Tender Age Shelters

[retread 2,951]

Better make sure you have plenty of food, water, and bullets. Does Jim Bakker sell bullets with his buckets?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

2 minutes ago, Pancho Negro said:

‘Murica 

 

We need more of this.

Good trouble! 

[SubliminalHorn 6,799]

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

We need more of this.

Good trouble! 

What an embarrassment this nation is right now. How can we tolerate this from this administration? We are supposed to be the guiding force in the world. What a crock of shit. Fuck this administration. I hope they rot in a prison cell. 

[Pancho 44,826]

Bless this man!

 

[GSU&UT 1,798]

4 hours ago, Pancho Negro said:

‘Murica 

 

Came to post this.

 

"BUT OBAMA DID THE SAME THING!" /Eurohorn, Johnny Sack,Chicken Dipshit Nuggets, Xr42dipshitCyclonewhatever

 

4 hours ago, SubliminalHorn said:

What an embarrassment this nation is right now. How can we tolerate this from this administration? We are supposed to be the guiding force in the world. What a crock of shit. Fuck this administration. I hope they rot in a prison cell. 

I think it became unequivocally clear many months ago that we are no longer the nation that guides the world.

Edited July 9, 2018 by GSU&UT

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

13 hours ago, Newdoc said:

Don’t be so gullible.

So Border Patrol didn't delete the records containing the family identification numbers that linked parent to child?   Please link. 

[Nivek 16,934]

Agree. It’s a hostage-taking tactic, using a person’s kids as hostages.

Yeah, no moral problem there.

Again, in our name, our country has decided to use children as hostages to make a political point. Sounds a bit ISIS-y.

Basically, it’s like getting stopped in Tenaha?

[Nivek 16,934]

‘Murica 

 

Would.

[Pancho 44,826]

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89,683]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/government-told-immigrant-parents-to-pay-for-dna-tests-to-be-reunited-with-kids-advocate

Quote

Government Told Immigrant Parents to Pay for DNA Tests to Be Reunited With Kids: Advocate

Authorities separated families and took their documents, leaving genetic tests as the only way to verify who they are. And a secret contractor is doing the work.

DALLAS—U.S. government officials recently told four immigrant women that they must pay for DNA tests in order to be reunited with their children, according to the shelter that housed the women. 

The tests are the latest ad hoc effort by the Trump administration to reunite families it had separated—in some cases because authorities took documents from adults proving they are related to their children. The tests are being administered by a private contractor on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the care and housing of children. HHS has refused to name the contractor, which may be a violation of federal law.

“None of them have the money [for the tests], so it’s going to fall back on us to push back on that,” said Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, an immigrant shelter in El Paso where the women are staying.

Three of the women are mothers of the children, Garcia said, and the fourth is attempting to reunite with her brother, a three and half-year-old boy. 

Iliana Holguin, an immigration attorney in El Paso who works with Annunciation House, said the government made some of her clients pay between $700 to $800 to prove their relationship to a relative as part of their citizenship cases. 

“The government wants the parents to foot the bill for the DNA testing when they’re the ones that caused the need for DNA testing,” Holguin said. “It’s incredible.”

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, responsible for the DNA testing, told The Daily Beast it “provides DNA testing at no cost to verify parentage.”

Solution for Self-Imposed Problem

ORR requires DNA testing in some cases to verify adult immigrants are related to children in ORR’s custody, before the children can be released to the adults who have either been paroled or are to be deported. The tests are often required, according Garcia, when parents’ have had their paperwork regarding their children taken by Customs and Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (CBP and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

“When these families come in, Customs and Border Protection takes away the documents from parents and puts them in their file,” Garcia said. “In the cases where they’ve been separated from their children, ORR then says, ‘You’re going to need to provide the documents that CBP took.’”

And when the immigrants can’t, Garcia said, ORR tells parents they must take a DNA test. 

It’s unclear how many immigrants have been told they’d have to pay for DNA tests. Other immigration attorneys reached by The Daily Beast said their clients had not been asked to pay for DNA tests.

Garcia said that the tests likely cost money that many immigrants entering the country with little more than the clothes on their backs don’t have. 

 

[bad_teammate 13,205]

24 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/government-told-immigrant-parents-to-pay-for-dna-tests-to-be-reunited-with-kids-advocate

 

We are the bad guys.

[David Dennison 18,869]

14 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

We are the bad guys.

Thanks a lot, honkies.

[Pancho 44,826]

 

[retread 2,951]

Quote

DALLAS—U.S. government officials recently told four immigrant women that they must pay for DNA tests in order to be reunited with their children, according to the shelter that housed the women. 

No words for this intentional cruelty.

[retread 2,951]

 

 

 

 

[Skyline 325]

 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

2 minutes ago, Skyline said:

 

The Republicans who complain loudest about the financial costs inflicted on taxpayers by illegal immigrants are happily replacing the free child care provided by parents with expensive, inferior taxpayer-funded child "care" in prison detention camps and centers. 

It was never about the financial cost.  It was about the potent alignment of hate and greed. 

