irizarry said she finds the actions of Trybus and the officer “equally offensive.” She said she was “severely disappointed” that the officer stepped down from the force before he explained his motivations.
“I will never get to hear from this man, this protector, the reason for why my safety — no, my life — had such little value to him,” Irizarry said. “Why an American citizen would not reap the benefits of the police force when it was most needed.”
…Irizarry called the officer a “coward” for resigning.
“I just want justice for the whole thing, and I want the ex-officer to really be held accountable, whatever that looks like,” Irizarry said. “Of all the people who have apologized to me, the one person that hasn’t is him.”
hmmm
State Dept trafficking report includes ill effects of family separation
The State Department trafficking report, in addition to drawing attention this year to “modern day slave markets” in Libya, the dislocation of thousands of Rohingya in Burma, “untold numbers” of North Koreans subject to forced labor and the punishment of trafficking victims in Iran, also includes a section on the negative effects of family separation.
…”Studies have found that both private and government-run residential institutions for children, or places such as orphanages and psychiatric wards that do not offer a family-based setting, cannot replicate the emotional companionship and attention found in family environments that are prerequisites to healthy cognitive development,” the report reads. “The physical and psychological effects of staying in residential institutions, combined with societal isolation and often subpar regulatory oversight by governments, place these children in situations of heightened vulnerability to human trafficking.”
The report made reference to “ill-managed facilities” as a prime target for traffickers.
State Dept trafficking report includes ill effects of family separation – CBS News
Sigh….
Indefinite family detention is now Trump’s official policy
Indefinite family detention is now Trump’s official policy – Vox
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
End ICE Access to PARS, Says Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner
“Quite frankly, cooperating with ICE at this time makes our city less safe because it makes undocumented individuals fearful of coming forward to report crimes or testify in criminal cases. That’s simply unacceptable.”
…“It creates a whole category of victims … because American criminals know that they could rob these people, they can hurt these people, they can rape these people, and there will be fear and the witnesses will not come forward,” he said.
End ICE Access to PARS, Says Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner – NBC 10 Philadelphia
hmmmmm
This Alternative To Detaining Immigrant Families Works. Trump Just Won’t Use It.
The Family Case Management Program, which President Donald Trump ended several months after taking office, was meant to keep track of immigrant parents and kids in removal proceedings without having to keep them locked up. It was relatively small ― about 950 families in five locations. But it was hugely successful: More than 99 percent of families in the program showed up for their court dates, and 97 percent participated in required check-ins with their case managers, according to a report from Geo Care, the private prison company that operated the program. And it reportedly cost the government just $36 per family each day, versus $319 per bed per day in a family detention center.
…The FCMP was meant for people deemed too vulnerable for detention, such as pregnant or nursing women or families with special needs children. It required families to be briefed on their responsibilities in the immigration court process, which can be complicated, and to check in regularly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their case manager. Case managers referred families to services — such as lawyers and children’s school enrollment — and, if they received a deportation order in court, helped them prepare to return to their native country.
…ICE abruptly shut down the program last June with little explanation for advisory committee members.
…Immigrant rights advocates are pushing for policymakers to remember that detention isn’t the only option.
“ICE has a whole range of alternatives to detention,” said Ashley Feasley, a former advisory committee member and the director of policy at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ migration and refugee services. “These are existing programs that could be implemented now in lieu of building large-scale family-child detention facilities.”
This Alternative To Detaining Immigrant Families Works. Trump Just Won’t Use It. | HuffPost
Sigh….
Immigrant ‘was offered reunification with child if he agreed to leave’
Illegal immigrant separated from his six-year-old daughter at the border says he was offered to be reunited with his child at the airport if he agreed to deportation.
…Immigrants who crossed into the United States have been told that they would be able to get their children back in exchange for agreeing to immediately leave the country, it has been reported.
…Immigration lawyers have advised him to revoke the paperwork he signed and appeal for asylum before an immigration judge.
Carlos is currently being housed at a privately run adult detention center in Polk County, Texas, some 75 miles outside of Houston.
