Nevermind. Shoulda read to the end of the thread first.
Thank you. But OP? “What’s the debate Kenneth?”
Pro “Those Border patrol FB posts were reprehensible” .
Con: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQFEY9RIRJA
What is the debate here? Those were horrible FB posts. Does anyone, anywhere disagree?
Czarcasm? 
What do you mean “Democrats?” Civil service in the U.S. was established in 1871, and to the best of my knowledge of history, not a single President or Congress since then has advocated going back to the old days when all government jobs depended on patronage, and every time the boss changed, so did the employees.
And which Democrat has refused to fire Kellyanne Conway after the Office of Special Counsel recommended thatshe be fired for repeatedly violating the Hatch Act?
…does the behaviour of a huge number of Border Patrol agents (which you characterizes as “reprehensible”) point to a systemic problem in both the culture and the make-up of the US Customs and Border Patrol? Does the position of Customs and Border Patrol agent inherently attract racist individuals and how do you stop that? Do the attitudes on display in the Facebook group affect how Customs and Border Patrol agents treat the people they hold in detention? And if someone in the Border Patrol can do this, be filmed doing it, and for their to have been zero consequences for the person driving the SUV, does that point to an even bigger problem of an agency that is completly out-of-control where there is no public accountability?
Ohh, very nice. But who is taking the other side?
I believe I asked those very questions.
But you see, we dont know. So, yes, I’d love to know the answers. How many BP agents are doing this? Thousands? a dozen? None? (maybe they are russian trolls or much more likely EX-BP agents)
But who is taking the other side? What is the other side? That we dont want to know?
So yeah, we all agree- this issue points to a possible serious problem.
Still, no debate, really?
and I do believe I asked this of Czarcasm, but of course, you are welcome to help out. And really, and no sarcasm here- very well put.
…if someone doesn’t “take the other side” that isn’t a problem with the debate, its a problem with “the other side.”
There is plenty of evidence that the Border Patrol has always been brutal, has always attracted white supremacists. The facebook story doesn’t add to this knowledge. It simply gives it context.
“The other side” is using tactics like attacking AOC, bringing up other countries, the “other side” are regurgitating alt-right talking points. The goal is to distract.
No we don’t all agree. People have posted in this thread to “disagree”, to minimize, to recontextualise. This isn’t a “possible” serious problem. Border Patrol were laughing, taking selfies, telling people in detention to ‘drink from the toilets’ literally in front of members of congress. They do it in the open without fear.
I suspect the quality of discussion on the Dope has declined in recent years.
This actually shows that you don’t understand the issue, should not talk about this matter or offer opinions on this matter until you have educated yourself. I actually have partially explained it already in this very thread: the Trump administration has changed how “unaccompanied minors” are classified. They also have started detaining people for the “misdemeanor” of illegally crossing the border. The current humanitarian crisis is created by a Trump Administration shift in policy, I literally posted that in my very first post in this thread: Link
So yes, factually speaking, the number of people that CBP must house is far worse today than at nearly any other time, it’s actually even worse than in the 2014 immigration crisis. The actual number of unaccompanied children (even counting the ones artificially created by Trump Administration policy) has gone down, but their policy of holding more total people has meant that the total number of CDP detentions has skyrocketed. (Supporting documentation: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0318_MGMT_CBJ-Immigration-Customs-Enforcement_0.pdf)
Page 6 of that PDF, labeled ICE - 6 has some of the most pertinent data:
Daily Detainess Avg, Per FY:
FY2015 - 28,449
FY2016 - 34,376
FY2017 - 38,106
FY2018 - 42,188
Those are the only years for which we have totals (the data for 2019 and 2020 are available as “targets”, but not actuals, at least on that chart.) What we do have is this snippet of info from page 43, labeled ICE - O&S - 16:
To explain both the political and practical of this: historically CBP broadly speaking lumped people illegally crossing the border into two categories, mostly reflecting the legal situation. One group are simply illegal border crossers simply seeking to enter the United States for a variety of non-specific reasons, often times to find migrant work. The other category are people seeking refugee status (asylum.) Under U.S. law, the economic migrants captured can be held and are detained usually relatively quickly. If they do not assert refugee status, the process for removing them is quite quick. The asylum seekers are a different matter, under U.S. law they are entitled to significant procedural due process in the Immigration Courts, because of this they cannot be deported rapidly.
