… or maybe there is a plan — to do nothing …
Attorneys launch a frantic effort to reunite immigrant parents with their separated kids, but find few of the children their parents are seeking https://t.co/B0Dxtd5Zn2
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 22, 2018
The Trump administration has pledged to warehouse migrant families together. But at the moment, it has no place to put them. https://t.co/Pb59eoNYDs
— POLITICO (@politico) June 22, 2018
'Are you the mother?' A woman's search for baby taken by U.S. immigration https://t.co/WamV6QiIWT pic.twitter.com/OLWcU2lhwR
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) June 22, 2018
Trump’s immigration order prompts confusion among law enforcement and social-service agencies supporting thousands of children https://t.co/mcQM98AQ15
— Capital Journal (@WSJPolitics) June 22, 2018
The Trump administration has pledged to warehouse migrant families together. But at the moment, it has no place to put them.
next stop gitmo?
now that they’re down to 40 according to this blog there’s plenty of room. given the very liberal welcome over the years to cuban refugees, sending central american asylum seekers to cuba would be ironic.
and not past the twit’s evil sense of humor and penchant for vengence to do so.
the guardian:
‘Going through hell’ at the border: parents split from children tell of anguish
[…]
Efrén Olivares has led a team of lawyers from the South Texas Civil Rights Project to document every separated family member prosecuted through the federal magistrates court in McAllen. Out of about 150 defendants in court each day – all charged with the minor crime of illegally entering the US – around 30 were parents separated from their children.
Among them Olivares documented an El Salvadoran mother separated from her brain-damaged pre-teenage son; a Guatemalan mother so distraught to be taken away from her daughter, she threatened suicide multiple times; and another mother who was separated from her teenage child who had survived rape.
“Many of them break down, crying halfway through the interview,” he said. “A father told me that if he’s deported without his son, his son is going to die of sadness. I was holding back tears when he told me that.”
On Thursday, there was mixed evidence that Trump’s executive order to end the separations had taken full effect. While federal prosecutors in McAllen dismissed charges against 17 parents who had been separated from their children, their counterparts, 59 miles away in Brownsville, exercised no such discretion.
[…continues…]
NY Times: The Billion-Dollar Business of Operating Shelters for Migrant Children
HARLINGEN, Tex. — The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business.
It’s a billion-dollar one.
The nonprofit Southwest Key Programs has won at least $955 million in federal contracts since 2015 to run shelters and provide other services to immigrant children in federal custody. Its shelter for migrant boys at a former Walmart Supercenter in South Texas has been the focus of nationwide scrutiny, but Southwest Key is but one player in the lucrative, secretive world of the migrant-shelter business. About a dozen contractors operate more than 30 facilities in Texas alone, with numerous others contracted for about 100 shelters in 16 other states.
If there is a migrant-shelter hub in America, then it is perhaps in the four-county Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, where about a dozen shelters occupy former stores, schools and medical centers. They are some of the region’s biggest employers, though what happens inside is often highly confidential: One group has employees sign nondisclosure agreements, more a fixture of the high-stakes corporate world than of nonprofit child-care centers.
[…continues…]
What’s up with Melania? The jacket thing aside (I don’t know what to make of that), her actual visit with detained immigrant kids not playing well either. “Good luck” was her message to them. The really awkward moment came when she asked how long the average child is detained at the facility she visited. When told 42 to 45 days, she said, “That’s great”.
.
When told 42 to 45 days, she said, “That’s great”.
something got lost in translation. like maybe compassion?
OTOH perhaps that “great” was meant sarcastically.
The missing faces of the girls, the toddlers and the boys will be hung on SFB and his cult/mob, which includes the greedy old perverts in the Congress. It is critical that Dems take over both chambers.
Noticeable for his absence, save an occasional adoring look at orange manure photo, is mini-SFB pence the creep. Not one biblical reference about traumatizing infants at mother’s breast. Nothing about concentration camps for kids. Nothing about destroying families and creating another generation of kids growing into adults who hate the US and will try to hurt us in the next ten years or so.