[Brisketexan 105,151]

The Republicans who complain loudest about the financial costs inflicted on taxpayers by illegal immigrants are happily replacing the free child care provided by parents with expensive, inferior taxpayer-funded child "care" in prison detention camps and centers. 
It was never about the financial cost.  It was about the potent alignment of hate and greed. 

And that is indeed quite the potent combo.

[retread 2,951]

Feels like this travesty is sliipping of the front page of the news cycle.

[atomheartbevo 89,683]

1 hour ago, retread said:

Feels like this travesty is sliipping of the front page of the news cycle.

The Russian stuff is kinda big.

But don’t worry. I have full faith that this administration will continue fucking up the reunification of the families. We’ve seen just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the meanness of this administration and the GOP towards these children.

Edited July 14, 2018 by atomheartbevo

[retread 2,951]

Yep, they undoubtedly will.

 

[VRHorn 718]

This is absolutely sickening and it is slipping off of the front page,

The administration’s whole bit has always been to overwhelm people with insanity.

[atomheartbevo 89,683]

I still think they are going to let a kid die, or a bunch of them get really sick, before this is over.  Housing thousands of children away from their parents in converted stores is a recipe for disaster. 

[VRHorn 718]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

I still think they are going to let a kid die, or a bunch of them get really sick, before this is over.  Housing thousands of children away from their parents in converted stores is a recipe for disaster. 

That’s kinda where I am. A dad killing himself didn't move the needle, so it will interesting to see what happens when a kid dies.

[F250 28,777]

Every society, religion, and sociologist considers the family unit to be of utmost importance. It's rare in human history to find a society that does not highly value the family. The Soviets and Nazis attempted to elevate the state above the family and probably a few other totalitarian regimes. Orwell, drove home this point in 1984. Historically we look back on those times and shake our heads in judgment.

Here we are in a situation where the state is treating families in a highly unethical manner so much that its been condemned by religions across the board. Yet, some of our political leaders with the power to stop it, ignore it and a big part of the electorate turn a blind eye to it. Shameful.

 

 

[Brisketexan 105,151]

Every society, religion, and sociologist considers the family unit to be of utmost importance. It's rare in human history to find a society that does not highly value the family. The Soviets and Nazis attempted to elevate the state above the family and probably a few other totalitarian regimes. Orwell, drove home this point in 1984. Historically we look back on those times and shake our heads in judgment.
Here we are in a situation where the state is treating families in a highly unethical manner so much that its been condemned by religions across the board. Yet, some of our political leaders with the power to stop it, ignore it and a big part of the electorate turn a blind eye to it. Shameful.
 
 

But, it seems you didn’t get the memo. These folks running for their lives need to face consequences for breaking the law, and MAGA!

Now that you have been reminded, I’m sure you’ll delete your unwise post.

[lemonlime 5,503]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html

 

Spoiler

Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

 

ADVERTISEMENT

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

 

Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

 

Image

Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

This is what a few of those children will remember.

No Touching, No Running

Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

 

Image

“Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” recalled Yoselyn Bulux, 15. “Others said they were going to deport us.”CreditRyan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Lessons in Math and Presidents

Yoselyn Bulux, 15, is a rail-thin girl from Totonicapán, Guatemala, with long dark hair and no clear memory of how she summoned the strength to climb the wall at the border. What followed was even harder: two days in a frigid processing center known as the “icebox,” then a two-day bus ride to a large facility somewhere in Texas. Her mother stayed behind in Arizona.

The new place had air-conditioning, but wasn’t as cold as the icebox, which had left her with a sore throat. There were windows, sunlight during the day. And beyond the perimeter, tall grass like the “zacate” you see along the highway.

At the intake area of the facility, which seemed to accommodate about 300 girls — some of them pregnant — she was given some clothes and a piece of paper with a number on it. There were rules.

“If you do something bad, they report you,” Yoselyn recalled. “And you have to stay longer.”

The days had structure. Yoselyn took classes with other teenage girls in math, language — she learned “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good night” in English — and civics, which touched on, among other things, American presidents. President Trump was mentioned, she said.

For an hour every day, the girls went outside to exercise in the hot Texas air. It was not uncommon to see someone suddenly try to escape. No whispers, no planning — just an out-of-nowhere dash for the fence. No one made it.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the girls watched movies. Also on Saturday, Yoselyn met with a counselor, whom she liked. They talked about her hope to be with her mother soon. She cried only twice.

But it wasn’t easy. Although Yoselyn spoke occasionally by telephone with her mother — the first time a full 10 days after their separation — the gossipy chatter among the girls could be confusing, and upsetting. “Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” she recalled. “Others said they were going to deport us.”

She made friends, and together they would paint their nails and make multicolored friendship bracelets out of yarn. She became especially close to a Guatemalan girl named Sofia. But one day, Sofia just disappeared.

Finally, on July 1, it was Yoselyn’s turn to leave. She was flown to New York on her first airplane flight. She watched the movie “Coco” while in the air. And then the woman serving as her escort handed Yoselyn over to her father, who was so overcome at the sight of his daughter that he could not speak.