Since they cannot be deported rapidly, we can basically house them or release them with an order to return on X date for their next court hearing. In the vast majority of the cases, historically, we simply released them. It should be noted that back in like the 1930s, a white supremacist legislator made it a misdemeanor to illegally cross the border. Technically, an asylum seeker is required to go through a valid border check point station, even though they are entitled to asylum rights regardless of where they cross, it is technically a misdemeanor to cross illegally, even for the purposes of seeking asylum. However, as a practical matter, actually charging all the illegally crossing asylum seekers with that crime, and prosecuting it, would be cost and time prohibitive. So mostly the “crime” of refugees illegally crossing the border was formally ignored. Illegally crossing refugees were detained briefly, CBP would seek to verify if they were convicted felons or not (as they would be handled differently), or previously deported etc; if not, they would almost always be released and expected to return for a court hearing.
The migrants on fast-track for deportation are out of the country pretty quickly. The small number of outright criminals (captured smugglers, previously deported felons etc), are handled separately, and the refugees are basically only held long enough to be processed–that was the standard procedure for a substantial portion of our history. It wasn’t a perfect procedure, but it mostly avoided insane problems. But it did create significant “white resentment” in the talk radio sphere, and thus the term “catch and release” was created. The simplistic view of the “catch and release” antis, is that we were turning a blind eye to criminality, and that we could easily fix it by locking them up, building more walls and arresting more people. The reality is this would flood our immigration court system, it would massively flood CBP facilities designed for short term, temporary detentions, and it would make the quality of life and humanitarian situation for asylum seekers abysmal.
Due to not believing in planning, or actually listening to the advice of others, Trump basically let ignorant immigration hardliners in the administration change how we handle this situation with no concern for the immediate consequences. It was changed in two ways:
- The misdemeanor of crossing the border began being more actively prosecuted and charged, this gives CBP greater justification to hold people as they are technically criminals.
- The Trump Administration wants to break up families, because he believes families migrating together “incentivizes” asylum seekers. He wants them to stay in Honduras an Guatemala, so he wants to send the message: come here, and we take your kids. He actually did this fully for a few months, if you remember the “family separation crisis”, since he was charging all adults for the misdemeanor of crossing the border, all children were being separate from their families. Breaking up nuclear families ended up being so politically unpalatable that this was technically stopped (although we’re hearing report it’s still going on to some degree.) But something that had been less reported on until the issues at the Clint CBP facility, is that while they formally ended the program of splitting up parent/child pairs, they still maintained the policy of reclassification of “unaccompanied” minors. It used to be if a minor crossed with a relative, be it a grandparent, adult sibling, aunt etc, they would not consider the minor unaccompanied. They would briefly hold the adult and child, and then release them together, with the adult receiving an appearance date at a future immigration court hearing. The Trump Administration has been disallowing this process for some time, so many of the current “unaccompanied minors”, are in fact “accompanied” by close biological relatives who may not be their biological parents.
I blamed the Trump Administration for this from day one. I said it in my very first post in this thread, and now I’ve explained it at considerable length.
What I haven’t done is blanket blame the entire CBP, I haven’t stupidly called them Nazis, abolished ICE, or any number of other things. I’ve said if individual Border Patrol Agents are committing crimes, they need punished. If some % of them are acting stupid on Facebook, they do not deserve punishment unless that behavior violates the law or CBP employee policies. I don’t think that’s a crazy position.
