Weeping Girl Left Abandoned By ICE Pleads With ‘Government’ To ‘Let My Parents Be Free’ | HuffPost

sigh

A month earlier, the Trump Administration had announced, amid public outcry over its systemic separation of migrant families at the border, that it would halt the practice. But, at a packed processing hub, Christian was taken from Noehmi and placed in a cage with toddlers. Noehmi remained in a cold holding cell, clutching Helen. Soon, she recalled, a plainclothes official arrived and informed her that she and Helen would be separated. “No!” Noehmi cried. “The girl is under my care! Please!”

Noehmi said that the official told her, “Don’t make things too difficult,” and pulled Helen from her arms. “The girl will stay here,” he said, “and you’ll be deported.” 

…At the time of her apprehension, in fact, Helen checked a box on a line that read, “I do request an immigration judge,” asserting her legal right to have her custody reviewed. But, in early August, an unknown official handed Helen a legal document, a “Request for a Flores Bond Hearing” …which was filled out with assistance from officials. There is a checked box next to a line that says, “I withdraw my previous request for a Flores bond hearing.” Beneath that line, the five-year-old signed her name in wobbly letters.

…“Well, where is Helen, the five-year-old?”

The judge, Delgado recalled, seemed startled. Both he and the government prosecutor had no idea that Helen existed, let alone where she was being held. 

…Now stage three has commenced—one in which separations are done quietly, LUPE’s Tania Chavez asserts, and in which reunifications can be mysteriously stymied. …An uncounted number of separated children in shelters and foster care fall outside the lawsuit’s current purview—including many like Helen, who arrived with a grandparent or other guardian, rather than with a parent. Many such children have been misclassified, in government paperwork, as “unaccompanied minors,” due to a sloppy process that the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General recently critiqued. …Through misclassification, many kids have largely disappeared from public view, and from official statistics. 

…The completion of Noehmi’s background check was delayed for unexplained reasons.

On August 17th, Helen was transferred to a foster home in San Antonio. “I feared, did they give Helen away?” Noehmi told me; she worried about the prospect of adoption.

…On September 7th, LUPE was told that Helen would finally be released, nearly two months after she was taken from Noehmi. …“Then she wasn’t released.” ….LUPE’s team adjusted the petition to address a greater number of O.R.R. officials, each of whom received a personal e-mail every time a person signed. …Then, that Monday, Noehmi and Jeny got a phone call: they should be at their local airport at 6:20 p.m.

..The shelter sent a small black backpack that Helen had left behind. It held Helen’s legal paperwork, including the document that the five-year-old had been told to sign, withdrawing her request to see a judge. 

The Five-Year-Old Who Was Detained at the Border and Persuaded to Sign Away Her Rights | The New Yorker

The hearing reached its emotional crescendo as the committee’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., delivered a furious indictment of the Trump administration, accusing it of an “empathy deficit.” As the two began to argue over whether Homeland Security has adequately kept track of parents and children in a unified database (it has not, according to multiple reports), McAleenan’s explanations seemed to only anger Cummings further. “These are human beings,” he said at one point. “Human beings, just trying to live a better life.”

Growing increasingly outraged, Cummings spoke of “a child sitting in their own feces,” referencing some of the more dire reports from the border. “Come on, man,” Cummings said, his voice quavering. “What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position.”

Democrat rips DHS head over child separation policy – AOL News

hmmm

…“Border Patrol was holding about 8,000 detainees in custody at the time of our visit, with 3,400 held longer than the 72 hours generally permitted,” the report said.

…Many people—1,500 of the detainees—had been held for more than 10 days. Nearly a third of the 2,669 children—both those who were unaccompanied and those who had crossed with families—at the facilities the investigators studied had been held longer than 72 hours. At one facility in McAllen, Texas, 50 unaccompanied children under the age of 7 had been in custody for more than two weeks while awaiting transfer. After 72 hours, once a child has been turned over to HHS, the government is supposed to find the closest relative in the United States for children in its custody. But it has not worked that way.

…Children weren’t being given hot meals, even though it is required by law; instead, they were fed sandwiches and snacks for meals. And at three of the facilities investigators visited, children had no access to showers.

…There were hungry children who did not have enough to eat, she told me. Children had urinated on their pants, and weren’t offered a change of clothes. Some children had vomited on their clothing. It was a health risk, she said. Children reported seeing guards pulling other children from cages by force.

An Astonishing Government Report on Conditions at the Border – The Atlantic

Jeezus….

U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses “metering” as a way to manage the flow of people seeking entry at official ports of entry — capping the daily number of asylum applications received at official border crossings.

We can’t know for certain whether Martínez Ramírez heard about metering or any other policies, so we aren’t rating Castro’s statement on the Truth-O-Meter. But it doesn’t seem far-fetched: Metering may lead migrants to cross the border illegally, according to experts and government investigators. 

…With the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy in effect, government officials have still publicly encouraged asylum seekers to enter the United States legally through a port of entry to avoid prosecution and family separations. However, at the same time, Customs and Border Protection is regulating the flow of asylum seekers at ports of entry through “metering.” A version of the practice has been used at least as far back as 2016, during the Obama administration, according to a September 2018 report from the Office of Inspector General within the Department of Homeland Security.

When metering, Customs and Border Protection officers stand at the international line in the middle of the foot bridges, the report said, and officers only allow asylum seekers to cross the line if space is available. 

“While the stated intentions behind metering may be reasonable, the practice [also has very negative] consequences,” the report stated. “For instance, (Office of Inspector General) saw evidence that limiting the volume of asylum-seekers entering at ports of entry leads some aliens who would otherwise seek legal entry into the United States to cross the border illegally.”

…A May 2019 study from immigration experts suggests there are more than 18,700 asylum seekers waiting in Mexico border cities. One of the report’s researchers, Stephanie Leutert of the University of Texas, told PolitiFact more specifically that there are around 1,000 people waiting to cross the bridge where Martínez Ramírez was waiting. 

A few weeks ago the National Migration Institute, which manages the list in Mexico, made the list private. That has prompted stress for migrants, because they can no longer see their place in line.

“That caused a lot of desperation among migrants,” Leutert said.

Fact-checking Julián Castro’s claim that asylum ‘metering’ caused drowning of father, daughter | PolitiFact

mmhmmm

Also, the Obama administration was in no way and in way near as bad as the Trumps. That is in arguable. It is also true that the BHO WH was hardly the paradigm of progressive policy that the Left likes to think of it as. Yes, they were using metering. No, there was no more of a moral, ethical, or practical justification when they were using it than there is now.