Today was the deadline for the Trump Gang to return the children they kidnapped to their parents. They succeeded in reuniting only slightly more than half.
The Trump Gang says it released 378 children to someone other than their parents. Who were they released to?
The Trump Gang says that 711 children are INELIGIBLE to be reunified with their parents. In what moral universe, under what conditions, under what circumstances, are children ineligible to be reunited with their parents?
Twenty-one children, the Trump Gang says, had parents with "red flags" in their background checks, but these were not explained. What are these "red flags"? What will happen to these children?
Forty-six children, according to the Trump Gang, had a parent with a "red flag" that didn't show up on their background checks. What are these "red flags"? What will happen to these children?
Seventy-nine children, says the Trump Gang, have parents who "were released into the U.S. and could not be reunited." This means that the Trump gang can't find the parents, because they had no system that linked separated children with their parents. What will happen to these children?
The Trump Gang swears that the parents of 120 children "declined to be reunited." Who believes this? Who will check with these parents--if they can be found--to check the accuracy of this claim? What will happen to these children?
The Trump Gang told the court today that they already deported the parents of 431 children and that they are not responsible for reuniting these families. The Trump Gang is refusing to pay the cost of flying these children out of the country. What will happen to these children?
The Trump Gang admits that it can't find the parents of 94 children. What will happen to these children?
The Trump Gang says that seven children were impacted by a different court case. What will happen to these children?
These numbers don't add up to 711. The Trump Gang hasn't explained the discrepancy.
Interviews with the separated families by the ACLU and Families Belong Together offer evidence that the Trump Gang was not honest with many of the parents and children who were separated.
This is heinous. It's heartbreakingly clear that some of these children will NEVER be reunited with their parents. This disaster is on Trump and the Republican Congress, which has refused to allow a vote on immigration legislation.
Why aren't the members of the Trump Gang being prosecuted for child abuse and gross negligence?
Contact your Senator and Congressperson. Contribute to the ACLU and Families Belong Together (familiesbelongtogether.org), who are the organizations working on behalf of these families. March. Protest. Show your anger!
Holding Brown People for Ransom
The fifteen and a half months of the Trump nightmare have been a long nightmare. The last few weeks, with the legalization of child abuse by the United States Government, have been torture. I was spun up enough last night, but then I watched Rachel Maddow break down as she read about the "Tender Age" detention camps. Dealt with my insomnia by drawing this cartoon.
Woke up this morning to the news that Trump will supposedly sign an executive order today ending the separation of families at the border. I'm posting the cartoon anyway, if only to remind myself in the middle of what will no doubt be a day of feverish rewriting of history by the Trump mob, that the President of the United States abused innocent child children to get Congress to pay for his insane wall.
If Trump does sign such an order today, there is no doubt, regardless of the details (which will doubtlessly be far less than satisfying), that this is a watershed moment. For the first time Trump has bailed on a key policy. And in doing so, he has admitted that his prior rationales (the policy was based on a law, the law had to be repealed by Congress, there was nothing that he could do personally) were lies. He has clearly buckled under the worldwide outrage that he and his gangsters purposely ignited and were reveling in just a few hours ago. They were utterly convinced, until this morning, that cruelty at the border would be their winning issue in the November midterms.
Today's developments don't change the reality that the effort to rid this country of Trump and his gang will be long, brutal, and horrific. But this is his first retreat, and the fact that he surrendered may perhaps make this the "emperor has no clothes" moment that the resistance has been hoping for--the crack in the fascist dam that begins to separate Trump from at least part of his family of supporters. For weeks now, Trump supporters have been loyally defending the separation of children from their parents. Most will continue to do so, but take a look at the comments on Breitbart and the Fox News web site this morning from the many Trumpists who are feeling betrayed this morning. Now, for some of them, Trump is not racist enough. As Ann Coulter put it in a tweet this morning, "Liberals cried and America died." As usual, she got it wrong.
Shithole America Hell
The First Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump is elected on a racist platform and a promise to shut down the southern border.
The Second Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump institutes a new policy designed to deter LEGAL immigration by rejecting families applying for asylum, declaring them as illegal immigrants, and separating children--including babies and toddlers--from their parents.
The Third Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump institutes this policy without having prepared for it. Two thousand children are separated from their parents in just six weeks. Existing facilities are quickly overwhelmed. New tent cities for detained children are thrown up in Texas under 100-degree heat. HHS staff is not trained on how to care for these children. The government cannot say if there is a database that maintains information on these children and their parents. It is not clear that whether the government may will be able to reunite these families.
The Fourth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, at the G7 Summit, stuns world leaders during a discussion on migration by telling Prime Minister Abe of Japan "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can ship you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon."
The Fifth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, in a brazen lie, claims that his new policy of separating of families at the border is mandated by "a law passed by the Democrats and forced on us by the Democrats."
The Sixth Level of Shithole America Hell: Jeff Sessions quotes the same Biblical passage used by 18th and 19th century American clergy to justify slavery as a religious rationale for his terrible new policy.
The Seventh Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump, in another brazen lie, claims that he "hates" his own policy of separating families at the border.
The Eighth Level of Shithole America Hell: Trump uses the human tragedy at the border as a bargaining chip to get the Democrats to vote for his border wall next week.
We haven't reached bottom on this despicable chapter in American history. To be continued...