Trump Regime planning to set up "tent cities' (aka concentration camps) for unaccompanied migrant children.

[The Romulan Republic]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politic ... 26379.html

The Trump administration is looking to build tent cities at military posts around Texas to shelter the increasing number of unaccompanied migrant children being held in detention.

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.

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

I know that the US government abusing immigrants is nothing new, but Trump and his cronies have escalated the scale and the cruelty of the abuse, deliberately and for political gain. Situations like this, more than anything else, honestly make me wonder how much longer I'll be able to retain my opposition to political violence.

[Zaune]

Situations like this, more than anything else, honestly make me wonder how much longer I'll be able to retain my opposition to political violence.

I know you and I have butted heads on that very issue in the past, but I want you to know that I'm really, really sorry we've got to the point where you're prepared to say that.

[Canis_Dirus]

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

[bilateralrope]

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

The abuse is that the children are being separated from their parents.

The aggressive plan comes at the same time that child shelters are filling up with more children who have been separated from their parents. The number of migrant children held in U.S. government custody without their parents has increased more than 20 percent as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen rolled out the administration's new policy zero tolerance policy that separates children from their parents who now face prosecution.

[Block]

This is disgusting, but can we stop with the unwarranted Nazi comparisons? No one is going to start marching them into showers, putting them in ovens, or lining them up in front of mass graves and machine gunning them.
Kids shouldn't be separated from their parents, and I'm certain that the reason behind it is absurdly petty, like "that'll show em for coming here." One of many stupid, petty and needlessly cruel actions by this administration, hopefully the next Congress looks radically different.

[Simon_Jester]

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

World War Two internment camps for Japanese-Americans say "what?"

[Civil War Man]

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

World War Two internment camps for Japanese-Americans say "what?"

There is also Joe Arpaio, who among all of his other human rights abuses built a tent city as a prison to house the (mostly Latino) people he arrested, and referred to it as a concentration camp as a point of pride.

Which brings us to another similarity that shows us why the tent city is a bad idea. Ever consider what the weather's like in that region? Current weather forecast for El Paso, TX, which is near the fort where they are considering building the camp: Partly cloudy, 93 degrees F (almost 34 C), high of 102 (almost 39 C), low of 77 (25 C), UV Index is 8 out of 10 (very high risk of burns to unprotected skin and eyes). One of the worst things about Arpaio's self-proclaimed concentration camp was that an outdoor tent city leaves its inmates exposed to the elements, and several people died from heat-related ailments. Now repeat for this proposal, but make all of the inmates children.

This is disgusting, but can we stop with the unwarranted Nazi comparisons? No one is going to start marching them into showers, putting them in ovens, or lining them up in front of mass graves and machine gunning them.
Kids shouldn't be separated from their parents, and I'm certain that the reason behind it is absurdly petty, like "that'll show em for coming here." One of many stupid, petty and needlessly cruel actions by this administration, hopefully the next Congress looks radically different.

The actual Nazis didn't start out with the showers, ovens, and mass graves. They started with things like arbitrary arrests and mass deportations. You know, like what Trump and the white supremacists and neo-Nazis he surrounds himself with are doing right now.

When Holocaust survivors are pointing to what's going on and saying, "This is how Hitler got started," the Nazi comparisons are not unwarranted.

[Dartzap]

Given that recent example of a senator being denied access to a kids detention centre for several daya, one has to be.... Wary of a situation where oversight is even less present.

[Ace Pace]

I'd hate to be the token representative but this is about the most uneducated comment I've seen in a while.

This is disgusting, but can we stop with the unwarranted Nazi comparisons? No one is going to start marching them into showers, putting them in ovens, or lining them up in front of mass graves and machine gunning them.
Kids shouldn't be separated from their parents, and I'm certain that the reason behind it is absurdly petty, like "that'll show em for coming here." One of many stupid, petty and needlessly cruel actions by this administration, hopefully the next Congress looks radically different.

As pointed out before, Nazis and generally totalitarian regimes start out with dehumanising language, shifting the overton window of acceptable discourse, gradually changing norms and moving racism to the forefront.
To be more specific, eroding civil norms and embracing more executive authority, such as preventing oversight by the legislative branch are known steps.