A Birthday Passes

Victor Monroy did not understand. It was Sunday, June 24. His birthday. He was now, officially, 11.

But no one at this place where he and his younger sister had been sent seemed to know, or care. No one sang to him, the way his mother would have. Finally, Victor told the adults in this strange place of his personal milestone.

“They said ‘feliz cumpleaños,’” the boy recalled. “That’s all.”

Given all that was happening, the moment may seem small, even inconsequential. Then again, perhaps the quiet passing of his 11th birthday will, years from now, still evoke for Victor the 41 days he counted that he and his 9-year-old sister, Leidy, lived in a place called Casa Guadalupe, with no idea where their mother was for weeks.

“She’s the one who had been watching over me,” Victor said. “My whole life.”

Victor and Leidy had left Guatemala with their mother by bus, but reached the United States border in the back of a tractor-trailer. Almost immediately, they were taken to a crowded place with other migrants. Then, late one night, agents started loading them into a vehicle, as their mother, who was being left behind in Arizona, quickly tried to explain what was happening.

Soon they were on their first airplane ride ever, on their way to some place called Chicago. They were taken to the shelter, given new clothes and separated: Victor to the boys’ area, Leidy to the girls’.

For the next several weeks, the only time the brown-haired siblings saw each other was during recreation period outdoors. If he asked, Victor said, he could spend up to a half-hour with Leidy.

Their daily routine was similar to what thousands of migrant children were experiencing around the country. Early morning wake-up calls, chores, classes. Victor and Leidy didn’t speak to their mother for a month. Where was she? When would they get out? Only once, Victor’s frustration got the better of him.

In the play area one day, some boys stole a ball that Victor was playing with, and he became distraught. When it came time to go back into the house, he refused. “I didn’t want to go inside,” he said.

Then, Victor said, two men, including one named Tito, grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the house. “I told him he didn’t have the right to do that,” the boy said. “And so he said, yes, he had the right to do whatever he wanted.”

Weeks later, Victor was still upset.

But at least he had a trabajadora de caso — a caseworker — named Linda who helped him navigate his new world. “She did everything she could to find my mother,” Victor said. “She called every state.”

Finally, there was a plan: Victor and Leidy would join their father, whom they hadn’t seen in a few years, in New England. The night before, Victor’s roommate and friend, a boy from El Salvador named Franklin, struggled to sleep.

“I don’t think he slept all night because I was leaving,” Victor said.

Sure enough, when the adults came for Victor in the morning, Franklin was awake to say goodbye.

“He wished me lots of luck,” Victor said.

Mischief and Melancholy

The kids are just — kids. That is what it comes down to, according to an employee at Casa Padre, a shelter for 1,500 migrant boys that inhabits a former Walmart Supercenter in Brownsville, Tex., close to the Mexican border. Just kids, all being held in the custody of the United States government.

Take the mooing, for example. The walls that separate the sleeping quarters do not reach the high ceilings, which means that sounds travel in the yawning spaces within the 250,000-square-foot building. One boy will make a loud animal noise, after which another will emit an animal-like response.

“Someone will start mooing,” the employee said. “They just think it’s funny. They just do it long enough so everyone can hear, and then we all start laughing.”

Casa Padre, which shares a parking lot with a gas station, a McDonald’s and other stores, is run by Southwest Key Programs, one of the largest migrant youth shelter operators in the country. According to the employee, its staff is overworked and a little stressed out by the 12-hour shifts and the considerable responsibilities.

A 15-year-old boy from Honduras recently escaped by climbing a fence during an outdoor recreation period. Staff members conduct round-the-clock head counts, sometimes at 15-minute intervals, all while monitoring the constant flow of boys being received and discharged.

During the day, the staff is required to maintain a ratio of one worker for every eight children. The ratio sets the tempo and culture at Casa Padre, the employee said. “It’s a big deal if we’re out of ratio.”

If one boy in a classroom needs to use the restroom, then a staff member has to find seven others who also want to go to the bathroom. “They’ll all stand in a line and then we’ll walk to the restroom,” the employee said.

Some of the boys at Casa Padre were separated from their parents at the border, but most were caught crossing without a parent or guardian. All seem to keep themselves entertained with soccer or movies or video games.

 

 

 

 

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“If they get sad, it’s like a quiet thing,” the employee said. “You’ll see them sit on the floor and just kind of wrap their arms around themselves.”

Some time in the evening is set aside for prayer. Boys can be found praying in a classroom, in a game room, in a bedroom. Some kneel. After that, many focus on creating intricately designed bracelets out of the huge supply of colorful yarn that seems always available. The bracelets become gifts, keepsakes, something to remember someone by.

Lights out at 9. Then, depending on the night, a cavernous old Walmart in South Texas begins to echo with the sound of mischievous migrant children imitating the lows of pent-up cattle.

624Comments

The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

 

 

624Comments

The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

 

 

 

[Brisketexan 105,151]

18 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/migrant-children-shelters.html

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.

Lights out by 9 p.m. and lights on at dawn, after which make your bed according to the step-by-step instructions posted on the wall. Wash and mop the bathroom, scrubbing the sinks and toilets. Then it is time to form a line for the walk to breakfast.

