Donald Trump sending thousands of troops to the border isn’t just ridiculous, it’s horrifying. What exactly does he plan to do with all those troops? He just recently said he is prepared to gun down people who throw rocks… it gives you a clue doesn’t it?
I’m genuinely worried that these people are going to get hurt, I don’t trust Donald Trump and I’m worried as to why we are comfortable with sending thousands of troops to greet families and children with guns… horrifying.
it’s also a massive breach in military deployment protocol, specifically the Posse Comitatus act and Article 10 of the United States Code. Donald Trump is breaking the fucking law
HE’S GONNA HAVE TROOPS GUN DOWN & MURDER WOMEN & CHILDREN.
I’m hoping that none of them get an itchy trigger finger as another commenter pointed out, but there is no other reason for them to be there and he’s talking about shooting people who throw rocks and it just sounds like an excuse to open fire. Let’s pray that nothing violent takes place against those people.
And they will all say “I was just following orders”
We can afford all these troops at the border but not 15 dollars minimum wage, free college, or Medicare for all.
I live on the Border. It’s peaceful, beautiful, and very nice overall.
He’s just afraid of brown people. Even women and children.
and we still have sent no aid to Puerto Rico, alright
I saw someone in the tags say this is fearmongering but there’s fearmongering, and then there’s actual fear. All of the comments on this post are reactions of genuine, sincere concern for the people at the border. Nobody is trying to fearmonger.
WE ARE ACTUALLY AFRAID.
Just to provide some context here since I haven’t seen a single soul talk about the Caravan online, I only know about it due to the controversy caused by several local Spanish news stations that decided to air coverage despite many stations in Mexico forbidding it;
There are currently thousands of people migrating in a Caravan up to the Mexican border. They are escaping poverty, and violence amongst other things from their home countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. They’re hoping to find a better life or apply for Asylum.
They’ve been walking for nearly a full month now having started October 12th of this year (2018 time stamp for anyone seeing this in the future.)
[Pictured above is the Caravan as it reached the Suchiate river at the border between Guatemala and Mexico]
[Pictured above is the first wave of the Caravan reaching the Tijuana border -not apart of the massive wave that was seen at the river.]
[Pictured above are several caravan men who decided to jump into the river when the crowds on the bridge got too dense when it was decided that only Women and Children could pass, most were fathers, brothers, and sons who didn’t wish to be separated. Many mothers with small children were also lowered down into the rafts to avoid the crowd that was stuck on the bridge for 24+ hours.]
The Donald Trump political campaign put out an ad that was as dehumanizing as you could imagine towards the immigrants, who again, at this point are largely unarmed women and children who are trying to escape the violence in their home countries.
Donald Trump has deployed 1,000 troops to the border in anticipation for the Caravans arrival. Promising to more than double the number to about 5,000 troops lasting until about December 15th, 2018.
[Pictured above are children waiting in line for their turn on playground equipment.]
[Pictured above is what sleep and rest has typically looked like for them, many only having a backpack or so left of their personal belongings to take with them.]
[Pictured above is man holding up a sign that reads, “Thank-you Mexico for opening up your hearts.” After the bridge and border were opened.]
These are the faces of the people Donald Trump is sending thousands of troops over to shoot down because he sees them as a threat.
Here’s a call script for your Senators and/or representatives – scroll down to “Tell your members of Congress: Condemn the Trump administration’s separation of families.” This is especially important if you live in a red state.Trump is trying to claim that the separation of families is due to a “law” enacted by Democrats – there is no such law. This is a Trump administration policy. It’s important for Republicans to know we don’t believe his lies, and that we know exactly who is responsible for this. Calling Democratic members of Congress helps, too – even if they already support keeping families together at the border, it will help to continue to encourage them to take action.
somebody on twitter found two archives of ICE detention facilities and a list of ICE employees. they also link another thread of things you can do to fight ICE and family separation — direct action, calling congress, finding local organizations, etc.
Together Rising Love Flash Mob. Organized by best-selling author and blogger Glennon Doyle through her non-profit organization, the fundraising effort will go to provide bilingual legal and advocacy assistance for 60 children, aged 12 months to 10 years, currently separated from their parents in an Arizona detention center. Their first priority will be to establish and maintain contact between children and their parents, with the ultimate goal of reunification and safety and rehabilitation for the children.
• The ACLU is litigating this policy in California.
• If you’re an immigration lawyer, the American Immigration Lawyers Association will be sending around a volunteer list for you to help represent the women and men with their asylum screening, bond hearings, ongoing asylum representation, etc. Please sign up.