[The Romulan Republic]

Situations like this, more than anything else, honestly make me wonder how much longer I'll be able to retain my opposition to political violence.

I know you and I have butted heads on that very issue in the past, but I want you to know that I'm really, really sorry we've got to the point where you're prepared to say that.

Me too. Though it occurs to me that "political violence" was not the most precise choice of words. I make a distinction between violence as a tool to impose one's own political agenda (which I do not support, period), and violence in defense of oneself or others against an aggressor. Admittedly, it can be a very murky distinction, with a lot of grey areas, and some might call it semantics, but I feel that it is nonetheless an important distinction to make.

Momentary anger and the need to vent aside, I really, really, really don't want it to come to violence, because it would represent a colossal failure for the American system, and because it would mean a lot of people (mostly innocent people, probably) suffering and dying. If there's any way to avoid it, short of complete capitulation on human rights or our right to defend ourselves, I'd consider it a duty to take that alternative. But the deliberate mass killing or enslavement of innocents by the state is an absolute red line for me, and while we're not there yet, it feels like we're creeping closer and closer. And when I think about what's happening on the border, and with immigration, it makes me sick. It makes me enraged. And it makes me frustrated that no one seems able to stop it, and that too few seem willing to really try. It makes me want to march down there and kick down the doors of their God Damn detention facilities that Senators aren't allowed to see inside of, and expose whatever's going on there to the light of day.

Already, I feel that the case could be made that US immigration policy represents a sort of low-key campaign of ethnic cleansing, and certainly some of the immigrants will die, directly or indirectly, as a result of US government actions. Those being sent back to dangerous situations will often die as a consequence, and as for the children in these camps, I'll be very pleasantly surprised if they receive anything like adequate care, or if they are not subject to systematic abuse. You put a bunch of vulnerable, dehumanized children in an institution without adequate oversight, and people WILL take advantage of that.

It absolutely sickens me that my government is doing this, and it absolutely sickens me that they are being permitted to do so.

Cause treating them like, you know, human children would mean spending more money on dirty brown foreigners.

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

Others have already addressed this, but while the Nazi death camps are the most infamous concentration camps, they are not the only one. Taking immigrant children from there families by force and herding them into tent cities on military bases absolutely qualifies, and quibbling about definitions is at best seriously missing the point.

As to the alternatives, we could: a) house them in something more secure and healthy than a fucking tent (but that would require spending more money on dirty brown foreigners), and b) give them a pathway to citizenship as swiftly as feasible, so that they could live like equal members of society. That would be the humane, moral course of action, especially for the party that likes to pander to "family values".

This is disgusting, but can we stop with the unwarranted Nazi comparisons? No one is going to start marching them into showers, putting them in ovens, or lining them up in front of mass graves and machine gunning them.
Kids shouldn't be separated from their parents, and I'm certain that the reason behind it is absurdly petty, like "that'll show em for coming here." One of many stupid, petty and needlessly cruel actions by this administration, hopefully the next Congress looks radically different.

That's exactly the reason, by Chief of Staff Kelly's own admission (he described it as a "deterrent").

As to "unwarranted Nazi comparisons", others have addressed this as well as I could:

Position on illegal immigration aside, how is building a tent city to house the children a bad thing? Especially as an easily done cost efficient measure that can be increased or decreased with need? It's not ideal but it's hardly abuse, nor is it very close to a concentration camp.

World War Two internment camps for Japanese-Americans say "what?"

There is also Joe Arpaio, who among all of his other human rights abuses built a tent city as a prison to house the (mostly Latino) people he arrested, and referred to it as a concentration camp as a point of pride.

Which brings us to another similarity that shows us why the tent city is a bad idea. Ever consider what the weather's like in that region? Current weather forecast for El Paso, TX, which is near the fort where they are considering building the camp: Partly cloudy, 93 degrees F (almost 34 C), high of 102 (almost 39 C), low of 77 (25 C), UV Index is 8 out of 10 (very high risk of burns to unprotected skin and eyes). One of the worst things about Arpaio's self-proclaimed concentration camp was that an outdoor tent city leaves its inmates exposed to the elements, and several people died from heat-related ailments. Now repeat for this proposal, but make all of the inmates children.

