Almost 2,000 migrant children were separated from their families at the US border over six weeks, officials say.
Following a Trump administration crackdown on illegal border crossings from Mexico, adults are being detained, meaning the children with them are removed from their care.
The issue is causing a growing political storm in the US.
via US child migrants: 2,000 separated from families in six weeks – BBC News
On Monday, local news channel Denver7 reported that a woman in Castle Rock, Colorado was charged with a misdemeanor after protesting outside Republican Congressman Ken Buck’s office, an act of dissent which included writing on the sidewalk in chalk.
The woman in question, Shauna Johnson, was there to speak out against the Trump administration’s monstrous policy of separating children and parents seeking asylum at the United States border. On the sidewalk in front of the congressman’s office, Johnson wrote, “Stop putting kids in cages Ken Buck, love Jesus and a cross.”
Denver 7 reported that it was the building’s management, and not Buck’s office, that called the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department following the incident, resulting in the misdemeanor charge related to scribbling in chalk on private property.
LGBTQ immigrants in ICE detention facilities are 97 times more likely to experience sexual assault than other immigrants in these facilities, according to a terrifying new report from the Center for American Progress.
The report, based on information provided in a congressional letter to the Department of Homeland Security, also reveals that ICE has returned to its practice of detaining transgender women with men. This is contrary to its own guidelines, which per the Prison Rape Elimination Act require an individualized placement determination for each trans person being detained.
via This Report Is a Terrifying Reminder of the Conditions LGBTQ Immigrants Face in ICE Custody
The U.S. government agency that oversees immigration applications is launching an office that will focus on identifying Americans who are suspected of cheating to get their citizenship and seek to strip them of it.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna told The Associated Press in an interview that his agency is hiring several dozen lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants who were ordered deported and are suspected of using fake identities to later get green cards and citizenship through naturalization.
Cissna said the cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, whose attorneys could then seek to remove the immigrants’ citizenship in civil court proceedings. In some cases, government attorneys could bring criminal charges related to fraud.
via APNewsBreak: US launches bid to find citizenship cheaters
The Department of Health and Human Services will visit Fort Bliss, a sprawling Army base near El Paso in the coming weeks to look at a parcel of land where the administration is considering building a tent city to hold between 1,000 and 5,000 children, according to U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the plans.
HHS officials confirmed that they’re looking at the Fort Bliss site along with Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene and Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo for potential use as temporary shelters.
“HHS will make the determination if any of the three sites assessed are suitable,” said an HHS official.
via Trump looking to erect tent cities to house unaccompanied children | McClatchy Washington Bureau
That’s why Mark advised me to promptly join a gang if I had ultimately been sentenced to prison (luckily, I was not). Gangs are based on race, so as a Whiffenpoof (third from left), my options were probably the Nazi Lowriders or the Aryan Brotherhood, both aligned with the hardcore Sureños Latino gang. “I just can’t see you being successful doing that,” Mark says, rightly, when I reach back out to him last week. He adds that someone like me would be better off in the warden’s office as a “trustee,” which means wearing all white and sycophantically shadowing prison guards so that they’ll protect you.
During his speech, Sessions recited from a well-rehearsed script, repeating talking points central to the administration’s worldview and subsequent policies. Sessions warned of the “tens of thousands” of undocumented workers crossing American borders, conflating immigrants with criminals. He spoke of the “shootings, stabbings, and beatings,” as well as the rapes and murders committed by MS-13, the Trump administration’s preferred monster. Sessions warned in his speech that the gang was “recruiting illegal aliens as young as 15.” Danger, it seems, lurked in every corner. He warned, too, that the “porous” Southwest border was impacting the rest of the United States, telling law enforcement in the audience that the lack of security at the border “makes your job that much harder.”
via Jeff Sessions Gives Speech in PA Defending “Zero-Tolerance”
After arriving in the U.S., A.B. was permitted to seek asylum, but her case has been tied up in the courts for more than four years. In 2016, the Immigration Board of Appeals ruled in her favor, allowing A.B. the right to asylum in the United States as a victim of domestic violence. On Monday, Sessions overturned the decision, writing that most claims “pertaining to domestic violence or gang violence perpetrated by non-governmental actors will not qualify for asylum.”
“The mere fact that a country may have problems effectively policing certain crimes—such as domestic violence or gang violence—or that certain populations are more likely to be victims of crime, cannot itself establish an asylum claim,” he wrote.
via Jeff Sessions’s Racist Whims and the Danger Ahead for Victims of Domestic Violence
A student in Lincoln who wears a hijab is being racially abused by motorists as she walks to and from school.
The Priory Academy LSST pupil walks along Cross O’Cliff and the lower High Street every day to get to school.
But shockingly, people in passing cars are shouting at her as they drive past, Lincolnshire Police have revealed.
The Illinois House voted on Wednesday to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, following approval last month in the state Senate. The state is now the 37th to do so, following Nevada in 2017. What this means is that we’re now one state away from maybe enshrining women’s equal rights in the United States Constitution, a mere….. 231 years after the document was first ratified. Hey alright, ladies!
The ERA—which declares, rather simply, that the “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex”—was originally proposed in 1921, approved by the House of Representatives in 1971, and then by the Senate in 1972. Congress then sent it to the states for ratification, and set a deadline for a vote: June 30, 1982, which was 36 years ago. This means that, should another state ratify it, Congress would need to remove the deadline in order for it to become the 28th amendment. Given that Congress is full of misogynists, I can see that being a real fight!
