Tuesday, December 18, 2018
An Angel and an Orphan
The Gospel According to Saint MatthewSuffer little children to come unto me . . . .
Children are in the news yet again.
Not the 12,800 immigrant children that were in shelters for migrant children in the United States in September 2017, a significant increase from May 2016. In that month there were 2700 immigrant children in detention facilities that Trumpsters describe as similar to summer camps.
And not the 85,000 children who Save the Children believes have died of starvation in Yemen since the U.S. assisted bombing began in that country in 2016.
Today we focus on just two little girls, each the beneficiary of the Trump’s hatred of immigrants, a hatred given life by his thankfully now departed, mean-spirited and quintessentially evil, former Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.
Jakelin was 7 years old. She came to us from Guatemala in the company of her father. Yeisvi is 11 years old. She came to us from Guatemala in the company of her mother. Their experiences were quite different.
Jakelin arrived in the United States on December 6, 2018 at 9:15 P.M in a remote stretch of desert in the Bootheel region of New Mexico. Immediately upon arrival, she and the 161 other immigrants accompanying her and her father, were placed in the care of the Border Patrol. That agency took them by bus from the remote border crossing to Lordsburg, New Mexico. When they arrived at 6:30 A.M., Jakelin had a temperature of 105.7 and was having seizures. She was flown to El Paso where she died later in the day.
Describing her condition when she arrived at the border crossing, the Border Patrol said she had had no food or water for several days before entering their custody. Her father said, through his lawyer, that he had made sure “she was fed and had sufficient water.” It is hard to imagine that a 7-year-old girl could walk through the hot desert for “several days” without food or water. Border Protection people have better imaginations than this writer.
The White House called Jakelin’s death “a horrific, tragic situation.” When asked by a reporter whether the administration took any responsibility for Jakelin’s death, the spokesman had a quick response: “No.” He was not thinking about how administration policies had created the conditions that led to Jakelin’s death. He had not read the Washington Post report published after Jakelin’s death. It reported that in November 2017, Border Patrol agents had picked up 25,172 “family unit members.”
Jakelin is no longer with us. Yeisvi is still with us. Yeisvi was born in the United States when her parents, Vilma Carillo, and Juan Bernardo, were working in fields and warehouses in Vidalia, Georgia, having arrived in 2003 as illegal immigrants. Yeisvi was born in 2006 and is, therefore, an American citizen. After living in Vidalia for three years, the family returned to their home village in Guatemala in order to care for Vilma’s mother. After the family had been back in Guatemala for a few years, Juan became abusive, beating and biting Vilma, knocking out four of her teeth and, on one occasion, throwing hot coals at her. The violence became so great that at one point Veisvi begged her father not to kill her mother.
Vilma and Veisvi fled their tortured life in Guatemala to the United States. Vilma hoped that since Veisvi was a United States citizen, and since she, Vilma, feared for her own safety, she would be granted asylum and they could both stay in the U.S. She could not have imagined how it would all turn out thanks to the monstrously evil policies of the Trump administration.
When Veisvi and Vilma arrived at the Arizona border on May 10, 2018, immigration officials noticed that Veisvi was an American citizen. Within hours, Veisvi was taken from her mother. As explained to a New York Times reporter by Customs and Border Protection officials: “When a removable foreign national arrives in the United States with a U.S. citizen minor, the minor must be permitted to enter while the foreign national is processed. If there is no relative to take the child, C.B.P. will contact state or local child welfare services to assist with appropriate placement.” Vilma was sent to a detention facility in Georgia. It is against the law to hold an American in one of those facilities. Therefore, Veisvi was transferred to Arizona’s Department of Child Safety and given to a foster parent in Yuma, Arizona. Here is the present status of mother and daughter.
Vilma’s claim for asylum was based on the treatment she received at the hands of her husband. Her claim was denied and the judge ordered her removed from the country. She is appealing, a process that could take months or years. If Vilma is ultimately deported, Veisvi may not be permitted to accompany her. That is because the domestic abuse her mother fears from her husband, though not adequate grounds in the Judge’s eyes to grant her asylum, is sufficient to cause the U.S. justice system to determine that it is unsafe for Veivsi to return to her home with her mother. Instead, the government may decide to terminate Vilma’s parental rights. If that happens, Veisvi will be taken out of foster care and put up for adoption.