He said that his daughter was taken from him on the day he went to a McAllen court to plead guilty to illegal entry.
Carlos said that he was told his daughter would be taken to an aunt in California, but this was ‘pure lies,’ he said.
‘She’s a prisoner,’ he said.
Immigrant ‘was offered reunification with child if he agreed to leave’ | Daily Mail Online
…And then the governments lies about it. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat…..
Tips For Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons
– Recall that violently rejecting a tyrannical government goes against everything our forefathers believed in.
– Find common ground by recognizing that some kids are huge assholes.
– Make sure any protests are peaceful, silent, and completely out of sight of anyone who could actually affect government policy.
– Give your political opponents the benefit of the doubt by letting this play out for 20 years and seeing if it gets any better on its own.
– Realize that every pressing social issue is solved through civil discourse if you ignore virtually all of human history.
– Remind yourself that you’re just two people having a cocktail at the same D.C. party and that politics is a game to you.
Tips For Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons
bahahahahahahah!
There Is No Immigration Crisis
While it may benefit Democrats politically to take a harder line on immigration, that doesn’t mean it’s better policy—and political commentators should stop saying otherwise.
…It may be true that Democrats would benefit politically by taking a harder line on illegal immigration, as Bill Clinton[ benefited] in the [1990’s] by taking a harder line on welfare and crime. I’m not sure. The contention is plausible but difficult to prove. Regardless, family detention is a terrible response to a largely fictitious crisis. It would be lovely if shrewd politics and sound policy always went hand in hand. But it’s important for commentators to acknowledge that, often, they don’t.
…They call illegal immigration a crisis—not just a political crisis for Democrats because Trump is using it to rally support, but an actual crisis because undocumented migrants are deluging America at the border.
…This is misleading. Over the last decade, illegal immigration has been going down.
…By historical standards, this isn’t a “mass movement.” It’s the opposite. And illegal immigration is unlikely to return to the levels of the [1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s] anytime soon for one simple, and under appreciated, reason: Mexican women are having fewer children. Since the early 2000s, the number of Mexicans being caught at the border has collapsed. Even a strengthening U.S. economy hasn’t lifted the numbers, because the young Mexican men who in past decades crossed the border today don’t exist in the same numbers. That’s because, since 1960, the Mexican birthrate has dropped from almost seven children per mother to just over two. Which means the pool of potential migrants is far smaller.
…The children Trump separated from their parents are overwhelmingly Central American. But Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador don’t have large populations. Combined, they contain about one-quarter as many people as Mexico. Frum and Sullivan both link America’s immigration crisis to Europe’s. But in scale, the problems are quite different. Europe is near large countries with high fertility rates. (The fertility rate is close to three in the Middle East and North Africa and near five in sub-Saharan Africa). The United States is not.
… It’s not true that the only way the government can keep track of asylum seekers is by imprisoning them. As Dara Lind has noted in Vox, the Obama administration (while, to its discredit, it detained some immigrant families) also experimented with two highly successful alternatives. The first was called “Community Supervision.” Asylum seekers were released to the care of government-funded social workers, who helped them find attorneys and places to live, and worked to ensure they showed up to court. The other was called “Intensive Supervision Alternative Program.” Asylum seekers were released with ankle bracelets linked to an app on immigration officials’ phones. The officials also regularly called and visited them. Under both programs, according to the people who ran them, asylum seekers showed up for their proceedings at rates of between 97 and 99 percent. The programs were also vastly cheaper than detention. The Trump administration closed the largest Community Supervision program last year.
…Yes, America takes far too long to adjudicate—and, when necessary deport—asylum seekers. But that’s largely because past administrations have showered money on the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) agencies, which catch undocumented immigrants, while starving the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which employs the judges who hear their cases. Rather than respond to the current backlog by denying asylum seekers due process, as Trump wants, the government could hire many more immigration judges.
Another way to humanely reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the Rio Grande is to make it easier for Central Americans to apply for refugee status in their home countries, as the Obama administration began doing when it established refugee processing centers in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in 2014.
