Well I am sure you have a solid opinion, but the current vice president considered this facility inhumane in 2019.
No matter what you Trumpers want to say about Biden, your president sucked way worse than whatever faults you can find in Biden. Biden is a stammering dude who can't get through a speech? Trump is a serial liar. Biden/Obama erected those facilities? Trump filled them and separated families. Biden's dogs are unruly? Trump couldn't find dogs that would stay with him. Dr. Jill Biden isn't a "real" doctor? Melania is ... well let's just leave Melania alone. Affordable care act sucks? Trump never had a plan Biden hasn't moved on infrastructure? Trump had 4 years, Biden is in his second month. We could do this all day. The reality is that for the majority of America, Trump was such a worthless sonofabich that Biden can only be an improvement. If Trump runs again in 2024, turnout will again be a record high and Biden or Kamala or a chair or a monkey would win.
Okay, so when Trump did his "zero tolerance policy" which seperated every child from their parents regardless of context, that generates an overcrowded influx of children to detention centers. Previous administations only detained UNACCOMPANIED children because they had no choice ad they had no guardians. And here is the major issue. Previous administations and the current one only held those children for a maximum of 72 hours in detention centers designed for only 72 hour stays. It's 72 hours or until they find a guardian or a temp foster home. Under the Trump adminstration since there was a massive influx of children in these detention centers, it created a overcrowded situation where many of these kids stayed MONTHS in these detention centers meant for only 72 hour stays. Do you get why people were pissed?
AOC declares war on Biden https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-aoc-biden-migrant-camp-children-20210224-hsdvznvmfncylkxymcivuq3f6m-story.html ‘This is not okay’: AOC slams Biden administration for reopening Texas migrant camp for children By DAVE GOLDINER NEW YORK DAILY NEWS | FEB 24, 2021 AT 10:01 AM Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) slammed the Biden administration for reopening a Texas migrant camp for children, saying it “never will be okay” no matter which party controls the White House. The firebrand lawmaker was responding on Twitter to a Washington Post report that the administration was reactivating the Carrizo Springs, Tex. facility to hold up to 700 children from ages 13 to 17 who came to the U.S. alone. “This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay - no matter the administration,” AOC tweeted. Many progressives consider the military-style camps like the one reopened in Texas as a symbol of many failed Trump policies that Biden should eradicate. more at the link
Is she ignoring context such as these kids were unaccompanied and they have to place them somewhere for a temporary measure until they find a guardian or temp foster home?
I was told by Republican it was just an act and that she’s doesn’t care about them. Lipstick, makeup, nice dress and purse.
For me it brings to mind the scene in Band of Brothers, where they find a concentration camp and of course free everyone... then the doctors come in and say they have to put them back so they can regulate their food intake and care for them, because they didn't have anywhere else for them to go. And the soldiers hated it, but it was what it was. And that's pretty much the tone of the admin's response: "officials said the facility had to be reopened to house children who cross the border without parents, who would otherwise be left to fend for themselves." Also, it kinda pisses me off that AOC says "It’s only 2 mos into this admin [other stuff]". No it's not, when did 35 days become 2 months? Frankly I tend to agree with her a lot of the time, but this feels a bit attention w****-y.
"Scoop: Border officials project 13,000 child migrants in May": https://www.axios.com/biden-migrant-children-border-dcc5df38-b9cd-4053-bee4-3642c4c215bf.html excerpt: A Customs and Border Protection staffer told top administration officials Thursday the agency is projecting a peak of 13,000 unaccompanied children crossing the border in May, sources directly familiar with the discussion told Axios. Why it matters: That projection would exceed the height of the 2019 crisis, which led to the infamous "kids-in-cages" disaster. It also underscores a rapidly escalating crisis for the Biden administration. "We’re seeing the highest February numbers than we’ve ever seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program," a Department of Health and Human Services official told Axios. What to watch: The administration is already preparing to quickly expand its network of migrant-child shelters, which have had their capacity sharply reduced because of coronavirus protocols. more at the link
Unaccompanied minors wasn't the reason for the "kids in cages" crisis. It was a zero tolerance policy of having all kids regardless of context seperated from their families and packed into detention centers for 72 hour stays for months. If Biden strips kids from their families and keeps them in detention centers meant for 72 hr stays for months on end, then we can make a equal comparison.