For those who have lived, worked or traveled through the D.C. region on the Beltway traversing the Potomac River on the Woodrow Wilson bridge, an accident Wednesday caused the new WW bridge to be shutdown in both directions for a while. As a survivor of the previous Woodrow Wilson bridge I have many stories
of sitting in traffic for hours due to something that happened and blocked the lanes. I have been wondering how the ghost of that bridge would find a way to block the new bridge with its multiple lanes. It finally did. Now many people who were not around for the earlier bridgehave their own story to tell.
America’s poor becoming more destitute under Trump, UN report says https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/us/america-poverty-un-report/index.html
Nikki Hayley thinks it’s ridiculous for the UN to look at poverty in the US. Nothing to see here, folks.
Um, we have some areas and conditions in the US that are not unlike third-world conditions.
Food deserts- unsafe water- violence- Congress & Prez acting like warlords when they reduce benefits like SNAP so folks can’t eat, while redistributing more wealth to wealthiest -no access to healthcare, only unaffordable policies that cover nothing until an unaffordable deductible is met -a minimum wage that can not meet the basic food/shelter needs of folks -a broken education system that does not prepare kids for jobs in the new economy, meaning they will stay un or under-employed…and living in poverty.
Nikki Hayley is a heartless joke of human being. Shame on her!
BB – I think pence’s smug face as he watched Trump sign a bogus EO says it all. He thinks Trump is going down, he will be the next on the throne…and he will welcome the second coming of Christ.
I really think he’s that misguided in his understanding of what it means to be a Christian, and, that he’s and end-timer.
That’s why the push to move the embassy in Israel. They are trying to provoke Jesus into returning. They are that crazy & arrogant.
pence & the rest of the Trump junta are a lot of things, but I have seen no evidence that being Christian is one of them.
42 to 45 “months” ?
So, roughly the amount of time Trump has been/will be in office.
Not days?
yes, that should be “days” BiD — thanks again for comment editor
patD – When the CEO of one of these “non-profits” running DETENTION centers (shelters, my ass) makes almost $1.5 million and likes to be referred to as “el presidente,” you know Congress needs to be looking into where taxpayer money is going. It is NOT going to benefit anyone being detained, except in the most basic way. We are paying for a lavish lifestyle of the CEOs.
So, when I hear someone complain about the benefits being given to those who cross the border illegally, I want to know where they are getting this $700/day figure.
She got her son back after suing the Trump administration https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/us/guatemalan-mother-son-separated-reunite/index.html
Still, being separated at all is traumatizing for a child, even for a day.
That’s great, good luck, I don’t really care & a kick in the pants….mic drop – Melania
Immigration Courts for all the little “planes”
The Heartbreaking Case of The Three Year Old Boy
Being old, I still remember that the whole anti-abortion wars didn’t really heat up until the orphanages started running out of white boys for adoption. Now birth control and natural inclination is reducing the size of families and again infant supply is shrinking.
I have to wonder how many good “Christians” will be adopting children they have stolen from others.
bbronc, glad you mentioned that word “cult”… more and more gopers are opening their eyes to that reality. last year’s (originally published 2016 but updated to 2017) huffpo piece “Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality” should have been a warning to them.
don’t know if they’ve come to their senses or are still drinking the Kool-Aid he spews, but I hope we don’t have to wait until a republican Jonestown massacre for the rest to wake up to it.
here’s an excerpt from that article:
Yet cults of personality go beyond private money and public influence. They are about an emotional tie that is forged between the leader and his followers. For this reason, they can be hard to grasp for those not making the connection.
Here’s the trick to cults of personality: the leader has to embody the people but also stand above them. He must appear ordinary, to allow people to relate to him. And yet he must also be seen as extraordinary, so that people will grant him permission to be the arbiter of their individual and national destiny.