…In a 2007 study of undocumented Mexican migrants, Wayne A. Cornelius of the University of California at San Diego and Idean Salehyan of the University of North Texas found that “tougher border controls have had remarkably little influence on the propensity to migrate illegally to the USA.” Surveying the academic literature for The Washington Post this March, Anna Oltman of the University of Wisconsin at Madison noted that, “researchers increasingly find that deterrence has only a weak effect on reducing unauthorized immigration.”
…Politicians can’t be purists. But if political commentators are going to endorse such moral compromises, it’s crucial that they at least acknowledge those compromises for what they are. The truth is that in the United States today, immigration is a challenge but not a crisis—except to the degree Trump makes it one. The United States can expedite and improve its asylum process, and reduce the number of people coming across the border, without putting families behind bars. Immigration enforcement does not require inhumanity. And saying so has never been more important than it is now.
There Is No Immigration Crisis – The Atlantic
Amen.
What we know about the police shooting death of Antwon Rose Jr.
“Why are they shooting at him?” the person recording the shooting is heard saying. “All they did was run, and they’re shooting at them.”
Upon seeing the video of the shooting, Antwon’s aunt Mica Tinsley is quoted by the Post-Gazette as saying, “They’re not even saying stop … They just started shooting, and he fell.”
…Rose’s mother, Michelle Kenney, told ABC on Sunday that the officer shot her son “in cold blood.”
“Every time you turn on the TV, there’s a young African-American male shot by the police,” she said through tears. “And you say, ‘I feel sorry for them.’ But ‘them’ is me. But ‘them’ is him.”
What we know about the police shooting death of Antwon Rose Jr. | PBS NewsHour
hmmmm
Antwon Rose shooting: East Pittsburgh officer charged with criminal homicide – CNN
New details, included in the criminal complaint against [East Pittsburgh police Officer Michael] Rosfeld, indicate Antwon was shot in his face, right arm and the middle of his back. It also states that Antwon was in a car suspected in an earlier shooting but did not appear to be the shooter, and that Rosfeld made inconsistent statements about whether he believed Antwon had a gun.
…Allegheny County District Attorney Steve Zappala said he believes Rosfeld acted “recklessly and without justification,” and thus, the evidence supports charges of manslaughter and third-degree murder, and Zappala said his office has a “right to argue murder in the first,” which the state code classifies as an “intentional killing.”
Antwon Rose shooting: East Pittsburgh officer charged with criminal homicide – CNN
hmmmm
Health secretary: ‘No reason’ why separated families can’t find children
Health secretary: ‘No reason’ why separated families can’t find children – POLITICO
Does Trump tell them he’ll fire them if they don’t agree to lie every time they are on the record?
Officer Michael Rosfeld Charged With Criminal Homicide In Fatal Shooting Of Antwon Rose
Murder is murder. There can be no reasonable expectation of justice being served until those charged with upholding the law are actually held to it.
Judge Bars Migrant Family Separations, Orders Return Of Children Within 30 Days
Judge Bars Migrant Family Separations, Orders Return Of Children Within 30 Days : NPR
How many days left? I hope no one is holding their breath on this one…
Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone
Given the trauma the children faced in their home country that spurred their families to flee and the pain of being separated from a parent, the expectation that children can mount a legal defense is “unconscionable,” said Dr. Benard Dreyer, director of the division of developmental-behavioral pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine.
“It’s certainly grossly inappropriate,” said Dreyer, who is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics advocacy committee. “I’m ashamed that we’re doing this.”
Leaders at three legal services organizations and a private firm confirmed that children are being served with notices to appear in court. They are not entitled to an attorney but rather are given a list of legal services organizations that might help them.
Immigrant toddlers ordered to appear in court alone | The Texas Tribune
Without even a fucking attorney to speak for them. What, in the ever-living fuck, is wrong with us?????????????????????!
Where Marijuana Is Legal, Opioid Prescriptions Fall – Scientific American
Two papers published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine analyzing more than five years of Medicare Part D and Medicaid prescription data found that after states legalized weed, the number of opioid prescriptions and the daily dose of opioids went way down.
