[D66] Fwd: US-Mexico border

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/06/22/immi-j22.html

US court documents reveal
Immigrant children tied down, hooded, beaten, stripped and drugged
By Patrick Martin
22 June 2018

Court documents made public in Virginia and Texas give a glimpse of the
systematic brutality being meted out to immigrant children in both
public and private jails. Children are strapped down, hooded and beaten,
or drugged by force, as part of the everyday procedure in what can only
be called the American Gulag.

An Associated Press report published Thursday gave details of the abuses
committed against young Latino migrants at the Shenandoah Valley
Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, last year. Lawyers for the
teenage victims sued the prison—a state facility run by a consortium of
seven towns and cities in the Shenandoah Valley—and a court hearing is
set for July.

According to a half-dozen sworn statements, given by the victims in
Spanish and then translated for filing with the federal court for the
Western District of Virginia, children as young as 14 were beaten while
handcuffed, tied down to chairs while stripped naked and hooded, and
held for long periods in solitary confinement, sometimes naked and cold.

All these are forms of torture practiced at Guantanamo Bay and at CIA
torture prisons around the world. These techniques have been transferred
back into the United States and unleashed on immigrant children, who
have been demonized by the Trump administration.

The lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Washington Lawyers’ Committee for
Civil Rights and Urban Affairs declares that young Latino immigrants
held at Shenandoah “are subjected to unconstitutional conditions that
shock the conscience, including violence by staff, abusive and excessive
use of seclusion and restraints, and the denial of necessary mental
health care.” As a result of “malicious and sadistic applications of
force,” the youth have “sustained significant injuries, both physical
and psychological.”

A Honduran youth sent to Shenandoah when he was 15 said in his
statement, “Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair,
they would handcuff me… [They] strapped me down all the way, from your
feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move… They have
total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has
little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the
bag on.”

A 15-year-old from Mexico who spent nine months at Shenandoah described
similar treatment.

“They handcuffed me and put a white bag of some kind over my head,” he
said, according to his sworn statement. “They took off all of my clothes
and put me into a restraint chair, where they attached my hands and feet
to the chair. They also put a strap across my chest. They left me naked
and attached to that chair for two and a half days, including at night.”

A 14-year-old Guatemalan youth reported frequent imprisonment in his
tiny cell for up to 23 hours a day, as well as long periods of physical
restraint. “When they couldn’t get one of the kids to calm down, the
guards would put us in a chair—a safety chair, I don’t know what they
call it—but they would just put us in there all day,” he said in his
sworn statement. “This happened to me, and I saw it happen to others,
too. It was excessive.”

A 17-year-old who fled Mexico to escape an abusive father and drug
cartel violence was arrested at the US border, and passed through
several detention centers before arriving at Shenandoah, one of three
facilities in the United States with contracts from the Office of
Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human
Services, to provide “secure facilities” for young immigrants. The boy
was frequently shackled, usually with cloth bindings, and reported at
least one violent strip search and several beatings. He was driven to
attempt suicide several times.

Other allegations include that the Latino youth received worse food and
facilities than local juvenile prisoners, mostly white, and that meals
were frequently cold and inadequate, leaving the children hungry.

The AP interviewed an unnamed child development specialist who had
worked with teens at Shenandoah. “The majority of the kids we worked
with when we went to visit them were emotionally and verbally abused. I
had a kid whose foot was broken by a guard,” she said. “They would get
put in isolation for months for things like picking up a pencil when a
guard had said not to move. Some of them started hearing voices that
were telling them to hurt people or hurt themselves, and I knew when
they had gotten to Shenandoah they were not having any violent thoughts.”

Because the children held at Shenandoah were unaccompanied minors,
rather than separated from their families, there were some suggestions
in the media that they had gang connections that somehow justified the
brutal treatment. But according to the AP report, a program director at
the facility said the youth had been screened for gang connections and
were actually suffering from mental health issues resulting from trauma
in their home countries.

The acts of torture involved multiple guards at the facility, which was
run by a regional board but under the ultimate control of the state
government, headed throughout this period by Democratic Governor Terry
McAuliffe. The new governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, who took office
January 1, ordered a state investigation into the claims of abuse, but
only after the AP report became public Thursday.

Even younger children were targeted for abuse at a Texas facility
operated under contract for the Office of Refugee Resettlement,
according to a report published by the Center for Investigative
Reporting and the Texas Tribune Tuesday. The allegations were further
detailed in a court suit filed by the Center for Human Rights &
Constitutional Law.

The lawsuit charges that the Shiloh Treatment Center in Manvel, Texas,
administered psychotropic drugs to immigrant children, who in some cases
were separated from their parents at the border. Neither the children,
some as young as nine years old, nor the parents gave consent to the
treatment, and in some cases, children were forcibly drugged as they
fought and screamed.