• Al Otro Lado is a binational organization that works to offer legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S.
• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.
• Human Rights First is a national organization with roots in Houston that needs help from lawyers too.
• Kids in Need of Defense works to ensure that kids do not appear in immigration court without representation, and to lobby for policies that advocate for children’s legal interests. Donate here.
• The Legal Aid Justice Center is a Virginia-based center providing unaccompanied minors legal services and representation.
• Pueblo Sin Fronteras is an organization that provides humanitarian aid and shelter to migrants on their way to the U.S.
• RAICES is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas offering free and low-cost legal services to immigrant children and families. Donate here and sign up as a volunteer here.
• The Texas Civil Rights Project is seeking “volunteers who speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’ or K’iche’ and have paralegal or legal assistant experience.”
• Together Rising is another Virginia-based organization that’s helping provide legal assistance for 60 migrant children who were separated from their parents and are currently detained in Arizona.
This list isn’t comprehensive, so let us know what else is happening. And please call your elected officials, stay tuned for demonstrations, hug your children, and be grateful if you are not currently dependent on the basic humanity of U.S. policy.
This secretly taken photo comes from a Texas courtroom during mass trial where dozens of immigrants are chained and tried all at once. Here’s what’s happening:
· Lawyers Are Representing Dozens of People At Once (Literally)
What you see is somewhere between 20 and 40-something people, all triple-shackled, not to each other but individually, their hands in handcuffs chained to their waists, and their feet shackled. And they clunk and clang into court. I mean, there’s this clanging sound of chains. And they go through these mass processes in less than an hour, usually. And they often—they are instructed to answer in groups or answer en masse. So you’ll hear like 40 people being asked a question, and they’ll say, ”Sí,” all at once, or they’ll say, “No.” And it’s just—it’s really uncanny. It’s shocking. It doesn’t feel like due process. One after one after one after one after one, with only one lawyer, they plead guilty: ”Culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable,” ”culpable.”
They’re getting somewhere between seven and 10 minutes of counsel right before the proceedings.
…
There were 60 defendants, and they were split into 20—into three groups of 20. And so, each group of 20 had a lawyer. And I interviewed one lawyer who told me that, of his 20, not one of them had been separated from a child, and not one of them had an asylum claim or a credible fear claim. So, then, in the third group, I was able to interview the attorney, who spoke Spanish, unlike the first one, and seemed very concerned about the immigration issues. And he told me that, of the 20 that I saw him representing, 10 of them had been separated from a total of 15 children, including one woman who was separated from three children. And, you know, he obtained that information by just really speaking with these people.
· International Law is Being Broken
Denying people the right to request asylum:
Traditionally, you go to the port of entry, and you—which is this big building at the bottom, you know, in Brownsville. It’s the big curved bridge. You go to the bottom of the bridge to the U.S. side, to the port of entry, and you tell the agents that want to request asylum. And that is your legal right. You’re in the United States at that point, and you request asylum.
So, what’s been happening up and down the border is—and this has been going on probably for at least a year and a half, that I’m aware of, anyway—is that they’re putting agents up at the top of the bridge, because, you know, there’s sort of an invisible line, which is often marked with a plaque, but there’s a line dividing the United States and Mexico. So, they want—what the government wants at this point is for people not to be able to step into the United States at that invisible line, because then they can’t apply for asylum. And so they’ve got these agents at the top of the bridge, and they’re standing there. And they’re asking everybody who they’re suspicious about—you know, and suspicious of not—you know, of maybe they’re going to apply for asylum, but asking people for their documents. And then they won’t let people go into the United States. So, I mean, it’s almost like they’re not even in Mexico. Technically, they’re in Mexico, but they’re like six inches from the United States. And that’s illegal. I mean, that’s against American law, and it’s against international law. But that’s what’s happening up and down the border.
Separating families:
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the U.S. government’s separating children from their parents as they seek asylum is “a flagrant violation of their human rights. Doing so in order to push asylum seekers back into dangerous situations where they may face persecution is also a violation of U.S. obligations under refugee law.”
· Border Patrol is Lying About Violence
Multiplying the number of assaults:
CBP claimed that there were 454 assaults on agents nationwide in 2016, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2017, according to CBP, there were 786 assaults, a 73 percent spike from the previous year. But The Intercept obtained data from CBP showing that the agency was using an unconventional method to count assaults.