"Number of Migrant Children Detained at Border Has Tripled in Two Weeks": https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/08/us/joe-biden-news excerpt: The number of unaccompanied migrant children detained along the southern border has tripled in the last two weeks to more than 3,250, filling facilities akin to jails as the Biden administration struggles to find room for them in shelters, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. More than 1,360 of the children have been detained beyond the 72 hours permitted by law before a child must be transferred to a shelter, according to one of the documents, dated March 8. The figures highlight the growing pressure on President Biden to address the increased number of people trying to cross the border in the belief that he will be more welcoming to them than former President Donald J. Trump was. The children are being held in facilities, managed by the Customs and Border Protection agency, that were built for adults. The border agency has been the subject of widespread criticism for the horrific conditions in its federal detention facilities, in which children are exposed to disease, hunger and overcrowding. Under the law, the federal government is required to move unaccompanied children within three days from the border facilities to shelters managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, where they are held until they are placed with a sponsor. Homeland Security officials have often pointed to delays by Health and Human Services in picking up the children as a reason for the prolonged detention. Until last Friday, when the government lifted the restrictions, the shelters managed by Health and Human Services were at reduced capacity because of the pandemic. The shelters for migrant children are 13 days away from “maximum capacity,” according to the documents. The data shows the stress on the system designed to hold the migrant children as Mr. Biden tries to make good on a campaign promise to be more compassionate to migrants during a global pandemic. Border agents encountered a migrant at the border about 78,000 times in January, the highest number for that month in at least a decade. Most of those were adults or families who were rapidly turned away under a pandemic emergency rule. The administration is expected to announce an increase in those crossings this week, according to officials. The rules are different for unaccompanied children, who, rather than being turned back, are taken into custody, forcing the administration to find space for them. More than 5,800 unaccompanied children were found at the border in January, an increase of more than 1,000 from October 2020. The Biden administration recently reopened an emergency facility used during the Trump administration in Carrizo Springs, Texas, to create more space for the children. The shelters where migrant children are supposed to be held have been strained. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention directed the shelters to return to full capacity last Friday. Health and Human Services had more than 8,100 unaccompanied children in its shelters as of Sunday, with space readily available for only 838 more, according to the documents. More than 42 percent of the roughly 3,250 children in the custody of Customs and Border Protection were held longer than the maximum of three days, even though they were referred for placement in shelters by Homeland Security, according to the documents. Border agents had yet to refer more than 440 of the young migrants in its custody to the child migrant shelters. The Border Patrol and Health and Human Services have long struggled to efficiently transfer migrant children to shelters. “It’s a difficult coordination process,” said Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary under the Obama administration. She said the rise of unaccompanied children at the border presented an urgent challenge for the administration. “That’s why they need some facilities at the border,” she said, “and I think what they need to do is move as quickly as humanly possible to place those minors with a vetted adult.” — Zolan Kanno-Youngs
The criticism of Trump was largely around family separation whereas this situation is primarily about unaccompanied minors. Either are very problematic but not exactly the same.
So where are the children being seperated from their parents part? Overstaying 72 hours is a problem but then again, there were kids who stayed up to a year in those 72 hr detention centers under Trump. So I need some nuance on what is "past 72 hours". Like an additional day or is it months? What do you think?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...d39390-81c6-11eb-bb5a-ad9a91faa4ef_story.html excerpt: The magnitude of the crisis facing President Biden at the U.S.-Mexico border came into clearer focus Wednesday as the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters. More than 8,500 migrant teens and children who crossed the border without their parents are being housed in Department of Health and Human Services shelters as they wait to be placed with relatives or vetted sponsors. Nearly 3,500 more are stuck at Border Patrol stations waiting for beds in those shelters to open up, the highest figure ever, according to internal data reviewed by The Washington Post. Held in grim steel-and-concrete cells built for adults, these young people are spending an average of 107 hours awaiting transfer to an HHS-run shelter, well over the 72-hour legal limit, the data shows. The largest number of unaccompanied minors held this way during the Trump administration was about 2,600 in June 2019, according to congressional testimony and two former Customs and Border Protection officials who were involved in handling that crisis. The Border Patrol warehouse with chain-link holding pens that were decried as “cages” in 2018 has been closed for renovations, but the conditions in the stations are not much better. Young people are waiting in cramped, austere holding cells with concrete floors and benches. Lights remain on 24 hours a day, agents say, and there are few places to play. Troy Miller, the acting CBP head, said those housed at the stations have full access to meals, snacks and medical care, as well as showers every 48 hours. “Many of us, maybe most of us, are parents,” Miller told reporters Wednesday. “I myself have a 6-year-old, and these Border Patrol agents go above and beyond every single day to take care of the children.” He acknowledged that the Border Patrol continues “to struggle with the number of individuals in our custody, especially given the pandemic.” more at the link
History is going to judge the family separation policy so harshly. It'll be something spoken of like the Japanese internment camps in WW2. Perhaps worse, because at least the internment camps had a backdrop of war, which is grounds for all types of short-term thinking. This policy was just a clear-headed elective human catastrophe.
This is the next big attack on the Right for the Biden Admin. Just my anecdotal observations but I've seen several posts from Trumpists blaming Biden for the rise in people coming to the border. Saw one post saying it's treason that Biden isn't defending the border.
The problem is many of these people think of it as war and which is why they use terms like "Invasion" and the need to "defend our borders from foreign adversaries."