For instance, they’re not about likeability. Leaders with cults of personality are usually aggressive. They keep audiences on edge with their outbursts and unpredictability. They create a bond that goes beyond agreeing with ideas and policies: people simply want a part of this person.
interesting…
nbc news:
President Donald Trump’s embattled personal attorney, Michael Cohen, retweeted a photo of himself with comedian Tom Arnold — who happens to be working on a show with Vice that features him hunting for unflattering video of Trump.
Arnold told NBC News early Friday that Cohen ― who is under investigation by federal prosecutors ― talked to him for the show, which is expected to air later this year.
“We’ve been on the other side of the table and now we’re on the same side,” said Arnold, an outspoken Trump critic.
“It’s on! I hope he [Trump] sees the picture of me and Michael Cohen and it haunts his dreams.”
It was Arnold — who is Trump fan Roseanne Barr‘s ex-husband — who posted the photo Thursday night with the caption “I Love New York.” Cohen then retweeted it without comment.
NBC News asked Cohen about the photo and he referred inquiries to Arnold. Several hours later, Arnold contacted NBC News.
He said he was in New York taping interviews for the Vice show and that he and Cohen met at the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan.
Vice announced in May that it had tapped Arnold to helm a show called “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes,” and investigate whether rumored tapes from the past showing the president in a negative light actually exist.
“The host will draw on his high-profile network of celebrity friends, entertainment executives, and crew members he’s met over more than 35 years in showbiz to dig for evidence on Trump’s most incriminating moments—and, being a comedian and all, he’ll have a little fun along the way,” Vice said in the announcement of the show.
“He’ll be backed up by a handful of experienced journalists, and — aside from trying to uncover the tapes themselves — he’ll look into the companies and tycoons who have allegedly fought to keep the damning recordings a secret.”
Arnold would not say whether Cohen was planning to give him any tapes he might have of conversations with Trump.
But he added: “This dude has all the tapes — this dude has everything.”
“I say to Michael, ‘Guess what? We’re taking Trump down together, and he’s so tired he’s like, ‘OK,’ and his wife is like, ‘OK, f*** Trump,'” Arnold said, laughing.
He admitted tweeting the photo was “indiscreet” but said Cohen had been betrayed by Trump after years of loyal service.
“Michael Cohen showed up and worked diligently above and beyond and sacrificed and Donald Trump is like I don’t even know who he is. You think Michael doesn’t notice that?” Arnold said.
[….continues…]
IOW, unreported campaign inkind contributions???
wapo:
National Enquirer sent stories about Trump to his attorney Michael Cohen before publication, people familiar with the practice say
So the narcissist just told Republicans in congress to stop wasting their time on immigration until after the midterms when they add more republican seats in the senate and house.
This man is a human bullshit machine!
We adopted our girls when they were six years old—basically unadoptable except by simple people such as us who simply wanted to share our love.
Flatus, there aren’t enough yous out there.
Yeah… the plan is to do nothing…. just like the infrastructure plan.
This article from Vox is longish… but a good read.
The fight over family separations proved how broken trump’s America really is…
Was that the big beautiful infrastructure plan that SFB would get passed in the 1st hundred days of his disastrous administration?
Trumpsky is calling for a “red wave” in November.
Red, as in Russian?
Red, as in the blood of Americans, from being stepped on by Republican policies?
patD – It sounds like Trump supporters have Stockholm Syndrome…except that they agreed to be kidnapped.
Tom Arnold, maybe, needs to play it a little closer to the vest.
On the other hand, it may freak out Trump enough to make him lash out & incriminate himself.
The infrastructure plan turned out to be projects that toll roads and other things that benefit people who can pay and did nothing for the chronically under and unemployed and some felt there should be more discussion about the plan –which sucked
DV, people in the South when I was a kid would refer to him as the south end of a northbound mule.