This is disgusting, but can we stop with the unwarranted Nazi comparisons? No one is going to start marching them into showers, putting them in ovens, or lining them up in front of mass graves and machine gunning them.
Kids shouldn't be separated from their parents, and I'm certain that the reason behind it is absurdly petty, like "that'll show em for coming here." One of many stupid, petty and needlessly cruel actions by this administration, hopefully the next Congress looks radically different.

The actual Nazis didn't start out with the showers, ovens, and mass graves. They started with things like arbitrary arrests and mass deportations. You know, like what Trump and the white supremacists and neo-Nazis he surrounds himself with are doing right now.

When Holocaust survivors are pointing to what's going on and saying, "This is how Hitler got started," the Nazi comparisons are not unwarranted.

I appreciate the need to avoid hyperbole (really, I do). But if you wait until they're machine gunning people into mass graves, gassing them, and putting them in ovens, its too late.

But frankly, what we know is happening is appalling enough, without even discussing the worst-case hypotheticals.

Given that recent example of a senator being denied access to a kids detention centre for several daya, one has to be.... Wary of a situation where oversight is even less present.

Yeah.

Frankly, I fully expect that in a few years, we'll be hearing reports of routine physical and sexual abuse in these places. Hell, considering that a lot of immigrant children have reportedly gone missing, I wouldn't be remotely shocked to find out someone is running a child trafficking ring out of these places. I really hope I'm wrong about that, and its just me being cynical, but there is a long history (the Catholic Church and Residential Schools come to mind) of what happens when you have children who are deemed inferior in the "care" of authoritarian institutions without adequate oversight.

[Patroklos]

You guys know “test cities” /= horrible conditions right? I just lived in one for a month in Jordan, and it was perfectly habitable, sanitary, and comfortable. And that’s in a desert (HI 135) using non mainline utilities (ie mobile generators, RODI water etc.).

Just because most of you have no perception of what tent means outside that one camping trip you did that one time, doesn’t mean you should apply that and extrapolate. If you don’t know what it means, look up the standard US military tent camp components and setups. Or ask.

Tents are just non permanent mobile enclosures. The are used from hell’s cape North Korean labor camps to palatial Burning Man billionaire playgrounds, and everywhere in between.

The hook of this thread is not”separating children” which we have already known for awhile. It’s “tent cities” that is the new information. So what is the link to concentration camps? If it’s “they use tents” you are a fucking idiot.

[Simon_Jester]

If they're tent cities in any way comparable to a lot of the tent-based accomodations that have sprung up to hold illegal immigrants over the past ten to twenty years in the American Southwest, they're going to be a lot closer to the "North Korean labor camp" end of the spectrum than the "Burning Man billionaire playground" end.

So the response to "you don't know the camp is going to suck!" is "Yes, we do. It's a facility for illegal immigrants. It is literally filled with children who've been pulled from their parents. And it is founded by an organization that is at best Dickensian, often Kafkaesque, and at worst actively malicious towards illegal immigrants. And this is happening under the watch of a president whose voter base will do nothing but applaud him for inflicting horrors on illegal immigrants."

The best case scenario is that the facility will be unpleasant. The worst case is, indeed, that it will be the kind of internment/concentration camp where inmates die and oversight is negligible.

[LaCroix]

I don't care so much about the tent aspect as about the fact that there will be ~5000 children of various ages be living there, mostly unsupervised.

All ages, all kinds of social background, traumatised, with no parental or other friend or family support, and nothing to do most of the day - unless they either hold classes (unlikely), or introduce labor (more likely, sadly).

This is going to be like a supermax prison in no time, at all.

[Dominus Atheos]

I don't care so much about the tent aspect as about the fact that there will be ~5000 children of various ages be living there, mostly unsupervised.

All ages, all kinds of social background, traumatised, with no parental or other friend or family support, and nothing to do most of the day - unless they either hold classes (unlikely), or introduce labor (more likely, sadly).