One report reads, “Some children held at Shiloh reported being given up
to nine different pills in the morning and six in the evening, including
antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants, Parkinson’s disease medication and
seizure medications. They were told they would remain detained if they
refused drugs, the lawsuit said. Children also said that after taking
the drugs, they experienced side effects that rendered them fatigued and
incapable of walking.”

The lawsuit charges, “ORR routinely administers children psychotropic
drugs without lawful authorization... When youth object to taking such
medications, ORR compels them. ORR neither requires nor asks for a
parent’s consent before medicating a child, nor does it seek lawful
authority to consent in parents’ stead. Instead, ORR or facility staff
sign ‘consent’ forms anointing themselves with ‘authority’ to administer
psychotropic drugs to confined children.”

The seven pills named in the court filings—clonazepam, duloxetine,
guanfacine, Geodon, olanzapine, Latuda and divalproex—are medications
used to control depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, bipolar
disorder, mood disorders, schizophrenia and seizures. This treatment
amounted to applying “chemical straitjackets” to subdue the children,
rather than meeting medical needs, the lawsuit charges.

According to the investigative reporting, the ORR paid $3.4 billion to
private organizations to hold immigrant children, and nearly half of
this, $1.5 billion, went to 13 companies that had been accused of
hundreds of serious violations of their responsibility to provide care.
These included failure to obtain medical treatment for accidents or
illness, “inappropriate contact” between children and staff (apparently
of a sexual nature), and neglect.

These reports of horrific treatment of innocent children do not just
expose the savagery and sadism of individual guards, administrators and
other officials, as well as the greed of corporate bosses seeking to
join in the orgy of profiteering from federal contracts for the
detention and abuse of immigrants.

What is revealed above all is the criminal character of the American
political elite, both Democrats and Republicans, who have deliberately
encouraged an atmosphere of brutality and terror as their preferred
method of “deterring” immigrants from crossing the US-Mexico border. And
it not just the sociopathic bully in the White House today, but his
Democratic predecessor, responsible for more deportations than any
previous president.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson declared that
the jailing of Central American refugees seeking asylum, and the
separation of parents and children, would have a positive effect in
reducing the sudden influx of refugees in 2014. It was Terry McAuliffe,
the longtime crony of Hillary Clinton, who oversaw the torture of
immigrant teenagers at Shenandoah from 2014 to 2017.

The shift from Obama to Trump has not fundamentally changed the policy
of the US ruling class towards immigrants, which has always been of an
anti-democratic and brutal character. But in the hands of Trump and his
fascistic aide Stephen Miller, the brutality has become more systematic,
and it is accompanied by a campaign aimed at whipping up anti-immigrant
racism and hysteria over the purported danger that the United States
will be “overrun,” as Trump claimed in his speech Wednesday night to a
rally in Minnesota.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal Thursday, the Trump
administration awarded multiple contracts involving tens of millions of
dollars earlier this year to build detention facilities for children.
This confirms that the mass separation of children from their parents,
which followed the announcement of the “zero tolerance” policy by
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was not an unexpected byproduct of the
new policy, but was planned and deliberate. It is a premeditated crime,
the state kidnapping of more than 2,400 children, for which Trump,
Sessions, Stephen Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen and other top officials
should be prosecuted and jailed.

Far from abandoning this policy—as media reports on the executive order
issued by Trump Wednesday suggested—the White House is preparing to
accelerate the mass detention of immigrants, including children. A
Pentagon spokesman said Thursday that military bases in Texas and
Arkansas had been reviewed as possible locations for housing as many as
20,000 immigrant children, double the number currently in custody.

