There are so many horrors on my radar right now that it is literally jammed. Where to start? Okay, let’s begin somewhere …
I had seen a snippet or two, here and there, but usually while I was deep into research for another post, and I bookmarked a couple of them to look at later, then promptly forgot … predictable, when I have so many different things on such a small mind, yes? Anyway, earlier today I received an email from my dear friend Cheryl, and in it she mentioned her frustration that her church had put together many kits containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, and other personal care items to be donated to the migrant children being held in captivity, but that Customs and Border “Protection” would not accept them! This triggered the memory of those articles I had bookmarked, so I went back and did a bit of digging (one needs a long-handled shovel to dig through the memory banks in my head or in the file labeled ‘notes’ on my laptop!)
On June 24th, the Texas Tribune reported …
On Sunday, Austin Savage and five of his friends huddled into an SUV and went to an El Paso Target, loading up on diapers, wipes, soaps and toys.
About $340 later, the group headed to a Border Patrol facility holding migrant children in nearby Clint with the goal of donating their goods. Savage said he and his friends had read an article from The New York Times detailing chaos, sickness and filth in the overcrowded facility, and they wanted to help.
But when they arrived, they found that the lobby was closed. The few Border Patrol agents — Savage said there were between eight and 10 of them — moving in and out of a parking facility ignored them.
For a while, the group stood there dumbfounded about what to do next. Ultimately, they decided to pack up and head home. Savage said he wasn’t completely surprised by the rejection; before he left, the group spotted a discarded plastic bag near the lobby door holding toothpaste and soap that had a note attached to it: “I heard y’all need soap + toothpaste for kids.”
A slew of other sympathetic people, advocacy groups and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have expressed a desire to lend a hand to the kids housed in the facilities. But after purchasing items like toys, soap, toothbrushes, diapers and medicine — especially as news reports circulate of facilities having drinking water that tastes like bleach and sick children without enough clothing — they’ve been met with a common message: No donations are being accepted.
Say WHAT???
Last week, I wrote a post titled Cruel and Inhumane about the conditions these poor children … CHILDREN … are living in. Washington Post writer Eugene Robinson wrote an opinion piece that went into even greater detail . These children are given a piece of f**king tin foil for a blanket, have no toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, and in some cases no diapers. They are suffering from illness, cold, and malnutrition. They are CHILDREN, and they are being treated worse than prisoners of war would be treated under the Geneva Convention!!!
Our government cannot be bothered to spend a few thousand dollars for the comfort and health of these children, but they can spend millions or more on an ego trip for Damnold Trump to “honour himself” on the Fourth of July??? And on top of it all, they will not allow those of us who have a conscience, those of us who feel compassion toward these children, who understand that they are every bit as valuable as our own children … we are not allowed to donate such necessities of life as soap to these poor children???
The friend I mentioned above writes a blog, Impromptu Promptlings, and she did an excellent rant about this last evening. Please take a minute to read it, to let her add her voice to the fury of my own.
When you go to bed tonight, ponder on something. Ask yourself what kind of country you are living in. You get up each morning, proceed through your daily routine … the view outside your window likely looks much the same as it did three years ago. But it isn’t the same. This isn’t the same country. This is a country that respects an over-bloated megalomaniac far more than it respects the lives of children. This is a nation that supports an agency of the federal government that is murdering children … yes, I said murdering. They are sick, they are not given proper hygiene, they are not given proper nutrition, and they are lacking the love of their parents that is so essential to the health and well-being, to the development of children.
Ask yourself, as you lie awake pondering this, what can we do? How can we stop this madness? Oh sure, there is an election in 16 months, and we can vote the madman out of office … maybe … but how many more children will die before then? Six children that we know of have already died of abuse or neglect in the concentration camps … and yes, they ARE concentration camps by any definition of the word. How many more must die? How can we stop this utter insanity? Think about it. Get mad. Let’s figure this out, folks, for those little kids are counting on somebody to help them.
“This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis. And for the shrieking Republicans who don’t know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as “the mass detention of civilians without trial.” And that’s exactly what this administration is doing.”
After a dangerous journey across Mexico and a difficult crossing through the Arizona desert, someone told Jose and Kristian that they might find water and food at a place in Ajo called the Barn. The Barn is a gathering place for humanitarian volunteers like me, and there the two young men were able to eat, rest and get medical attention. As the two were preparing to leave, the Border Patrol arrested them. Agents also handcuffed and arrested me, for — in the agency’s words — having provided the two migrants with “food, water, clean clothes and beds.”
Some passengers attempted to cable President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge, but he never responded. A State Department telegram stated that the asylum-seekers must “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.”
Last Monday, Carlos Hernandez Vásquez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan became the sixth child to die in Customs and Border Protection custody since the Trump administration began the fiasco at the border. Felipe Gomez Alonso, an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy, died in a New Mexico hospital on December 24th, Christmas Eve 2018. Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl, died last December 7th. Juan de Leon Gutiérrez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy died on April 30th. An unnamed Guatemalan boy age two-and-a-half died on May 14th.
And then there was Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle — a 10-year-old girl from El Salvador with heart defects who died in HHS custody last fall. Her death was kept secret until just last week. Acting Director of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, testified before Congress in December, but did not notify lawmakers that Darlyn had died in Border Patrol custody three days before. How many more have died that we don’t even know about?
Last June, Judge Dana M. Sabraw ordered the reunification of children and parents who had been separated under the Trump administration policy. Ten months ago. Since then, some 2,800 children have been reunited with their parents, however a group of separated families including possibly as many as 2,000 children was unaccounted for because the government lacked an effective tracking system. Even after Judge Sabraw’s order that the government cease separating children from their families, another 245 children were taken from their parents. But the government let the ball drop when it came to record-keeping, so there is speculation that the number may, in fact, be much higher than 245.
On Friday, the Department of Justice filed court documents stating that it will take at least a year to review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children taken into government custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018. Why? Because record-keeping was shoddy, or perhaps non-existent. Because nobody cared enough about these children to take time to even find out who they were. Because the people currently responsible for running this nation care only about people whose skin is white.
What??? Did they not think it would ever be necessary to figure out who these kids were and where they belonged, such as with their parents? Did they just hope the children would disappear, and that the parents would forget about them?
Last year, for a few weeks, the story of the children separated from their parents and kept in questionable conditions was in the news every day. It was front and center in our minds and we … well, most of us anyway … were appalled and horrified. Then, Judge Sabraw issued his ruling, the government partly complied, and the story receded into the background to be replaced by other abominations of the Trump regime. But the story is not over … not by a long shot. Meanwhile, these children are undoubtedly suffering both physical and emotional damage that may last a lifetime. Is this, then, what Trump meant when he said he was going to “make America great”? Sorry, Donnie, but in my book this makes America pretty darn lousy.
The U.S. already has THE HIGHEST military budget of ALL NATIONS ON THE GLOBE, at $596 billion, as compared to the 2nd highest, China, who spends $215 billion. The U.S. spends more than twice as much on military as any other nation in the world! And guess who pays THAT bill, friends??? Now, da trumpeter wants to increase it by $54 billion … 9% … to “protect our safety”? We have not had a major terrorist attack from outside groups in over 16 years, there is no other nation poised to attack us, but we must immediately stop protecting the air we breathe in order to buy more tanks, hire more border patrol agents, build a useless wall, and build more nuclear weapons in order to PROTECT OUR SAFETY???????????????
Filosofa's Word 