“You had to get in line for everything,” recalled Leticia, a girl from Guatemala.

Small, slight and with long black hair, Leticia was separated from her mother after they illegally crossed the border in late May. She was sent to a shelter in South Texas — one of more than 100 government-contracted detention facilities for migrant children around the country that are a rough blend of boarding school, day care center and medium security lockup. They are reserved for the likes of Leticia, 12, and her brother, Walter, 10.

The facility’s list of no-no’s also included this: Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita — your little brother or sister.

ADVERTISEMENT

Leticia had hoped to give her little brother a reassuring hug. But “they told me I couldn’t touch him,” she recalled.

In response to an international outcry, President Trump recently issued an executive order to end his administration’s practice, first widely put into effect in May, of forcibly removing children from migrant parents who had entered the country illegally. Under that “zero-tolerance” policy for border enforcement, thousands of children were sent to holding facilities, sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles from where their parents were being held for criminal prosecution.

Last week, in trying to comply with a court order, the government returned slightly more than half of the 103 children under the age of 5 to their migrant parents.

But more than 2,800 children — some of them separated from their parents, some of them classified at the border as “unaccompanied minors” — remain in these facilities, where the environments range from impersonally austere to nearly bucolic, save for the fact that the children are formidably discouraged from leaving and their parents or guardians are nowhere in sight.

Depending on several variables, including happenstance, a child might be sent to a 33-acre youth shelter in Yonkers that features picnic tables, sports fields and even an outdoor pool. “Like summer camp,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, a Democrat of New York who recently visited the campus.

 

Or that child could wind up at a converted motel along a tired Tucson strip of discount stores, gas stations and budget motels. Recreation takes place in a grassless compound, and the old motel’s damaged swimming pool is covered up.

Image

Migrant children in a recreation area at a shelter in Brownsville, Tex.CreditLoren Elliott/Reuters

Still, some elements of these detention centers seem universally shared, whether they are in northern Illinois or South Texas. The multiple rules. The wake-up calls and the lights-out calls. The several hours of schooling every day, which might include a civics class in American history and laws, though not necessarily the ones that led to their incarceration.

Most of all, these facilities are united by a collective sense of aching uncertainty — scores of children gathered under a roof who have no idea when they will see their parents again.

Leticia wrote letters from the shelter in South Texas to her mother, who was being held in Arizona, to tell her how much she missed her. She would quickly write these notes after she had finished her math worksheets, she said, so as not to violate yet another rule: No writing in your dorm room. No mail.

She kept the letters safe in a folder for the day when she and her mother would be reunited, though that still hasn’t happened. “I have a stack of them,” she said.

Another child asked her lawyer to post a letter to her detained mother, since she had not heard from her in the three weeks since they had been separated.

“Mommy, I love you and adore you and miss you so much,” the girl wrote in curvy block letters. And then she implored: “Please, Mom, communicate. Please, Mom. I hope that you’re OK and remember, you are the best thing in my life.”

The complicated matters of immigration reform and border enforcement have vexed American presidents for at least two generations. The Trump administration entered the White House in 2017 with a pledge to end the problems, and for several months, it chose one of the harshest deterrents ever employed by a modern president: the separation of migrant children from their parents.

This is what a few of those children will remember.

No Touching, No Running

Diego Magalhães, a Brazilian boy with a mop of curly brown hair, spent 43 days in a Chicago facility after being separated from his mother, Sirley Paixao, when they crossed the border in late May. He did not cry, just as he had promised her when they parted. He was proud of this. He is 10.

He spent the first night on the floor of a processing center with other children, then boarded an airplane the next day. “I thought they were taking me to see my mother,” he said. He was wrong.

Once in Chicago, he was handed new clothes that he likened to a uniform: shirts, two pairs of shorts, a sweatsuit, boxers and some items for hygiene. He was then assigned to a room with three other boys, including Diogo, 9, and Leonardo, 10, both from Brazil.

The three became fast friends, going to class together, playing lots of soccer and earning “big brother” status for being good role models for younger children. They were rewarded the privilege of playing video games.

There were rules. You couldn’t touch others. You couldn’t run. You had to wake up at 6:30 on weekdays, with the staff making banging noises until you got out of bed.

“You had to clean the bathroom,” Diego said. “I scrubbed the bathroom. We had to remove the trash bag full of dirty toilet paper. Everyone had to do it.”

Diego and the 15 other boys in their unit ate together. They had rice and beans, salami, some vegetables, the occasional pizza, and sometimes cake and ice cream. The burritos, he said, were bad.

Apart from worrying about when he would see his mother again, Diego said that he was not afraid, because he always behaved. He knew to watch for a staff member “who was not a good guy.” He had seen what happened to Adonias, a small boy from Guatemala who had fits and threw things around.

“They applied injections because he was very agitated,” Diego said. “He would destroy things.”

A person he described as “the doctor” injected Adonias in the middle of a class, Diego said. “He would fall asleep.”

