[D66] Fwd: US-Mexico border

[A.O.]

https://www.apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79

WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginia’s governor ordered state officials Thursday
to investigate abuse claims by children at an immigration detention
facility who said they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for
long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in
concrete cells.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced the probe in a tweet hours after The
Associated Press reported the allegations. They were included in a
federal civil rights lawsuit with a half-dozen sworn statements from
Latino youths held for months or years at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile
Center. The AP report also cited an adult who saw bruises and broken
bones the children said were caused by guards.

Northam, a Democrat, said the allegations were disturbing and directed
the state’s secretary of public safety and homeland security and the
Department of Juvenile Justice to report back to him “to ensure the
safety of every child being held there.”

Children as young as 14 said the guards there stripped them of their
clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.

“Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would
handcuff me,” said a Honduran immigrant who was sent to the facility
when he was 15 years old. “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.”

In addition to the children’s first-hand, translated accounts in court
filings, a former child-development specialist who worked inside the
facility independently told The Associated Press this week that she saw
kids there with serious injuries. She spoke on condition of anonymity
because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the children’s cases.

In court filings, lawyers for the detention facility have denied all the
allegations of physical abuse. The incidents described in the lawsuit
occurred from 2015 to 2018, during both the Obama and Trump administrations.

Many of the children were sent there after U.S. immigration authorities
accused them of belonging to violent gangs, including MS-13. President
Donald Trump has repeatedly cited gang activity as justification for his
crackdown on illegal immigration.

Trump said Wednesday that “our Border Patrol agents and our ICE agents
have done one great job” cracking down on MS-13 gang members. “We’re
throwing them out by the thousands,” he said.

But a top manager at the Shenandoah center said during a recent
congressional hearing that the children did not appear to be gang
members and were suffering from mental health issues resulting from
trauma that happened in their home countries — problems the detention
facility is ill-equipped to treat.

“The youth were being screened as gang-involved individuals. And then
when they came into our care, and they were assessed by our clinical and
case management staff ... they weren’t necessarily identified as
gang-involved individuals,” said Kelsey Wong, a program director at the
facility. She testified April 26 before a Senate subcommittee reviewing
the treatment of immigrant children apprehended by the Homeland Security
Department.

Most children held in the Shenandoah facility who were the focus of the
abuse lawsuit were caught crossing the border illegally alone. They were
not the children who have been separated from their families under the
Trump administration’s recent policy and are now in the government’s
care. But the facility operates under the same program run by the U.S.
Office of Refugee Resettlement. It was not immediately clear whether any
separated children have been sent to Shenandoah Valley since the Trump
administration in April announced its “zero tolerance” policy toward
immigrant families, after the lawsuit was filed.

It also was not immediately clear when federal authorities first learned
of the abuse claims and whether any action was taken. Spokespeople for
the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the
Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to multiple
requests for comment Wednesday and Thursday.

Robert Carey, who served as director of Refugee Resettlement under the
Obama administration, said Tuesday he only heard about the complaints at
the Shenandoah center after he left office in January 2017. Had he
known, Carey said, he “would have been all over that trying to figure
out what needed to be done, including termination of contracts.”

Following AP’s report about the abuse accusations, Virginia’s two
Democratic senators said Thursday they would seek to investigate
conditions inside the Shenandoah facility.

In a tweet, Sen. Tim Kaine said: “Deeply troubled by this report. We
need answers on what happened at this facility, and my staff and I are
going to demand them.”

Sen. Mark Warner said at a public forum on immigration issues that he
will seek to visit the detention center.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican whose home district
includes the Shenandoah facility, said he was unaware of any complaints
prior to the AP’s report. An architect of the current effort by GOP
conservatives to pass tougher restrictions on legal immigration,
Goodlatte called the abuse allegations “alarming” and said they
“certainly merit a thorough investigation to uncover the truth.”