If the United States government deprives Veisvi of her mother, by terminating Vilma’s parental rights and giving Veisvi a new mother and father, and if Veisvi learns of Jakelin’s fate when she arrived in this country, Veisvi may very well wish she could trade places with Jakelin. Who would blame her?
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Holiday Detention
— Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)[F]reedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus . . ..
There are two great new Trump initiatives designed to make life in the United States less attractive for immigrants and reduce their number here. One is aimed at those who entered the country seeking asylum, and the other is for those who are already here who came from Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam war, and at some point and at some point during there stay here, encountered the criminal justice system. Each involves indefinite detention.
The beneficiaries of the first long term detention policy are those enjoying long term detention while awaiting hearings on their claims for asylum. Long term detention is the way to thwart those who want to thwart the Trump by seeking to gain permanent access to our country in defiance of the Trump’s persistent attempts to keep them out. Ansly Damus is a good example of that policy.
Ansly fled his home country of Haiti in 2014 after a vicious attack on him following a class he had taught in which he named a government official who, he told the class, worked with gangs to terrorize the population. Following the attack, he fled, first to Brazil, but uncomfortable there, left after a few months. In October 2016 he ended up at the California border and sought asylum.
The officer who interviewed him found he had a significant fear of persecution and he was granted asylum. The government appealed and lost two times. But during the pendency of the appeals, he was held in a cell at ICE’s Geauga County Safety Center. He has been imprisoned therefor more than two years while his appeals have been considered. His petition for habeas corpus was heard on November 28th, and time will tell the outcome of his petition. Meanwhile, he remains incarcerated.
The Trump has now discovered another group of people he can indefinitely detain in what, as in Ansly’s case, seems an obvious violation of the constitutional right of all who are in the United States, to not spend lengthy periods in prison without due process of law. The latest victims of the Trump agenda, are refugees from Vietnam, who in many cases have lived here for decades.
In 2002, President George W. Bush entered into an agreement with the Vietnamese government. It provided that Vietnamese residents who came to this country before 1995. would not be deported even though convicted of crimes that would, for other immigrants, result in automatic deportation. The more lenient treatment of the Vietnamese came from a well-deserved sense of guilt for the United States’ role in that ill-fated conflict. As a result, and unlike what occurred with most other categories of refugees, when a Vietnamese immigrant who had been found guilty of criminal conduct was released from prison after serving the imposed sentence, that individual was not subject to deportation proceedings.
Unlike those who introduced the leniency policy towards Vietnamese convicted of criminal conduct after their arrival in this country, the Trump has no lingering feelings of guilt over what he and his family might well refer to as the “heel spur war.” It was, after all, his heel spur that enabled him to avoid serving in the military during the Vietnam war. He is now seeking to end the special treatment accorded those refugees by eliminating the practice that has historically permitted Vietnamese convicted of crimes to remain in this country. Towards the end of 2017, about 12 Vietnamese with criminal convictions were returned to Vietnam. He now wants to send back another 8000 permanent residents.
A class action lawsuit and resistance from the Vietnamese government is temporarily blocking their return. Undaunted, the Trump has ordered that the prospective deportees be placed in long-term detention centers similar to those described above. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has said that immigration officials cannot hold refugees more than six months if deportation is probable in the “reasonably foreseeable future,” the Trump is undaunted and has held them longer and says he can hold them indefinitely.
The Vietnamese who are now detained may find some comfort in the plight of those Cambodians who have been living in this country and, like the Vietnamese now detained, have been the beneficiaries of an unstated rule similar to the rule protecting the Vietnamese although no formal agreement about their status was ever entered into.
More than 500 Cambodians who had been convicted of criminal conduct at some point in their residency here, have now been sent back to Cambodia. Many of them have never had contact with that country and have no family members still living there.
The Trump now plans to deport the largest number of legal Cambodians ever deported. Their deportation is scheduled to take place on December 19th. That will enable them to arrive in a country many of them left as infants and have never visited, just in time to celebrate Christmas. The families they have left behind will be celebrating Christmas without the deported family member. The Vietnamese awaiting court rulings won’t be back in Vietnam. They’ll be in holding cells in the United States. Merry Christmas.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
We and the Uighurs
Concentration Camp Universe.