This is going to be like a supermax prison in no time, at all.

Too late.

Trump mural, 22-hour lockdown and no MS-13: Inside overcrowded US child immigration detention centre

Hundreds of migrant children are effectively being “incarcerated” in an immigration detention centre in Texas, according a journalist given access to the facility.

Nearly 1,500 boys are crammed into overcrowded rooms and reportedly given only two hours fresh air a day at Brownsville’s Casa Padre, the largest centre of its kind in the US.

Many were forcibly separated from their families under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy after illegally entering the country, according to MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff.

Read more

Trump administration ‘plans to put migrant children in tent cities’

The number of unaccompanied migrant minors held across 100 centres has swelled to more than 11,000 in the weeks since the government launched the aggressive campaign to deter families crossing the border.

A 20-per-cent rise in children being held has brought the facilities to the brink of capacity, with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) now looking at building tent cities at military bases to hold thousands more minors.

Mr Soboroff, one of the first reporters allowed to tour Casa Padre after the zero-tolerance policy was introduced, said most children slept five to a room in dormitories designed only for four.

The government has allowed the centre, a converted supermarket run by private firm Southwest Key, to exceed that limit because of overcrowding.

“Kids here get only two hours a day to be outside in fresh air,” Mr Soboroff said. “One hour of structured time. One hour of free time. The rest of the day is spent inside a former Walmart.”
US congressman Luis Gutierrz speaks at Washington rally demanding end to family separations at US border

He added: “I have been inside a federal prison and county jails. This place is called a shelter but these kids are incarcerated.

“No cells and no cages, and they get to go to classes about American history and watch [Disney film] Moana, but they’re in custody.”

Children entering the facility for the first time are greeted by a mural of Donald Trump. Alongside images of the president, the American flag, and the White House, are words he once tweeted: “Sometimes losing a battle you find a new way to win the war”.

“[There are] presidential murals everywhere,” Mr Soboroff. “But that one is first.”

There is also a mural of Barack Obama.

“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too,” reads his quote, in English and Spanish, taken from a 2014 speech in which he announced protections for undocumented immigrants.
[casa-padre.jpg]
Children line up for food in Casa Padre's canteen (The US Department of Health and Human Services )

Lights at the shelter go off at 9pm and come on again at 6am.

Children eat and attend school in shifts. They are taught in numbered classrooms with tiny windows, through which they waved at reporters during the tour, also attended by the Washington Post and local media.

“You might want to smile,” journalists were told by a Southwest Key employee. “The kids feel a little like animals in a cage, being looked at.”

The centre’s detainees, all boys aged 10 to 17, stay an average of 52 days before they are placed in foster care or with other relatives.

“The lack of parental protection, and the hazardous journey they take, make unaccompanied alien children vulnerable to human trafficking, exploitation and abuse,” a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families at the HSS told The Independent.

“In some cases many violent gangs, including MS-13, are exploiting loopholes in US laws to bring gang members into the United States or recruit unaccompanied alien children once placed with a sponsor,” he added.

The spectre of gangs has been used by Mr Trump's administration as part of its justification for the crackdown on undocumented migrants and the detention of their children.

However, staff at Casa Padre told MSNBC they had “never had an MS-13 member here, ever”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 98051.html

[Simon_Jester]

I don't care so much about the tent aspect as about the fact that there will be ~5000 children of various ages be living there, mostly unsupervised.

All ages, all kinds of social background, traumatised, with no parental or other friend or family support, and nothing to do most of the day - unless they either hold classes (unlikely), or introduce labor (more likely, sadly).

This is going to be like a supermax prison in no time, at all.

A lot depends on how many adults they have staffing the place, and where they get them from.

[Zixinus]

There is also a mural of Barack Obama.

“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too,” reads his quote, in English and Spanish, taken from a 2014 speech in which he announced protections for undocumented immigrants.
[casa-padre.jpg]

Now that is just petty.

[LaCroix]

A lot depends on how many adults they have staffing the place, and where they get them from.