The Shenandoah lockup is one of only three juvenile detention facilities
in the United States with federal contracts to provide “secure
placement” for children who had problems at less-restrictive housing.
The Yolo County Juvenile Detention Facility in California has faced
litigation over immigrant children mischaracterized as gang members.  In
Alexandria, Virginia, a multi-jurisdiction commission overseeing the
Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center has said it will end its
federal contract to house young immigration detainees when it expires in
September.

The Shenandoah detention center was built by a coalition of seven nearby
towns and counties to lock up local kids charged with serious crimes.
Since 2007, about half the 58 beds are occupied by male and female
immigrants between the ages of 12 and 17 facing deportation proceedings
or awaiting rulings on asylum claims. Though incarcerated in a facility
similar to a prison, the children detained on administrative immigration
charges have not yet been convicted of any crime.

Virginia ranks among the worst states in the nation for wait times in
federal immigration courts, with an average of 806 days before a ruling.
Nationally, only about half of juveniles facing deportation are
represented by a lawyer, according to Justice Department data.

On average, 92 immigrant children each year cycle through Shenandoah,
most of them from Mexico and Central America.

Wong said many of the 30 or so children housed there on any given day
have mental health needs that would be better served in a residential
treatment unit. But such facilities are often unwilling to accept
children with significant behavioral issues, she said.

Wong and other managers at the Shenandoah center, including Executive
Director Timothy J. Smith, did not respond to phone and email messages
seeking comment this week.

Financial statements reviewed by AP shows the local government
commission that operates the center received nearly $4.2 million in
federal funds last year to house the immigrant children — enough to
cover about two-thirds of the total operating expenses.

The lawsuit filed against Shenandoah alleges that young Latino
immigrants held there “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.”

The complaint filed by the nonprofit Washington Lawyers’ Committee for
Civil Rights and Urban Affairs recounts the story of an unnamed
17-year-old Mexican citizen apprehended at the southern border. The teen
fled an abusive father and violence fueled by drug cartels to seek
asylum in the United States in 2015.

After stops at facilities in Texas and New York, he was transferred to
Shenandoah in April 2016 and diagnosed during an initial screening by a
psychologist with three mental disorders, including depression. Besides
weekly sessions speaking with a counselor, the lawsuit alleges the teen
has received no further mental health treatment, such as medications
that might help regulate his moods and behavior.

The lawsuit recounts multiple alleged violent incidents between Latino
children and staff at the Shenandoah center. It describes the guards as
mostly white, non-Spanish speakers who are undertrained in dealing with
individuals with mental illness. The suit alleges staff members
routinely taunt the Latino youths with racially charged epithets,
including “wetback,” ″onion head” and “pendejo,” which roughly
translates to dumbass in Spanish.

A 16-year-old boy who said he had lived in Texas with his mother since
he was an infant ended up at Shenandoah in September after a police
officer pulled over a car he was riding in and asked for ID, which he
couldn’t provide. As one of the few Latino kids who is fluent in
English, the teen would translate for other detainees the taunts and
names the staff members were calling them. He said that angered the
guards, resulting in his losing such modest privileges as attending art
classes.

“If you are behaving bad, resisting the staff when they try to remove
you from the program, they will take everything in your room away — your
mattress, blanket, everything,” he said. “They will also take your
clothes. Then they will leave you locked in there for a while. This has
happened to me, and I know it has happened to other kids, too.”

The immigrant detainees said they were largely segregated from the
mostly white juveniles being held on criminal charges, but they could
see that the other housing units had amenities that included plush
chairs and video gaming consoles not available in the Spartan pods
housing the Latinos.

In their sworn statements, the teens reported spending the bulk of their
days locked alone in their cells, with a few hours set aside for
classroom instruction, recreation and meals. Some said they had never
been allowed outdoors, while the U.S.-born children were afforded a
spacious recreation yard.

The Latino children reported being fed sparse and often cold meals that
left them hungry, though meals of American fast food were occasionally
provided. Records show Shenandoah receives nearly $82,000 a year from
the Agriculture Department to feed the immigration detainees.