I started investigating the claims the Border Patrol has been making for about, oh, the past several months, that it’s a very dangerous job and that their assault statistics were way, way up from last year. And I got data from the Border Patrol which showed that, in fact, assaults were down and injuries are down, but they were using this accounting method—they were counting in this very strange, unconventional way.
And, for example, what I was told from law enforcement people is that, you know, police and law enforcement officials usually—like, if somebody is assaulted, that’s considered one assault. I mean, somebody could throw seven rocks at you, and that would be—and you’re one agent, so that’s counted as one assault. But the Border Patrol was—or still is, I guess—multiplying the number of agents assaulted—and, by the way, an assault doesn’t necessarily cause an injury, and in most cases with the Border Patrol it doesn’t—but multiplying the number of agents assaulted by the number of perpetrators and the number of weapons.
So, the example that they gave me was six agents assaulted by seven perpetrators who used a water bottle, a rock and a tree branch. So, when you multiply and multiply and multiply, you get 126 assaults. Conventionally, that would be counted as six assaults.
Immigrants who are tried and acquitted for assault are also included in these inflated statistics:
A recent trial in south Texas provides a good case in point. In November, Border Patrol agent Steven Yackanin chased Eliseo Luis García, a young Guatemalan migrant, through a field near the Rio Grande. The area was only about a mile from where Claudia Patricia Gómez González would later be shot to death.
After Luis was apprehended and taken to lockup, another immigrant there noticed that Luis had blood coming out of his ear. Luis explained that he had been trying to escape and that, as a result, Yackanin and some other agents beat him up.
Yackanin claimed it was he who was assaulted by Luis, and he filled out a Department of Labor form to authorize medical care. He was diagnosed with an elbow sprain and a bruise.
Luis was charged with assault and went to trial. His public defender attorney introduced into evidence photographs of the immigrant and the Border Patrol agent, each standing next to a door with markings. The markings suggest that the Guatemalan immigrant stood about 5 feet tall and weighed perhaps 100 pounds. Yackanin was a full head taller and appeared 60 pounds heavier. The jury apparently believed Luis. He was acquitted.
Even so, the Border Patrol will likely fold the charges against Luis into its fiscal year 2018 assault statistics. Likewise for Claudia Patricia Gómez González, the young Guatemalan woman shot last week. Her death will probably be analyzed as the outcome of a purported assault against a Border Patrol agent.
· Parents and Children are Being Separated
Public defenders unable to find their defendant’s children:
One woman who spoke about her children in open court was from Honduras. “Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?” she asked Morgan.
“Your Honor,” interjected Jeff Wilde, director of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Brownsville, “both she and the man next to her have their children with them. They had a credible fear claim [for asylum]. … Their children have been separated from them, and I’ve been unable to figure out where their children are at this point.”
A young father then said he’d been separated from his 6-year-old and was very worried.
Threats and taking children away:
Another parent who appeared in Morgan’s court was from a Central American country that provides no meaningful protection to women and children who are victims of homicidal domestic violence. She asked for her identity to be concealed, because she fears retaliation by the U.S. government. We will call her Delia. Before fleeing her country, she was for years beaten up, cut, assaulted with guns, and threatened with death by her partner. He also threatened to kill their young child. When she hid in another city, he found her and dragged her home.
Delia said she fled her country weeks ago and went on the road to Mexico, eventually crossing the Rio Grande with her child on an inner tube. She saw three Border Patrol agents watching her and floated in their direction, so she could turn herself in.
Delia said that when she arrived later that night at the hielera — the Border Patrol processing office — she told the officers that she and her child needed asylum. She described the beatings and assaults and death threats. “Oh, come on!” she said the officers snickered. “You and everyone else with that old story!”
“You’re going to be deported,” she remembers them telling her. “And your child will stay here.” The next morning, the child was taken. Delia fell on her knees during the removal, wailing and begging not to be separated. Officials looked on indifferently, she said, as her child screamed incessantly.
Uncertainty of policy:
In Brownsville, Judge Morgan also started alluding to biblical matters. It was Thursday, the fourth day of “zero tolerance” in his court, and defendants were telling their stories. The judge had just asked Holly D’Andrea, the assistant U.S. attorney handling illegal entry prosecutions that day, if it were true that families were being reunited in detention. D’Andrea sounded uncertain, but answered that she thought it was true.
“Tell you what,” the judge said slowly, with a hard edge in his voice, “if it’s not, then there are a lot of folks that have some answering to do.
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