Knowing this administration - as little as possible, and as unqualified and cheap as they can get them.

[The Romulan Republic]

You guys know “test cities” /= horrible conditions right? I just lived in one for a month in Jordan, and it was perfectly habitable, sanitary, and comfortable. And that’s in a desert (HI 135) using non mainline utilities (ie mobile generators, RODI water etc.).

Yeah, and how much money do you think the Trump administration is going to be willing to spend to provide these children with all the amenities? Given that a) the two main ideological cornerstones of the modern Right are "cut spending/taxes" and "Keep out the immigrants", and that b) the fact that they're switching to tents indicates they've decided that putting them in actual buildings is too costly or too comfortable (or both).

You know damn well that they're going to be treated like cattle (probably worse, since cattle have actual value in our society). You just don't seem to care.

They're also likely to be there a lot longer than a month. But go on, explain how you feel a tent city is suitable long-term housing for children.

Just because most of you have no perception of what tent means outside that one camping trip you did that one time, doesn’t mean you should apply that and extrapolate. If you don’t know what it means, look up the standard US military tent camp components and setups. Or ask.

Or, you know, this is a cheap attempt to substitute ridicule of me for an actual argument, so that you can defend the mass incarceration and neglect of innocent children by the United States government for transparently racist, xenophobic, and partisan reasons.

Tents are just non permanent mobile enclosures. The are used from hell’s cape North Korean labor camps to palatial Burning Man billionaire playgrounds, and everywhere in between.

As Simon_Jester said, its pretty clear what end of the spectrum these ones are likely to be closer to.

The hook of this thread is not”separating children” which we have already known for awhile.

Incidentally, what is your opinion of our government forcibly separating children from their parents as a "deterrent"?

It’s “tent cities” that is the new information. So what is the link to concentration camps? If it’s “they use tents” you are a fucking idiot.

No, its "they are rounding up immigrant children en mass and herding them into these camps because they don't want to a) treat them like the innocent human beings they are and integrate them into our society, or b) at least shell out the cash for proper long-term housing.

[K. A. Pital]

Is Patroklos serious or just trolling? It is a fucking tent slum.

[Eulogy]

Is Patroklos serious or just trolling? It is a fucking tent slum.

And if the kids are lucky that's all it's going to be.

[The Romulan Republic]

Is Patroklos serious or just trolling? It is a fucking tent slum.

Serious, I'm guessing. There's narry a thread where Trump or the Alt. Reich has done something horrible where he doesn't come out to make excuses.

[K. A. Pital]

Sure, but this is so fucking clear-cut. I mean, it's a refugee camp. Look at the prior history of such things and combine 2 and 2.

If you get "5" after summing up, seems like you're not addressing the issue honestly.

[madd0ct0r]

Normally when they say something so clearly designed to be outrageous, I start looking for what they are distracting attention from. Any ideas?

[Broomstick]

The TV news has been featuring video taped tours of a converted Wal-Mart used to house 1500 boys age 10-17 - the "Casa Padre" facility already mentioned. These broadcasts have been offered with a bit of skepticism in most cases. Yes, it looks clean and orderly, with classrooms and a health center and a claimed staff to "resident" ratio of 1:8. But it's just one center and they knew the camera crews were coming. It's not unknown for governments to have a showcase facility and the rest in the system being far worse.

The recent comments from Jeff Sessions and that female mouthpiece of the administration in the official white house press briefing about how it's Biblical to obey the government is just "sit down you peasants and shut the fuck up - we're in charge and it will be as we say". The deplorables love it, the rest of us, not so much. Frankly, it does make more and more of us uneasy, especially those of us who are descendants of recent refugees.

I'm not sure where the tipping point comes, where enough people are willing to man the barricades and try to force a change. Or just get up off their asses and vote. Better yet, do both.

[The Jester]

So the response to "you don't know the camp is going to suck!" is "Yes, we do. It's a facility for illegal immigrants. It is literally filled with children who've been pulled from their parents. And it is founded by an organization that is at best Dickensian, often Kafkaesque, and at worst actively malicious towards illegal immigrants.

And, most importantly, operated by the lowest bidder.