— David Rousset, Book title
It’s all a matter of perception. Often the outside
observer doesn’t have the proper view of things and fails to appreciate that what is observed is not what is actually taking place. Consider the Uighurs in far West China and illegal immigrants along the southwest border of the United States.
In the United States, there is great concern for the plight of the Uighurs. It was well described in an editorial that appeared in the New York Times on December 1, 2018. It was titled: “Who Will Speak Up for the Uighurs?” The editorial writer described the “urgent need to address at the highest levels of the American government what have been described as China’s worst human rights abuses in decades.” The need for the editorial seems obvious.
The Uighurs, and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region,, in what are described by outside observers as beyond deplorable conditions. The number of Uighurs detained may be in excess of one million and the inhabitants of the camps are reportedly subject to torture, and food deprivation. There have reportedly been countless deaths resulting from the treatment of the Uighurs by the Chinese authorities.
It comes as no surprise to learn that the Chinese do not have the same perception of life in the camps as outside observers, former inhabitants of the camps and the editorial board of the New York Times.
Explaining the treatment of the Uighurs, the Chinese say it is necessary to crackdown on them to “combat extremism and terrorism on its western frontier. Mimicking the Trump, who says the same things about immigrants in the United States on its southern border, the Chinese say: “many of those detained are common criminals.”
The Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups detained in the camps, is the largest number of Chinese citizens detained since the days of the Cultural Revolution. According to the Chinese government, their detention is needed in order to crackdown on religious extremism. Thanks to reporting from a Chinese government spokesman, we have learned that the camps are not nearly as bad as the editorial writers of the NYT and others would have us believe.
In an interview with Shohrat Zakir, the chairman of the region in which the Uighurs are detained, that was published by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Mr. Zakir described the camps as “generously equipped vocational schools that are vital to a crackdown on religious extremism.” He said that the camps helped bring an end to terrorism and a drop in crime in the region. Mr. Zakir said: “Facts have proven that vocational education and training fits the reality of current efforts in countering terrorism, maintaining stability and eradicating extremism. . . .” He described the facilities as resort-like, equipped with volleyball courts, ping-pong tables, and film-screening rooms. In addition, he said that each resident’s room was provided with its own television set. He has been quoted as saying the camps were “colorful” places, and that among other things, the people confined there could enter singing contests, play basketball and watch movies.
All in all, the camps sound not unlike the ones the Trump has created in the United States, and along its southern border with Mexico. The United States has its own Shohrat Zakhir to describe the wonderful qualities of the camps in the United States. His name is Matthew Albence.
Mr. Albence is serving as the acting deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and oversees its Enforcement and Removal Operations units.
At a hearing held in late July 2018, Mr. Albence, like Mr. Zakhir, described the facilities in which immigrants in the United States are held. His description makes it sound, as we would all expect, that the facilities in the United States are every bit as nice as the facilities in which the Uighurs are housed. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Albence said the facilities the United States operates are more like summer camps than like jails. He said: “These individuals have access to 24/7 food and water. They have educational opportunities. They have recreational opportunities, both structured as well as unstructured. There’s basketball courts, there’s exercise classes, there’s soccer fields that we put in there. They have extensive medical, dental and mental health opportunities.”
At a second hearing held in mid-September, Mr. Albence, was given the opportunity to modify his glowing description of life in the camps. He stood by his earlier comments, saying the facilities had unlimited amounts of food, and residents lived in dormitory settings where they were provided televisions, Xboxes and other educational opportunities. In response to a question, from Senator Kamala Harris, (D.Ca.) he declined to say whether he would send his children to the kinds of summer camp he was describing.
Referring to the camps in which the Uighurs are held, the NYT editorial writer asks: “Why aren’t China’s neighbors demanding an end to the abuses?” The same question could be asked of the Senate Judiciary committee before whom Mr. Albence appeared, their congressional colleagues, or concerned citizens in the United States. It is a sad commentary on the United States, when a spokesman for the administration who is justifying the United States’ harsh treatment of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, has gotten his talking points from a spokesman for the Uighur detention camps in China.