That indicates that some people may be shifting away from prescription drugs to cannabis, though the studies can’t say whether this substitution is actually happening or if patients or doctors are the driving force.
…Previous research has pointed to a similar correlation. A 2014 paper found that states with medical marijuana laws had nearly 25 percent fewer deaths from opioid overdoses.
…One of the two new studies found that people on Medicare filled 14 percent fewer prescriptions for opioids after medical marijuana laws were passed in their states. The second study found that Medicaid enrollees filled nearly 40 fewer opioid prescriptions per 1,000 people each year after their state passed any law making cannabis accessible—with greater drops seen in states that legalized both medical and recreational marijuana.
Where Marijuana Is Legal, Opioid Prescriptions Fall – Scientific American
A Former ICE Director Explains How Separated Children Can Easily Become Orphans
John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE Director under President Obama, tells Rolling Stone,“There’s a very high risk of permanent separation” for the families that were ripped apart. Migrant parents could easily lose legal custody, he says, in a Kafka-esque tangle of American bureaucracies.
To understand the plight of the families affected by Trump’s initiative – which Amnesty International has condemned as “nothing short of torture” – it’s critical to understand that once family units are broken apart, parents and children are in the hands of two separate bureaucracies. …Children are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, and are now considered unaccompanied minors. Some of the children have extended family in America who can provide a home for them. For the rest, HHS seeks foster care placements – anywhere in the U.S. that can accommodate them.
…Some desperate parents, Sandweg says, may have already been pressured into abandoning asylum claims and voluntarily accepting removal from the United States, in the mistaken belief that this would speed reunification with an infant child. But this is a false hope.
…It can take years for a child’s asylum case to wend its way before an immigration judge. If the child is now in the foster care system, he or she is a ward of whatever state HHS sent him or her to.
…In state court hearings, the deported parents are then punished for being out of country. “The parent has no way – legally or financially – to return to the United States to appear in state court proceedings where the guardianship of their child is being decided,” Sandweg says. Because the feds deported the parent, courts usually deem the child to have been abandoned, legally speaking. “Parental rights are then severed,” often permanently, says Sandweg. “Now, the parent has no legal authority to mandate return of their child.”
…Some of the children, Sandweg says, could eventually be put up for adoption. In the darkest of ironies, forcibly orphaned migrants – whom the president is desperate to deport – could in fact qualify for permanent residency, because the U.S. has a “special immigrant juvenile” classification designed for abandoned children. As Sandweg puts it, “Trump could be creating hundreds of future green card holders.”
A Former ICE Director Explains How Separated Children Can Easily Become Orphans – Rolling Stone
Argggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
How prosecutors can help end mass incarceration, with Larry Krasner
Now Larry Krasner, who is a true believer in criminal justice reform and deconstructing the machinery of mass incarceration, sits atop the office that produces incarceration in one of the biggest cities in America. He is the rebel who has taken the palace and he now sits there at the desk, making the decisions that the people he spent his life battling against and critiquing used to make, and now he has to be the one to implement his vision of what a more just and humane system looks like while also being the person that prosecutes crimes that takes alleged rapists and alleged murderers, and puts them behind bars that finds people who are accused of violently accosting fellow citizens and decides how much to charge them, how long they need to be kept away from society. He now has that power and that control.
…WEhen you get to the point where one in three black men is going to experience jail in their lifetime you have come to a moment. It’s a moment not just for them, it’s a moment for their sisters and their mothers who are watching the consequences of a young person who does something not so bad getting a felony and therefore being effectively unemployable the rest of their life.
…We sit around a table, and determine whether the sentence we should recommend for the re-sentencing is 50 years, or it’s time served at 20 years. We’re doing this while looking at what the prior administration was willing to recommend before they left. Sometimes the numbers we’re recommending are 10 years less. Sometimes they’re the same, or even more. But, often they’re gonna be 10 years less, or 15 years less.
Well, think about that for a minute. You’re looking at 10 years times what, $42,000, or maybe more. Or 15 years times $42,000, you’re dealing with a half a million dollars, $600,000. And you’re dealing with that in a city that has public schools that are starved for funding, and you’re making a decision about where society’s resources are gonna go, and I don’t have to get that past anybody in the state legislature. That is a decision that, ultimately, is up to me.