Pogo, up North that’d be North end of a Southbound skunk
Wonder how the European auto tariff war will work out for the US? I think there may be some unintended consequences – like cutbacks at European drive train and assembly plants – particularly if the parts they manufacture and assemble are made from Euro or Canadian steel and aluminum.
Flatus, that’s probably a more apt description.
The merging of Education and Labor is only one part of a massive and frightening re-org. Mulvaney, Heritage Foundation, and Koch Brothers operatives have been working on a massive plan to to do away with much of what we consider “government”. We cannot allow this to happen. Read the NYTimes story:https://www.nytimes.com/…/trump-government-overhaul…
the twit has it in for brown people
the guardian:
‘He’s a political prisoner’: Standing Rock activists face years in jail
The extraordinary Native American resistance effort may have faded from the headlines but the US government continues to prosecute activists, who say it is destroying lives
[….]
“He has been taken from us, and it’s a huge void in our lives,” Cowboy, 44, told the Guardian in a recent interview after Little Feather, also known as Michael Giron, was sentenced to three years. “He is a political prisoner … We were protecting our land. It’s something we have to do, and we’re going to be met with this violence from these agencies, from the federal government, from the state.”
As Red Fawn Fallis prepares for her sentencing next week in the movement’s most high-profile prosecution, activists are speaking out about the toll the cases have taken – continuing to drag on and tear apart families – all as Standing Rock has almost entirely disappeared from headlines.
After Donald Trump took office and ordered expedited approval of the $3.7bn pipeline last January, the crackdown on activists escalated. The cases stemmed from clashes with police in late 2016 when thousands gathered at Oceti Sakowin and other campsites by the pipeline, facing a highly militarized operation, brutal shows of force, mass arrests and widely condemned jail conditions.
Under Trump, who has had financial ties with the pipeline company, the US Department of Justice has pressed forward with six cases against Native Americans. North Dakota prosecutors meanwhile have pursued more than 800 state cases against people at Standing Rock, including 165 still pending, according to the Water Protector Legal Collective, a legal support team.
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“They needed these convictions to make examples of people,” said Rattler, another federal defendant who, like Little Feather, agreed to a plea deal. “We got their attention, and they are scared of us.”
[…continues…]
wapo: Watchdog group calls for investigation into Wilbur Ross’s financial dealings
[….]
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics David J. Apol to investigate whether Ross made a false statement about divesting himself of his stock in Invesco, the firm he managed before taking office in the Trump administration.
The group’s executive director Noah Bookbinder and chair Norm Eisen also asked for an investigation of Ross’s sale of his shares in Navigator Holdings, the shipping firm, in October 2017. That company did business with a Russian energy firm whose directors included a Russian oligarch who was subject to U.S. sanctions and a son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
By Ross’s own account, he used a short sale — a technique that rewards investors betting a stock will go down in price. Ross said the goal was to quickly reduce his position in Navigator, but the move had come after he learned journalists were working on articles about his holdings.
“Secretary Ross’s actions reflect an apparently knowing and repeated disregard for his ethics obligations,” CREW said in its letter.
[…]
Separately, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking minority-party member of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Ross asking to reply to questions about who else knew about his short sales, whether he had personally executed them and how much profit he made on those transactions.
[….]
According to articles in Forbes, Ross also opened a short position in Navigator after learning that Forbes and the New York Times were working on potentially negative articles about Ross and the company. The transaction was valued between $100,000 and $250,000. The stock dropped about 4 percent before Ross closed his position on Nov. 16, 11 days articles were published by The Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
[….continues…]
They spoke out against immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/us/immigration-resistance-genealogy-jennifer-mendelsohn-trnd/index.html
Resistance Genealogy
jamie – I thought you might like this one.
Navy memo outlines potential military housing for thousands of migrants https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/politics/migrant-housing-navy-memo/index.html
$233 million to build housing for 25,000 immigrants?