Diego managed to stay calm, in part because he had promised his mother he would. Last week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered that Diego be reunited with his family. Before he left, he made time to say goodbye to Leonardo.

“We said ‘Ciao, good luck,” Diego recalled. “Have a good life.”

But because of the rules, the two boys did not hug.

Image

“Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” recalled Yoselyn Bulux, 15. “Others said they were going to deport us.”CreditRyan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Lessons in Math and Presidents

Yoselyn Bulux, 15, is a rail-thin girl from Totonicapán, Guatemala, with long dark hair and no clear memory of how she summoned the strength to climb the wall at the border. What followed was even harder: two days in a frigid processing center known as the “icebox,” then a two-day bus ride to a large facility somewhere in Texas. Her mother stayed behind in Arizona.

The new place had air-conditioning, but wasn’t as cold as the icebox, which had left her with a sore throat. There were windows, sunlight during the day. And beyond the perimeter, tall grass like the “zacate” you see along the highway.

At the intake area of the facility, which seemed to accommodate about 300 girls — some of them pregnant — she was given some clothes and a piece of paper with a number on it. There were rules.

“If you do something bad, they report you,” Yoselyn recalled. “And you have to stay longer.”

The days had structure. Yoselyn took classes with other teenage girls in math, language — she learned “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good night” in English — and civics, which touched on, among other things, American presidents. President Trump was mentioned, she said.

For an hour every day, the girls went outside to exercise in the hot Texas air. It was not uncommon to see someone suddenly try to escape. No whispers, no planning — just an out-of-nowhere dash for the fence. No one made it.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the girls watched movies. Also on Saturday, Yoselyn met with a counselor, whom she liked. They talked about her hope to be with her mother soon. She cried only twice.

But it wasn’t easy. Although Yoselyn spoke occasionally by telephone with her mother — the first time a full 10 days after their separation — the gossipy chatter among the girls could be confusing, and upsetting. “Some of the girls said we were going to get out,” she recalled. “Others said they were going to deport us.”

She made friends, and together they would paint their nails and make multicolored friendship bracelets out of yarn. She became especially close to a Guatemalan girl named Sofia. But one day, Sofia just disappeared.

Finally, on July 1, it was Yoselyn’s turn to leave. She was flown to New York on her first airplane flight. She watched the movie “Coco” while in the air. And then the woman serving as her escort handed Yoselyn over to her father, who was so overcome at the sight of his daughter that he could not speak.

A Birthday Passes

Victor Monroy did not understand. It was Sunday, June 24. His birthday. He was now, officially, 11.

But no one at this place where he and his younger sister had been sent seemed to know, or care. No one sang to him, the way his mother would have. Finally, Victor told the adults in this strange place of his personal milestone.

“They said ‘feliz cumpleaños,’” the boy recalled. “That’s all.”

Given all that was happening, the moment may seem small, even inconsequential. Then again, perhaps the quiet passing of his 11th birthday will, years from now, still evoke for Victor the 41 days he counted that he and his 9-year-old sister, Leidy, lived in a place called Casa Guadalupe, with no idea where their mother was for weeks.

“She’s the one who had been watching over me,” Victor said. “My whole life.”

Victor and Leidy had left Guatemala with their mother by bus, but reached the United States border in the back of a tractor-trailer. Almost immediately, they were taken to a crowded place with other migrants. Then, late one night, agents started loading them into a vehicle, as their mother, who was being left behind in Arizona, quickly tried to explain what was happening.

Soon they were on their first airplane ride ever, on their way to some place called Chicago. They were taken to the shelter, given new clothes and separated: Victor to the boys’ area, Leidy to the girls’.

For the next several weeks, the only time the brown-haired siblings saw each other was during recreation period outdoors. If he asked, Victor said, he could spend up to a half-hour with Leidy.

Their daily routine was similar to what thousands of migrant children were experiencing around the country. Early morning wake-up calls, chores, classes. Victor and Leidy didn’t speak to their mother for a month. Where was she? When would they get out? Only once, Victor’s frustration got the better of him.

In the play area one day, some boys stole a ball that Victor was playing with, and he became distraught. When it came time to go back into the house, he refused. “I didn’t want to go inside,” he said.

Then, Victor said, two men, including one named Tito, grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the house. “I told him he didn’t have the right to do that,” the boy said. “And so he said, yes, he had the right to do whatever he wanted.”

Weeks later, Victor was still upset.

But at least he had a trabajadora de caso — a caseworker — named Linda who helped him navigate his new world. “She did everything she could to find my mother,” Victor said. “She called every state.”

Finally, there was a plan: Victor and Leidy would join their father, whom they hadn’t seen in a few years, in New England. The night before, Victor’s roommate and friend, a boy from El Salvador named Franklin, struggled to sleep.

“I don’t think he slept all night because I was leaving,” Victor said.

Sure enough, when the adults came for Victor in the morning, Franklin was awake to say goodbye.

“He wished me lots of luck,” Victor said.