The lawsuit said the poor conditions, frequent physical searches and
verbal abuse by staff often escalated into confrontations, as the
frustrated children acted out. The staff regularly responded “by
physically assaulting the youth, applying an excessive amount of force
that goes far beyond what is needed to establish or regain control.”

In the case of the Mexican 17-year-old, the lawsuit said a staff member
who suspected him of possessing contraband threw him to the ground and
forcibly tore off his clothes for an impromptu strip search. Though no
forbidden items were found, the teenager was transferred to “Alpha Pod,”
described in the lawsuit as a unit within the facility designated for
children who engage in bad behavior.

The lawsuit said Latino children were frequently punished by being
restrained for hours in chairs, with handcuffs and cloth shackles on
their legs. Often, the lawsuit alleged, the children were beaten by
staff while bound.

As a result of such “malicious and sadistic applications of force,” the
immigrant youths have “sustained significant injuries, both physical and
psychological,” the lawsuit said.

After an altercation during which the lawsuit alleged the Mexican
teenager bit a staff member during a beating, he was restrained in
handcuffs and shackles for 10 days, resulting in bruises and cuts. Other
teens interviewed as part of the court case also reported being punished
for minor infractions with stints in solitary confinement, during which
some of the children said they were left nude and shivering in cold
concrete cells.

Academic studies of prison inmates kept in solitary confinement have
found they often experience high anxiety that can cause panic attacks,
paranoia and disordered thinking that may trigger angry outbursts. For
those with mental health issues, the effects can be exacerbated, often
worsening the very behaviors the staff is attempting to discourage.

A Guatemalan youth sent to the center when he was 14 years old said he
was often locked in his tiny cell for up to 23 hours a day. After
resisting the guards, he said he was also restrained for long periods.

“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,” the teen said in a sworn
statement. “This happened to me, and I saw it happen to others, too. It
was excessive.”

A 15-year-old boy from Mexico held at Shenandoah for nine months also
recounted being restrained with a bag over his head.

“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.”

After being subjected to such treatment, the 17-year-old Mexican youth
said he tried to kill himself in August, only to be punished with
further isolation. On other occasions, he said, he has responded to
feelings of desperation and hopelessness by cutting his wrists with a
piece of glass and banging his head against the wall or floor.

“One time I cut myself after I had gotten into a fight with staff,” the
teen recounted. “I filled the room with blood. This happened on a
Friday, but it wasn’t until Monday that they gave me a bandage or
medicine for the pain.”

The lawsuit alleges other immigrant youths held at Shenandoah have also
engaged in cutting and other self-harming behaviors, including ingesting
shampoo and attempting to choke themselves.

A hearing in the case is set for July 3 before a federal judge in the
Western District of Virginia.

Lawyers on both sides in the lawsuit either did not respond to messages
or declined to comment, citing strict confidentiality requirements in
the case involving children.

The child development specialist who previously worked with teens at
Shenandoah told AP that many there developed severe psychological
problems after experiencing abuse from guards.

“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.”

She said she never witnessed staff abuse teens first-hand, but that
teens would complain to her of injuries from being tackled by guards and
reveal bruises. The specialist encouraged them to file a formal complaint.

Though lawyers for Shenandoah responded with court filings denying all
wrongdoing, information contained in a separate 2016 lawsuit appears to
support some of the information contained in the recent abuse complaints.

In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed against the Shenandoah center, a
former staff member said he worked in a unit called “Alpha Pod” where
immigrant minors were held, “including those with psychological and
mental issues and those who tend to fight more frequently.”

The guard, Trenton Farris, who denied claims that he punched two
children, sued the justice center alleging he was wrongly targeted for
firing because he is black. Farris said most staff members at the
facility are white, and that two white staff members involved in the
incident over which he was fired went unpunished.

Lawyers for the center denied the former guard’s claims, and the case
was settled in January.

___

Pearson reported from New York and Burke reported from San Francisco.

___

Follow Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

___

Read the lawsuit:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4529878-Shenandoah-Complaint.html

___

On 22-06-18 14:32, A.O. wrote:
> 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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>>
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