On 22-06-18 14:27, A.O. wrote:
> (stond nog in de queue)
> 
> http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/02/cara-m02.html
> 
> Democrats maintain silence over persecution of Central American 
> immigrants at US-Mexico border By Genevieve Leigh 2 May 2018
> 
> In the face of the Trump administration’s sadistic and illegal
> treatment of Central American immigrants seeking to apply for asylum
> at the border crossing between Tijuana-San Ysidro and San Diego, the
> Democratic Party has said virtually nothing, exposing as a cynical
> fraud its pretensions of sympathy for the plight of immigrant
> workers.
> 
> For the third day, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) 
> officials at the border checkpoint are holding in limbo a large
> majority of the 170 migrants who participated in a caravan from
> Guatemala to seek refuge in the US from murderous political and gang
> violence in their home countries. In line with President Donald
> Trump’s racist attacks on the caravan as an assault by criminal
> elements against US national security, the CBP has allowed only 14 of
> the refugees to cross into the US and begin the onerous process of
> applying for political asylum.
> 
> The rest, consisting largely of women and children, are being left
> to camp out on the Mexican side of the border. This is being done to
> people who have endured a months-long trek in an attempt to escape
> horrific conditions caused by US imperialist intervention,
> exploitation and support for CIA-backed death squad regimes. The
> deliberate delay in processing the immigrants is a flagrant violation
> of international laws and conventions guaranteeing the right to
> political asylum.
> 
> The 14 immigrants who have been allowed to apply for asylum are
> being held in a detention center known as the “hielera,” or “cooler,”
> where they could remain for days, or even a week, as border agents
> question them to determine whether they have “credible fear” of
> returning to their home countries.
> 
> Under orders from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice
> Department has filed criminal charges against 11 immigrants,
> allegedly part of the caravan, who are said to have entered the US
> illegally. “The United States will not stand by as our immigration
> laws are ignored and our nation’s safety is jeopardized,” Sessions
> said in a statement.
> 
> The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the CBP and the 
> Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), has announced a
> policy of separating children from their parents where families are
> caught crossing the border with documents.
> 
> Trump has repeatedly railed against what he calls the “catch and 
> release” policy, a pejorative term for allowing undocumented
> immigrants to remain free pending the outcome of their administrative
> hearings and determination of their status, instead of locking them
> up for weeks, months or even years. Earlier this year, the US Supreme
> Court ruled that immigrants held in detention facilities have no
> right to a bail.
> 
> On Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence made a provocative visit to El 
> Centro California, just 100 miles east of the scene unfolding in 
> Tijuana, where he toured a construction site for Trump’s border
> wall. After lauding the CBP and Homeland Security, Pence accused the
> caravan’s organizers of persuading people to leave their homes to
> advance an “open borders” agenda.
> 
> The silence of the Democratic Party will not shock anyone who has
> paid attention to immigration policy over the last decade. The slim
> chance these migrants have of being granted asylum is not a new
> feature of the Trump administration, but rather a longstanding
> bipartisan policy. More than 75 percent of applicants from Honduras,
> Guatemala and El Salvador between 2011 and 2016, under the Obama
> administration, were rejected. Obama deported more immigrants than
> any previous president. The policies of the Trump administration are
> a continuation and intensification of those of the Obama
> administration.
> 
> In order to reduce the number of immigrants reaching the US, and 
> circumvent international law regarding asylum seekers, the Obama 
> administration oversaw a program called “Frontera Sur,” which
> required the Mexican government to crack down on Central American
> migrants before they could make it to the US border.
> 
> Under the program, Mexico relocated hundreds of immigration agents
> to its southern border with Guatemala to carry out the diktats of 
> Washington. Mexican immigration officials set up mobile checkpoints
> and conducted regular raids on trains and immigrant safe houses to
> prevent Central Americans from reaching the United States.
> 
> The Obama administration supported this campaign with training, 
> technology, intelligence and funding. The US has provided the
> Mexican police and military with roughly $100 million to detain and
> deport Central Americans.
> 
> A year after the program’s initiation in July 2014, apprehensions by
> the Mexican government increased by 71 percent over the previous
> year. The crackdown has led to the deportation of about 950,000
> Central Americans as well as the detention of many indigenous Mexican
> citizens living in southern states like Chiapas. According to a 2015
> United Nations report, the large-scale detention and deportation
> scheme has also produced widespread torture.
> 
> After the caravan initially left Chiapas over a month ago, Trump 
> pressured the Mexican government to “break up” the migrants, using
> the tools in place from Obama’s “Fronter Sur” program.
> 
> The Mexican government obeyed Trump’s order and worked to intimidate
> the group. Trump boasted of its actions in a tweet in early April,
> saying, “The Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong
> immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as
> not to cause a giant scene at our Border.” Shortly afterwards, armed
> Mexican immigration agents entered a train carrying over 500 of the
> original 1,500 in the original caravan, forcibly removed them from
> the train and left them to travel on foot miles from any major city
> or town.
> 
> The Democrats are complicit in the conditions in Central America
> that are driving desperate people to become refugees. Over 80 percent
> of the migrants traveling in this year’s caravan are from Honduras.
> In 2009, the Obama administration, with direct oversight by
> then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, backed a military coup in
> Honduras that ousted the elected president Manuel Zelaya and
> inaugurated a period of repressive violence against the working
> class.
> 
> The repression includes arbitrary detentions, beatings, torture and
> the murder of members of opposition media. Since the overthrow, the
> US has turned a blind eye to fraudulent elections held under
> state-of-siege rule so long as they produced victories for
> US-friendly candidates. The US government entered into bilateral
> agreement with the Honduran government in 2010 to resume the direct
> flow of US military aid to the Honduran armed forces and police.
> Organized gangs in the country are well known for extorting Hondurans
> to pay an arbitrary “war tax,” and some who can’t pay are killed. 
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