Comparisons to Nazi Germany and how “you can’t just say they’re following orders because that didn’t work for Nazis in Germany” is so ignorant on so many levels. For one, by and large we did not actually prosecute most low-level Nazis. Factually speaking the various Allied lead trials of Nazis was limited thus:
There were millions of members of the Nazi party, and probably tens of thousands who were directly involved in running the concentration camps, the vast majority were not prosecuted, particularly because there was a desire not to charge very low level officers and military service members. So even if we agreed with this being some sort of crime against humanity, the actual history of such crimes suggests we do not regularly prosecute and convict people at the level of “guard.” A few concentration camp guards have been prosecuted by Germany and Israel in the 1990s-2000s, but I think the total numbers have been in the tens at most.
However, I do not believe this meets an international legal or American domestic legal “crime” of a sort that individual civil servants are required to exercise their conscience and refuse to comply with legal orders. In the military there is a concept of an “illegal order”, and you have an active requirement to disobey it. This can be required to be made imminently in a combat situation. However CBP operates in a civilian context, its activities are directly tied to an immigration court system and our broader civilian court system. CBP if it just declared unilaterally that Trump’s policy changes were “illegal”, would be acting gravely out of sync with our legal system and our constitution in fact (which does put the President in charge of the executive branch.)
I do think that if California’s prison overcrowding was viewed as unconstitutional, a strong case could be made that overcrowding in detention facilities represents an unconstitutional situation requiring a release system. But that has not been adjudicated yet in our country, and we are a country of laws.
The correct reading of this situation is the Trump Administration imposed very stupid policy, policy that is bad whether it works or not. The policy doesn’t really work, and they did not do even the base level of preparation for enacting the policy. They basically took a big shit on our border apprehension/detention system, and expected career civil servants to just “make it work”, without any concomitant increase in resources. I frankly think we should feel sympathy for border agents just trying to do their jobs in incredibly trying circumstances. They are executors of the law and of executive orders, they do not have the legal agency to decide to stop detaining asylum seekers or to unilaterally just open the door to the detention centers and let people out. That would be a case of executive branch civil servants substituting their opinion for that of our immigration judges and our elected executive branch leadership–that is not how a system of government can function.
Or maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about and it is illegal for them to accept donations. Under the Antideficiency Act, government agencies can’t spend any money or accept any donations other than what Congress has allocated to it. The law was intended to prevent government from ever being “beholden” to private interests.
There has been reporting on this–which you probably spend too much time foaming at the mouth and being outraged to read; that has specifically mentioned Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy have proposed an amendment to the Antideficiency Act that would allow CBP to take donations of humanitarian supplies.
See, yet again, you are showing you do not know anything factual about the refugee crisis at the Southern border it is shameful for you to slur hardworking civil servants when you are entirely ignorant about the basic facts of the situation..
When an Unaccompanied Minor is detained by CBP, they are intended to be transferred to HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within 72 hours. [This does not always happen, specifically due to lack of funding and resources.]
Between FY 2012 and FY2018, the following number of children were referred to ORR from DHS each year:
FY2018 - 49,100
FY2017 - 40,810
FY2016 - 59,170
FY2015 - 33,726
FY2014 - 57,496
FY2013 - 24,668
FY2012 - 13,625
ORR’s primary goal is to get children placed with sponsors ASAP, while ORR is better equipped to deal with children than CBP, they are not designed as long term care providers. The average amount of time a child spends with ORR is 60 days. The number of children released to sponsors from FY2014 to FY2019:
FY2019 - 46,312
FY2018 - 34,815
FY2017 - 42,497
FY2016 - 52,147
FY2015 - 27,840
FY2014 - 53,515
Supporting datasets:
You may be wondering, “Wait, that big uptick in 2014? Why wasn’t there a crisis then?” There was, you just forgot about it and absolved Obama for any complicity in it.
Wiki page on: 2014 American Immigration crisis
FWIW, Obama did take some flak at the time. Unlike Trump, I think Obama wasn’t being actively malicious, he was trying to make the best of a rough situation FWIW–I say that as someone who voted against Obama 2x.
However at the end of the day there is a very simple fact:
I know significantly more about you on this topic, have researched it and followed this situation for years. You are someone who I think has only become interested in this as a means of attacking Trump, being outraged, and saying outrageous things. You need more education on the topic before you should feel entitled to spew out uninformed opinions.