Mischief and Melancholy

The kids are just — kids. That is what it comes down to, according to an employee at Casa Padre, a shelter for 1,500 migrant boys that inhabits a former Walmart Supercenter in Brownsville, Tex., close to the Mexican border. Just kids, all being held in the custody of the United States government.

Take the mooing, for example. The walls that separate the sleeping quarters do not reach the high ceilings, which means that sounds travel in the yawning spaces within the 250,000-square-foot building. One boy will make a loud animal noise, after which another will emit an animal-like response.

“Someone will start mooing,” the employee said. “They just think it’s funny. They just do it long enough so everyone can hear, and then we all start laughing.”

Casa Padre, which shares a parking lot with a gas station, a McDonald’s and other stores, is run by Southwest Key Programs, one of the largest migrant youth shelter operators in the country. According to the employee, its staff is overworked and a little stressed out by the 12-hour shifts and the considerable responsibilities.

A 15-year-old boy from Honduras recently escaped by climbing a fence during an outdoor recreation period. Staff members conduct round-the-clock head counts, sometimes at 15-minute intervals, all while monitoring the constant flow of boys being received and discharged.

During the day, the staff is required to maintain a ratio of one worker for every eight children. The ratio sets the tempo and culture at Casa Padre, the employee said. “It’s a big deal if we’re out of ratio.”

If one boy in a classroom needs to use the restroom, then a staff member has to find seven others who also want to go to the bathroom. “They’ll all stand in a line and then we’ll walk to the restroom,” the employee said.

Some of the boys at Casa Padre were separated from their parents at the border, but most were caught crossing without a parent or guardian. All seem to keep themselves entertained with soccer or movies or video games.

 

 

 

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“If they get sad, it’s like a quiet thing,” the employee said. “You’ll see them sit on the floor and just kind of wrap their arms around themselves.”

Some time in the evening is set aside for prayer. Boys can be found praying in a classroom, in a game room, in a bedroom. Some kneel. After that, many focus on creating intricately designed bracelets out of the huge supply of colorful yarn that seems always available. The bracelets become gifts, keepsakes, something to remember someone by.

Lights out at 9. Then, depending on the night, a cavernous old Walmart in South Texas begins to echo with the sound of mischievous migrant children imitating the lows of pent-up cattle.

624Comments

The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

 

 

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The Times needs your voice. We welcome your on-topic commentary, criticism and expertise.

 

 

 

Well, you see, the Jesuits are well-known globalist libtard cucks, so, MAGA!!!!

[InkaUtexas 25,951]

Blood inside a fountain pen wrote you out of life again

 

 

[JimmyJames 12,271]

I’ve got a question. Why don’t our various right wing trolls ever post in this thread anymore? Surely Johnny sacks can beak away from counting his tax savings to weigh in. And that chicken snacks guy, surely he has an opinion? The raisin cookie guy? Anyone, anyone? Bueller, bueller? 

[InkaUtexas 25,951]

Simple. There is no fucking way you can justify this. 

Central America is fucked, and I wish the people would stay and fix their own countries, but we are better than this. Or at least we were. 

[achooloco 1,072]

7 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Simple. There is no fucking way you can justify this. 

Central America is fucked, and I wish the people would stay and fix their own countries, but we are better than this. Or at least we were. 

well we fucked it but yeah, otherwise you're right.

[Tuco 5,076]

21 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Simple. There is no fucking way you can justify this. 

 

Yet there are those who try.  One guy I ran into on Facebook felt that they should have choppers on the border with free fire orders.  Not an ounce of irony.  Lost of bad paintings of Jesus on his Facebook feed. 

But, there is hope out there.  This was posted by a Facebook friend who implied he was part of the effort.

WaPo-Immigrant Families Together

 

Quote

She was on the road for days, crying and praying and recounting her story to kind strangers who offered to drive and house and feed her.

Freed from an immigrant detention center in Arizona, she traveled nearly 3,000 miles to a place called New York — the place U.S. government officials had taken her daughter.

Juana, a Guatemalan immigrant who crossed the border at a port of entry in Arizona hoping to seek asylum, refused to stop for meals. She spent nights in the homes of well-meaning American families. Each night a different city. Each morning a different car.

Juana, whose lawyer asked that her last name be withheld for fear that identifying her could jeopardize her and her daughter’s legal case, was the beneficiary of a growing legion of volunteers who have offered up their cars, homes, food and clothing to aid migrant parents separated from their children as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero- tolerance” immigration policy.

In two weeks, this loosely organized network of citizens has helped reunite nearly a dozen separated families, in some cases connecting them with housing, lawyers and other services they may need.

They call their coalition “Immigrant Families Together.”

“It’s empowering to think how much we’re getting done,” said Meghan Finn, a theater director and mother of two from Brooklyn who has helped lead the effort. “We’ve changed the course for these families and we’ve connected thousands of people across the country who have stepped up to help and formed this huge community.”

The federal government is under court order to return more than 2,500 separated children to their parents by July 26. A total of 102 migrant children younger than 5 were supposed to be reunited with their relatives by Tuesday, although the government said that it could return only 38 by that deadline and that more than two dozen children were not eligible for reunification for various reasons. A Trump administration official said Wednesday night that the government expects to have reunited by Thursday morning all children age 4 and younger “who are eligible under the court order for reunification with parents in the United States.”