Realistic long term solution? Climate change need to be handled. If southern nations destabilize due to famine and war over resources as projected by our military assessment due to harsher climate, the pressure on the souther border will be much much more than today. More immediately, the souther nations to the US need to be more stable. We should want them to govern well and have strong economy. Strategic investment here pay dividends. We also need a work visa program and strong enforcement of violation (against companies and employer). The incentive for folks to go over here is economic and we have a defacto system of looking the other way, punish these individuals but not the employers and businesses that take advantage of the situation. Bring it into light and manage it for mutual benefits. The easy and cruel solution of the past 4 years is ignore the threat of climate change, retreat from stabilizing southern nations, seal the border (which isn’t possible by a simple minded idea of just a standing wall) and do cruel things toward those crossed over for discouragement.
"Biden Has Few Good Options for the Unaccompanied Children at the Border": https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/why-biden-has-few-good-options-at-the-border excerpt: During the Trump years, Carrizo Springs was one of three so-called influx facilities, provisional shelters used in cases of emergency. (Unlike permanent shelters, they are typically not licensed at the state level.) Another was a tent encampment near El Paso, in a town called Tornillo. The Trump Administration had opened the Tornillo facility in June, 2018, in response to another crisis of its own making: the Department of Homeland Security had officially begun separating children from their parents at the border, and H.H.S. needed more room to house them. Some seven months later, in January, 2019, Tornillo was closed. The third site was a complex near Miami, known as Homestead, which, beginning in March, 2018, had held more than fourteen thousand unaccompanied minors, making it, at one point, the largest housing facility for children in the country. By August, 2019, Homestead, too, was emptied out. The Trump Administration said that it no longer needed the temporary facilities. But the closures underscored how the use of such facilities could have been avoided in the first place. “There should never be an influx facility,” one advocate told Vice News at the time, if the government “properly managed the release of children.” In 2019, this was a justifiable sentiment, because the Trump Administration was plainly acting in bad faith. But what about now? Late last month, the Biden Administration announced that it was reopening Carrizo Springs; the facility will be able to hold around seven hundred minors between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Two weeks ago, after the first group arrived, President Biden told Univision, “Our hope and expectation is that it won’t stay open very long, that we will be able to provide for every kid who comes across the border safely to be housed in a facility that is licensed.” The backlash among progressive Democrats was swift. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “This is not okay, never has been okay-no matter the administration or party.” Her Twitter thread coincided with claims from activists and concerned citizens that went viral on social media accusing the new President of putting “kids in cages.” A headline in the New York Times read “Thousands of Migrant Children Detained in Resumption of Trump-Era Policies.” Lawyers and advocates who’ve spent years working to defend immigrant children were stunned—more by the general confusion than by the situation that gave rise to it. “It’s emotional,” Jennifer Podkul, a vice-president of Kids in Need of Defense (kind), a legal-advocacy group that specializes in the rights of immigrant children, told me. When it comes to immigrants, H.H.S. is tasked with a much different job than D.H.S., a distinction that’s frequently missed. The facilities in question are meant to serve as shelters, not as detention centers. O.R.R., the H.H.S. agency that is supposed to care for the children, “serves a protective purpose, not a punitive purpose,” Podkul said. When children arrive at the border, the first government agency they encounter is Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.), but officials there aren’t trained to deal with minors, and their facilities are not designed to hold them. Federal regulations prohibit placing children in C.B.P. custody for more than seventy-two hours; the agency is supposed to immediately transfer them to O.R.R. The Trump Administration, as it did with many government agencies, warped the office’s mission and its reputation. In an unprecedented step, O.R.R. started to share information about undocumented sponsors, so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) could target them for arrest when they came forward to claim the children. “O.R.R is not a law-enforcement entity. It’s a social-service provider,” Robert Carey, a former head of the office, once told me. The distinction matters because O.R.R. vets sponsors not to police them but to protect the children. Between 2013 and 2015, tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central America arrived at the border, on a scale that overwhelmed federal authorities. To release the children faster, the Obama Administration relaxed the usual background checks. In 2016, the Senate issued a report detailing more than a dozen cases of children who were sent to abusive sponsors. For Biden, there’s also the pandemic to consider. O.R.R. has more than thirteen thousand available beds for unaccompanied children, but to limit the spread of the virus the government is using only sixty per cent of them. According to H.H.S., there were seven thousand seven hundred unaccompanied children in its facilities as of late last week. The use of influx facilities is never ideal, Podkul told me, but, under the circumstances, the other options struck her as worse. Releasing children into the U.S. without a sponsor would be dangerous. And, if O.R.R. did not secure extra space, children would likely be forced to spend more time in holding cells run by C.B.P. “Those are the actual cages,” Podkul said. *** Inside the Biden Administration, a common refrain is that “all the options are bad.” For example, Biden’s advisers had criticized Trump for using Title 42 for political, rather than public-health, reasons. Yet the Administration has not relinquished what could be a useful tool: under Title 42, the government will continue to expel single adults. The President is desperate to manage the increasing flow of migrants, while D.H.S. rebuilds its capacity for processing new arrivals. Understandably, this has frustrated many immigrants-rights advocates. Eleanor Acer, of Human Rights First, told me, “You either believe in asylum or you don’t. I understand there are political challenges. But the Biden Administration should be following the asylum laws enacted by Congress, not the policies devised by the Trump Administration to evade those laws.” more at the link
