CFOW Weekend Update
June 21, 2018
Hello All – This edition of the CFOW Weekend Update focuses on the immigration crisis at our southern border. If this issue – migrant detentions, separating children from parents – is important to you, please come to our "RALLY FOR IMMIGRANTS/KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER" on Saturday, June 23rd, from 12 to 2, at the VFW Plaza in Hastings (Warburton Ave. and Spring St.)
The rally is co-sponsored by CFOW, Indivisible Rivertowns, Hastings RISE, and the Greenburgh Human Rights Advisory Council.
The speakers list is a work-in-progress. It includes Hastings' mayor, Peter Swiderski; county legislator MJ Shimsky; and members of the Hudson Valley Community Coalition, the grassroots organization that works with Westchester immigrants in defense of their rights. We have also invited area political leaders and immigration attorneys/experts, and Jenny Murphy will sing. And we will have an open-mike for those wishing to add their voices. We have invited local media, and hope that this will amplify our voices to the community.
Please spread news of this rally to your friends and post on your Facebook pages. A good-size rally will help to keep the momentum going until the following Saturday, June 30th, when there will be many (and large) rallies across the country.
Below I've linked some recent articles and videos that help to illuminate what's going on.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
Some Good/Useful Reading About the Refugee Crisis
Stories from today's edition of Democracy Now!
Trump Admin to Indefinitely Detain Migrant Families Together; No Plan to Reunite Separated Children
GEO Group & Private Prisons Stand to Profit as Trump Pushes Indefinite Family Detention
Report from McAllen, Texas: No One Knows What Will Happen Now to Separated Migrant Children
Lawsuit Claims Detained Migrant Children Have Been Forcibly Injected With Powerful Psychiatric Drugs
U.S. Prepares Housing Up to 20,000 Migrants on Military Bases
By Michael D. Shear, Helene Cooper and Katie Benner, New York Times [June 21, 2018]
---- The United States is preparing to shelter as many as 20,000 migrant children on four American military bases, a Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday, as federal officials struggled to carry out President Trump's order to keep immigrant families together after they are apprehended at the border. The 20,000 beds at bases in Texas and Arkansas would house "unaccompanied alien children," said a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Michael Andrews, although other federal agencies provided conflicting explanations about how the shelters would be used or who would be housed there. It was unclear whether the military housing would also house the parents of migrant children in families that have been detained, and officials at the White House, Defense Department and Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday they could not provide details. [Read More]
The Trump Administration Still Has No Plan to Reunite Families It Tore Apart
By Zoë Carpenter, The Nation [June 21, 2018]
---- When María got to court on Thursday morning, federal prosecutors dropped charges against her and 16 other immigrant parents who'd also been separated from their children. It's not clear why the charges were dropped; the Department of Justice did not respond to questions. It's tempting to see it as a sign of good news, perhaps a signal that the executive order that President Trump signed Wednesday evening is encouraging prosecutors to use discretion, softening the "zero-tolerance" policy that has led to thousands of family separations. In reality, the dropped charges—and the executive order itself—raise many more questions than they answer. María, who told Olivares that she came to the United States for her son's protection after two of her siblings were murdered in El Salvador, has no idea where her son is. Children are not supposed to stay at the McAllen processing facility for longer than 72 hours, and so presumably he's already been transferred into custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and placed in a shelter. Trump's executive order does nothing to help María and other parents find the more than 2,300 kids who've been taken from them. So far, the administration has no official process for reuniting them. (A spokesperson of the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that the agency was "awaiting further guidance" on reunification.) [Read More]
Trump's Executive Order Turns Family Separation Into Family Incarceration
By Julianne Hing, The Nation [June 20, 2018]
---- On Wednesday, Trump caved to an overwhelming outcry from a widespread group of critics that came to include the pope and former first lady Laura Bush and announced that his administration would end the policy of separating children from parents at the border. "Anybody with a heart feels very strongly about it," Trump said shortly after signing the executive order. "At the same time, we don't want people coming in illegally. This takes care of the problem." But like so much else in Trumpland, there is how something appears, and how something actually operates in reality. In the hours between the announcement of the order and its actual release, many hailed the change as an about-face—a stunning and rare pivot for a president who has little capacity to admit error. But now that the executive order is out, what is clear is that this document offers no fix at all. The Trump administration intends to trade the practice of separating children while it prosecutes parents for another kind of horror: locking up parents and children together. And, according to the executive order, this new incarceration of families could well be indefinite. [Read More]
The U.S. Has Taken More Than 3,700 Children From Their Parents — and Has No Plan for Returning Them
By Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept [June 19, 2018]
---- The Trump administration's program of systematically separating migrant children from their parents is steadily expanding, government officials confirmed Tuesday. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions's "zero tolerance" doctrine, U.S. authorities have been ordered to criminally prosecute all individuals arrested for illegally crossing the border without exception, including asylum-seekers and parents arriving with small children. The result has been historic, and catastrophic, with the U.S. government intentionally creating thousands of so-called unaccompanied minors whose immigration cases have now become separate from their parents, plunging them, on their own, into an already overwhelmed system of federal bureaucracies. [Read More]
Cops plead 'allow ICE employees to go home to their families' after protesters blockade prison in Portland
By Arun Gupta, Raw Story [June 19, 2018]
---- In Portland, Oregon, the prison used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is housed in a nondescript building tucked between a highway and the waterfront south of downtown. The tan three-story structure has darkened windows and no identifying marks. It's surrounded by an 8-feet high metal fence, guarded by a security checkpoint, and cameras outside cover every angle. Since Sunday night, dozens of protesters under the banner of #OccupyICEPDX have been maintaining a round-the-clock vigil outside the prison. They are demanding an abolition of ICE and an end to the Trump administration's policy of forcibly separating children from parents fleeing across the U.S. border from violence-ravaged countries. [Read More]