I also oppose Trump’s Presidency, I voted for him in both the primary and general election. I do not believe that justifies behaving ignorantly or being willfully ignorant of information.
We lack the information required to make determinations about this. There are 9,500 members of the Facebook group. We have no idea:
- How many are current or former CBP agents
- How many have read the offensive material
- How many support the offensive material
- How many oppose the offensive material
Without that information it is quite literally impossible to make any broad conclusions.
…I never suggested we make determinations based **only **on the Facebook group. This is a Great Debate. We can bring in other evidence and discuss other things: you did this earlier in the thread, the rest of us can do that as well.
We don’t need to make **broad **conclusions. We can make specific conclusions based on the totality of what we know if you would prefer.
Here?
Does anyone here think those reprehensible FB posts are OK? :eek:
There, there- we are in grave disagreement. This isnt even a so-so Debate. This is actually a not well written Pit rant about the BP.
Enough. If you don’t think it’s a debate, don’t participate. No more of this junior modding.
[/moderating]
Ok, fair enough.
So let’s dial back–every country needs police. Every country needs prisons and men to guard them. Every country needs customs agents to control trade to varying degrees–a landlocked country like Austria that is in the EU will receive a limited amount of trade that has to go through the customs process, but still receives non-Schengen tourists and even has had to deal with the refugee crisis. These are positions of government authority that allow some degree of legal power over other people, petty tyrants will always be drawn to such positions. It is indeed the job of government oversight and political elements to control this as best as possible.
I think there is weak evidence that there is a “systemic problem” with CBP agents, based on the accounts of a politician like AOC–a known and serial liar, a single opinion piece calling CBP toxic, and an unsavory Facebook group of uncertain provenance. It should be noted the lawyers that were inspecting the Clint facility as part of the Flores settlement, i.e. the ones not showboating for their Instagram followers, opined that they believed most CBP agents actually wanted to help the migrants as best they could, but were dealing with systemic problems.
…we don’t all agree that “this issue points to a **possible **serious problem.” Emphasis on the bold.
I disagree with your statement. I don’t think there is a “**possible **serious problem.” I think there is an **actual **serious problem.
As to whether or not “anyone here think those reprehensible FB posts are OK” thats an unrelated question that as a non-mind-reader I wouldn’t be able to answer.
I wonder how hard it would be for some foreign adversary to fake something like this. I could imagine a blockbuster like this being released a couple of days before an election. That would give it time to spread, and not time enough to be debunked.
…did the Trump Administration need to shift policy that changed how “unaccompanied minors” are classified? A simple yes or no would suffice.
In June 2018 a Border Patrol SUV hit Paulo Remesthen drove away. All captured on video. Nobody has yet been held to account. Is the current government doing its job of both allowing independent oversight to control “petty tyrants” as best as possible at the moment?
Is that the sort of person “political elements” should let be in charge of Immigration or Customs Enforcement, or not? Is he the best person to be appointed as the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection?
Do you think we should even be having this discussion? Or do you think that this is “simply how it all works”, and we don’t need to be having this debate?
Even if we were to accept your characterization of AOC (which I obviously don’t, I think the characterization is complete and utter bullshit) we can remove AOC completely from the discussion and still provide you with plenty of evidence of a systemic problem.
Is that all there is? Really? I cited that ‘opinion’ piece. I didn’t cite that single ‘opinion’ piece because that was the only evidence that is available. I cited it because it was representative of the point I was making at the time. Your arguement is disingenuous. And its also disingenuous to characterize long-form reporting with multiple citations which essentially provided a history lesson as “an opinion piece.”
“Most wanted to help” doesn’t mean a lot really. This is what they are doing. That is their job. I honestly couldn’t live with myself being responsible for this. Could you live with yourself holding people in cages like that? Or would you be taking photos and leaking to the media? Quit your job in protest?
Or would you, like all of the CBP agents who apparently “really wanted to help”, just follow orders?
But it wasn’t released days before an election, and there is absolutely no evidence that this Facebook page was faked by some “foreign adversary”.
Do not accuse other posters of lying in Great Debates.
[ /Moderating ]