In most cases, the government has been releasing parents from detention and children from federal shelters, then transporting them to a meeting place to be reunited. The parents are usually given ankle monitoring devices and told they are free to go but must report back for immigration or deportation hearings.

Immigrant Families Together is trying to speed the process by identifying parents who can be freed from custody, paying their bonds if necessary, then coordinating caravans to move the parents across state lines to where their children are being held.

...rest in spoiler

Spoiler

Their first success was Yeni Gonzalez, whose story and tearful reunion with her three children in New York made national news last week.

Juana’s journey began Friday, after an online fundraiser collected enough to post her $15,000 bond at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and get her on her way. Unlike Gonzalez, she had already been cleared to claim her daughter. All she needed was to get to Cayuga Centers, the shelter in Harlem that also is responsible for Gonzalez’s children.

As of Wednesday, three more mothers from Eloy were waiting to be picked up and taken to their children. One was headed to Georgia. Another needed to get to Texas. The third would also be making the journey to New York City.

They would spend their nights in the homes of volunteers like Bill O’Brien, a Detroit resident, who took in two Honduran fathers Tuesday night after they were reunited with their 3-year-old sons.

move faster]

Ever Reyes Mejia, 30, and another father, also in his 30s, arrived at O’Brien’s home with only their children and the clothes on their backs. He gave them clothes and toys and food that was bought and donated by members of O’Brien’s church and community.

It’s not just individuals. Companies like Lyft have partnered with nonprofits to offer free rides to migrant families and advocates. Cayuga Centers collected hundreds of toys from donations via an Amazon wish list.

Rosalie Lochner, a philosophy professor turned stay-at-home-mom, has spent the last week at the marble-slab table in her Detroit kitchen, cold-calling anyone she could think of to build a database of people willing to donate frequent flier miles, toys, clothes, food and more. She said she’s received more offers than she knows what to do with.

“I, as a citizen, feel like I am responsible for this policy and am responsible for helping in some small way to change it,” she said.

Juana’s journey included a total of eight drivers over five days. They took her from Arizona to New Mexico to Colorado to Nebraska to Illinois to Michigan, where she settled into a minivan driven by Mira Sussman, a mother of three from Ann Arbor.

They spent five hours Monday driving to Pittsburgh, Sussman said. She drove most of the way a few miles an hour under the speed limit — just in case. “I was terrified we would be pulled over in a regular traffic stop and they would find her and take her away again and she’d never make it to New York to see her kid,” Sussman said. “I was being so careful.”

Juana, exhausted, crawled into the back seat of the minivan, held her Bible to her chest and slept.

She woke in Ohio, Sussman said, and talked about what she had gone through, how she and her daughter, who is 15, would carry this experience with them for the rest of their lives. She used the word trauma, which sounds the same in Spanish as it does in English. Sussman said her Spanish “isn’t very good,” but she understood. “I told her she has so many friends across the United States now who care about her and her family and their well being,” Sussman said. “I’m glad we have the opportunity to show her that there are people with morals and courage in this country, but it’s just disgusting that we have to do this at all.”

On Tuesday, after traveling from Pittsburgh to Newark, Juana got into one last car for the drive into New York City. She met her daughter at the shelter and hugged her for the first time in weeks. A volunteer sent a message to a group text that included eight of the volunteers who helped Juana get there: drivers, organizers, translators, people who offered Juana a place to spend the night.

“Got her,” it said.

The recipients responded joyfully, sending each other congratulations and emoji of big red hearts.

 

[Pancho 44,826]

 

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Man, fuck us.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Brisketexan 105,151]

