Don't Worry, It's Just "Alien Children"

Monday was the day that the issue of asylum-seeking families being torn apart by American border agents just exploded.  The current First Lady, and even more strongly and to the point, the four living former First Ladies publicly condemned the policy, beginning with a Washington Post oped and tweets by Laura Bush, joined by statements by Michelle Obama,  Rosalyn Carter and Hillary Clinton.

More voices on Capitol Hill condemned the policy, including Republicans--notably also not supporting the antipresident's lie that it is the law.  Even a partisan stiff like Senator Lindsay Graham said plainly that the antipresident could end it with a phone call.

The antipresident tweeted back, his press secretary dissed Laura Bush, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen lied about the policy while doubling down on it. In her White House press briefing, she continually referred to the children involved as "alien children."  That's what the blond lady said.

She claimed that only Congress can stop it--an assertion that could soon come back to haunt her or the administration.

Then came the release of audio from inside one of the intake centers, with the unforgettable voices of young children: a 6 year old pleading to call her aunt to come and get her, and an unknown children repeatedly calling for "Papi."  Reports described the children as "screaming" but this child was not screaming, she was utterly desperate.

As desperate as this moment was, health experts are talking about the future effects of such trauma and the imprisoning itself.  The characterization of the day by experts, reports and pundits was "child abuse."

But in addition to the political and humanitarian fury that dominated the news on Monday, there was actual new information--all of it portraying the situation in even worse terms.

New information confirmed that the pace of separations has increased to nearly 70 families a day.

Several news outlets reported that many if not all of these family separations are being forced on asylum-seekers--people escaping from being murdered by repressive governments and drug dealers (including those who own banks) in Central America.  Some brought children to save them from being forced into gangs by drug dealers.

They are legally entitled to apply for asylum, but border agents are stopping them from entering the US at official ports of entry so they can apply.  Consequently many are avoiding the official ports of entry to enter illegally so they have standing to apply for political asylum under US law.  It is at this point--after a long and dangerous journey escaping for their lives--that they are arrested and their children taken away.

Jonathan Blitzer in the New Yorker reported that the government has no plan or procedure for reuniting these families.  Others report that there appears to be no tracking of parents and children after they are separated to even know who the parents of the children are.

Another reporter who interviewed children released from a facility said that conditions were poor inside, and that children were stripped of all their possessions, including pieces of paper bearing the phone numbers of relatives in the US.

A shortage of qualified social workers and caregivers was reported.  A shortage of judges to hear the mounting cases of the parents is predicted.  A separate story this weekend said that because of this administration's shrinking-the-government cutbacks, there are dangerously few trained prison guards in federal prisons, with secretaries, teachers and other personnel drafted to guard prisoners.

There were reports of parents deported but their children left behind, and a report of a child who was told her parents might be deported and she might be abandoned.

There still have been few reporters or officials allowed into these facilities, and those who have are restricted in what pictures they can take, no film, and they haven't been permitted to speak with prisoners.  All of this would be permitted for--and demanded by-- a UN human rights visit of a POW camp.

Those camps that have been visited have all been for older boys.  A reporter asked Homeland Security chief Neilsen what is happening to the girls.  She said she didn't know.

There was a later report that some Members of Congress toured a "facility" where girls were imprisoned, along with toddlers and infants.  They witnessed one of the girls changing the diaper of an infant, because no one else would touch the baby.