Steve King doesn’t want Somali Muslims to package pork in his district https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/22/politics/steve-king-muslims-pork/index.html
“I don’t want people doing my pork that won’t eat it.”
(This is not a typo.)
There are a lot of people in organized groups besides Muslims who do not eat pork Steven King is another gooper moron
$233 million to build housing for 25,000 immigrants?
BiD, since they insist on keeping open Guantanamo and it’s almost empty, wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t incarcerate some of the families there.
Flatus
You are one of the noble of the earth. You should be cloned for the decency, kindness, and love you bring to life.
BiD
I’m following her on Twitter. She is both fun and informative.
if it’s better and more efficient to merge depts. and programs as the trumpsters are proposing to do for education and labor, why is their beloved leader proposing just the opposite in the military? to be consistent with the other argument, he should consolidate army, navy, air into one gigantic force. having same uniforms alone would save a pile of money [she says sarcastically]
“The oversight in Congress is already in one jurisdiction,” OMB Deputy Director for Management Margaret Weichert said on a press call. “The goal isn’t to downgrade any of the major missions of the two organizations, but really integrate, and frankly, upgrade.”
wapo:
A handful of new federal prosecutors have joined one of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s cases — an indication that he is preparing to hand off at least one prosecution to others when his office completes its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
In a pair of court filings Friday, the special counsel added four assistant U.S. attorneys to the case against Russian entities and people accused of running an online influence operation targeting American voters.
People familiar with the staffing decision said the new prosecutors are not joining Mueller’s team, but rather are being added to the case so that they could someday take responsibility for it when the special counsel ceases operation. The case those prosecutors are joining could drag on for years because the indictment charges a number of Russians who will probably never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom. Russia does not extradite its citizens.
The development suggests Mueller is contemplating the end of his work and farming out any potentially outstanding prosecutions to other parts of the Justice Department.
[…continues…]
For people being snotty and condescending about the Democratic party -if it were not for Democratic Senator Merkley of Oregon this issue would still be traveling under the radar. The people taking a leadership position are Democrats.
Still if complaining about nothing is your game plan have at it. Still marching, donating money and making phone calls beats complaining and lying about the role of the
Democrats either out of ignorance or malice
TX Dem Convention In Ft. Worth this week. Repugz trolled them by driving by in a hearse with “RIP Dems” on it. Very grown up of them.
patD – shhhh. Don’t give them any ideas about baby GITMO.
Sadly, Tom Arnold is just a big-mouthed actor. Even sadder, my hopes were riding on him to produce the tape that takes down Trumpco.
BTW, I took that picture last month just before our local Buddhist temple celebrated Buddha’s birthday. Miss Tam, (I’m using her given name with the African American convention of respect toward older women. Her Buddhist name is something else.) runs the Temple. The day I stopped by they were setting the new Buddha , an enormous chunk of rock. You know when you have reached across cultural boundaries when some one feels free to tease you. When I stopped by she waved me in and said “we’ve got a new Buddha and it is just like you” then patted her stomach.
Jack
About the same time I took that picture we found out what was causing Mrs Jacks stomach problems. She has stomach cancer. since then she has been getting scanned and tested to see how bad it is. So far it seems to be in the early stages and hasn’t moved out of her stomach. That is good news but today they were seeing how much it has affected the stomach. We will meet with her cancer doctor next week and see where we are going from here.
Jack
Yesterday, as I was working in the front yard a little boy , his brother and his dad walked up the street. He saw me and waved and told me how much he liked the flowers in our front yard.
He looked a lot like the picture of the boy in the cage.
Talk about zero tolerance, how about zero tolerance for those who would cage little children. From the top on down.
Night everyone, I’m going to a family reunion tomorrow , it might get ugly.
Jack
W’jack – Sending good thoughts to your Mrs, as that’s all I can do.
jack, please give the mrs. an extra hug for us and let her know a lot of folks here are sending out her way those good vibes solar told us about.