When we look at all of these juvenile lifers who’ve been released, in Pennsylvania, as a consequence of these re-sentencings, out of all of them, we have not one who has committed a serious violent crime. To the best of my knowledge, only one who’s committed any crime. We’re dealing with recidivism at a rate that is essentially equal, to a random selection of the population. They are no more dangerous. They’re supposedly monsters who had to spend their entire lives in jail, but they’re no more dangerous than the average person walking down the street.
…We looked at the Pennsylvania Sentencing Guidelines, and we realized how excessive and inappropriate they were, we made a decision on a range of offenses that are not sex offenses, and not violent offenses, we made a decision that our offers to resolve those cases should be below the bottom end of the sentencing guidelines. Why? Because those are the sentencing guidelines that gave us a 700 percent increase in jail population, while the rest of the country was already drunk on 500 percent. They’re just too high. It’s that simple.
…Having looked at the example of D.C., where for 30 years they’ve had very successful bail system that never included money, we realized that Pennsylvania’s legislature wouldn’t give us a law, like they had in D.C., that says, “Judges cannot use money.” But, what we could do, is we, as an office, could make recommendations to judges in many different types offenses that were not sex offenses, and not violent offenses, and not felony possession of a weapon, we can make a recommendation, ordinarily, that we don’t want any money.
The way we did this, is we looked at 26 different crimes, where ordinarily, the judges were given between $0 and $1,000 bail to get out of jail. Which means, the middle class people always got out, the rich people always got out, and the people who were completely broke, and could not find $250, stayed in jail, for months, at a price to the taxpayer of $135 a day, simply because they were broke.
… So, we took those 26 crimes and we created a presumption that we will never ask for cash. That doesn’t mean… Look, if Charles Manson shows up in Philly, and commits a minor offense, and we know he’s Charles Manson, we’re going for a bunch of cash bail. We want to keep him jail, right? But, it just means that the default position is we’re not gonna ask for it. The consequence of this was, between the sentencing, policy, and the cash bail policy, that in the first 45 days, after we put these policies into effect, we saw reductions in the county jail population of about 13 people per day, where the reductions before the policy went into effect were about six people per day. You know, there was a doubling of the rate of reduction of people in our over-crowded county prisons as a consequence of these two policies, and that happened 45 days into the administration. It was an immediate effect. And we are at the point now, where Philadelphia is ready to close one of it’s four county jails because there aren’t any people in that jail.
How prosecutors can help end mass incarceration, with Larry Krasner: podcast & transcript
hmmmm
Forest Preserve Cop who stood by as woman harassed over Puerto Rico shirt resigns effective immediately
Officer Patrick Connor was supposed to explain “the whole story” to his bosses Thursday about why he stood idly by as an allegedly drunk man verbally assaulted a woman at a Northwest Side forest preserve.
Instead, Connor quit the job the night before.
…Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia called Connor’s resignation “a commonsense decision after his inaction and failure to serve Cook County.
“However, this still leaves many questions unanswered,” Garcia said in a statement. “Cook County Government must not only review the types of trainings that officers and staff in all departments receive, but how they are implemented and held accountable.”
…Connor, who had been reassigned to desk duty following the June 14 incident, had been scheduled to attend an internal affairs disciplinary hearing on Thursday to answer questions posed to him by a commanding officer, Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin said.
They planned to try to get Connor to clarify why he didn’t respond to Irizarry’s pleas for help as 62-year-old Timothy Trybus berated her. And they wanted to know why Connor apparently stopped Irizarry’s brother when he tried to intervene.
No big loss there. Apparently he didn’t want to try and justify his actions because even he knew there was no reasonable justification for them.
Lawsuits alleging weed killer Roundup caused cancer get green light
Hundreds of lawsuits claiming Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup caused cancer were given the green light to proceed to trial, a San Francisco judge ruled Tuesday.
Lawsuits alleging weed killer Roundup caused cancer get green light
hmmm
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 