Spoiler Their first success was Yeni Gonzalez, whose story and tearful reunion with her three children in New York made national news last week.
Juana’s journey began Friday, after an online fundraiser collected enough to post her $15,000 bond at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona and get her on her way. Unlike Gonzalez, she had already been cleared to claim her daughter. All she needed was to get to Cayuga Centers, the shelter in Harlem that also is responsible for Gonzalez’s children.
As of Wednesday, three more mothers from Eloy were waiting to be picked up and taken to their children. One was headed to Georgia. Another needed to get to Texas. The third would also be making the journey to New York City.
They would spend their nights in the homes of volunteers like Bill O’Brien, a Detroit resident, who took in two Honduran fathers Tuesday night after they were reunited with their 3-year-old sons.
move faster]
Ever Reyes Mejia, 30, and another father, also in his 30s, arrived at O’Brien’s home with only their children and the clothes on their backs. He gave them clothes and toys and food that was bought and donated by members of O’Brien’s church and community.
It’s not just individuals. Companies like Lyft have partnered with nonprofits to offer free rides to migrant families and advocates. Cayuga Centers collected hundreds of toys from donations via an Amazon wish list.
Rosalie Lochner, a philosophy professor turned stay-at-home-mom, has spent the last week at the marble-slab table in her Detroit kitchen, cold-calling anyone she could think of to build a database of people willing to donate frequent flier miles, toys, clothes, food and more. She said she’s received more offers than she knows what to do with.
“I, as a citizen, feel like I am responsible for this policy and am responsible for helping in some small way to change it,” she said.
Juana’s journey included a total of eight drivers over five days. They took her from Arizona to New Mexico to Colorado to Nebraska to Illinois to Michigan, where she settled into a minivan driven by Mira Sussman, a mother of three from Ann Arbor.
They spent five hours Monday driving to Pittsburgh, Sussman said. She drove most of the way a few miles an hour under the speed limit — just in case. “I was terrified we would be pulled over in a regular traffic stop and they would find her and take her away again and she’d never make it to New York to see her kid,” Sussman said. “I was being so careful.”
Juana, exhausted, crawled into the back seat of the minivan, held her Bible to her chest and slept.
She woke in Ohio, Sussman said, and talked about what she had gone through, how she and her daughter, who is 15, would carry this experience with them for the rest of their lives. She used the word trauma, which sounds the same in Spanish as it does in English. Sussman said her Spanish “isn’t very good,” but she understood. “I told her she has so many friends across the United States now who care about her and her family and their well being,” Sussman said. “I’m glad we have the opportunity to show her that there are people with morals and courage in this country, but it’s just disgusting that we have to do this at all.”
On Tuesday, after traveling from Pittsburgh to Newark, Juana got into one last car for the drive into New York City. She met her daughter at the shelter and hugged her for the first time in weeks. A volunteer sent a message to a group text that included eight of the volunteers who helped Juana get there: drivers, organizers, translators, people who offered Juana a place to spend the night.
“Got her,” it said.
The recipients responded joyfully, sending each other congratulations and emoji of big red hearts.
 

Thank you for posting this. Seriously, thank you. It’s the best thing I’ve read in months.

 

I know a lot of lawyers taking cram coursework to become able to represent these kids, their parents, etc. and I’m working on figuring out how to do it ourselves.

I am ashamed of my country. But I am proud of so many of my fellow citizens. I’m proud of Catholic Charities, of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and so many other religious organizations. I’m proud of the Bar, and my profession. We all have a lot more work to do.

[TornACL 7,698]

On 7/14/2018 at 4:28 PM, VRHorn said:

That’s kinda where I am. A dad killing himself didn't move the needle, so it will interesting to see what happens when a kid dies.

You seem to believe that we'll be told if and when that happens. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

There are still thousands of kids that haven't been reunited with their parents. 

Not one hearing has been held on this by Congress.

No one has been fired over this.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. 

[Pancho 44,826]

 

[Brisketexan 105,151]

 

This is our country. Acting under our flag. Just wanted to remind you of that.

This is who we are now.

[InkaUtexas 25,951]

3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

This is our country. Acting under our flag. Just wanted to remind you of that.

This is who we are now.

No Sir. We are the People. This is the Government. Big difference. What is sad is how quickly this fell from headlines. Fuck the assclowns in both parties who cannot come up with real immigration policy and left the door open for this "modification" of enforcement. 

Some people are doing what they can, others are vocal, others choose to ignore, accept or support. That is who we are. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Are we not a government for the people by the people?

[Nivek 16,934]

Good thing the party of family values wouldn’t let this happen..... oh....

[retread 2,951]

On 7/20/2018 at 12:12 PM, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There are still thousands of kids that haven't been reunited with their parents. 

Not one hearing has been held on this by Congress.

No one has been fired over this.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. 

Nope it's not. Think about all the chaos. DACA, tariffs, child prison camps, enabling Russian hacking, etc. All done by one man.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

9 minutes ago, retread said:

Nope it's not. Think about all the chaos. DACA, tariffs, child prison camps, enabling Russian hacking, etc. All done by one man.

And a complicit Congress 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

 

[RomaVicta 29,909]

On 7/18/2018 at 9:05 PM, Pancho Negro said:

 

I hope we put those dangerous motherfuckers in shackles.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

 

[Brisketexan 105,151]

No Sir. We are the People. This is the Government. Big difference. What is sad is how quickly this fell from headlines. Fuck the assclowns in both parties who cannot come up with real immigration policy and left the door open for this "modification" of enforcement. 
Some people are doing what they can, others are vocal, others choose to ignore, accept or support. That is who we are. 

Are we not a government for the people by the people?

Yep. This. It’s being done in our name, under our flag.

The responsibility is ours. We will not be absolved from it.

[InkaUtexas 25,951]

8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

 

Yep. This. It’s being done in our name, under our flag.

The responsibility is ours. We will not be absolved from it.

 

as long as their are new bars opening, amazon prime days and the interwebz most people won't care. NFL and CFB start pretty damn soon. Our attention span will drop again. 

Yes it is Our government, but we continue to lose control every time congress fails to act and we reelect the same people. ICE has been transporting people around the country for a long time, not a peep. Separating families? Yep, we built a camp at Guantanamo in the 1990's for Haitian kids. Not a peep. It is about time people get pissed and take back our Government. 

Serious question. Is anyone on here contemplating running for local or state office?