Do you have evidence that they are well-run and the kind of place that kids belong?
Before these border issues came to everyone’s attention, would you think that the American Academy of Pediatrics was not a credible organization? But – just to make clear – today you do not think of them as being very credible?
On one hand, doubting the veracity of anything that any officials related to Trump state is not entirely unreasonable. On the other hand, the fact that a Department of Justice lawyer argued under oath before a court that DHS is not actually required to provide soap to people held in the camps and therefore that it’s OK that they don’t, which includes openly admitting that they aren’t providing things like soap and toothpaste, is about as credible as one can get.
This goes back to my earlier comment about Trump supporters; we have a government lawyer stating in court that they are not providing soap to people detained in the camps, and rather than be outraged at the flagrant abuse of people and the flagrant disregard for the laws of the United States, they dismiss it all as ‘fake news’. They have no problem with torturing immigrant children, and stick their fingers in their ear and deny it when the government itself states what the policy is, but do cry and clutch their pearls if the concentration camps are called such.
I found this article pretty compelling on why the whole Concentration Camps thing is bullshit. I’m fairly certain just about no one else in this thread will, and I have no idea of the politics of the people who wrote it. Probably neo-Nazi or conservatives or something like that. I didn’t bother checking and, frankly, don’t give a fuck. The arguments themselves seem pretty compelling to me, so I’m going to quote some from the article. You all probably shouldn’t bother reading since it’s almost certainly some evil conservative organization.
This is kind of the crux, here IMHO:
But, you know, it’s not about calling Trump Hitler or trying to make that mental connection. :dubious: As I said earlier, show me someone who is pushing legislature to fix the issues, to up funding and resources for this. That isn’t want is happening. Instead, what seems to be happening is folks arguing about definitions and trying to craft the narrative for political gain or advantage, to paint one side or the other in a certain light. It doesn’t seem anyone actually wants to address the problems (and they are many) with what we are doing, instead, they want to score points. If the Dems were pushing, hard, for increased funding to address the myriad deficiencies then I’d be all for that…it’s what we need to be doing. Instead of mud slinging for political gain with both sides basically fucking up and no one trying to fix the problem. And by ‘fix’ I don’t mean ‘all these folks should be released immediately and no one detained’, as that isn’t a fix IMHO. We do need border control, and it’s ridiculous to say we don’t. We need a way to hold the folks who are illegally trying to enter the US when they are caught and to process them, either back to their home countries or into the queue on the path to become citizens. I’m all for fixing our broken immigration system and allowing more folks in, but just letting in everyone and anyone who feels like illegally crossing the border isn’t an answer.
Yeah, like I haven’t blamed the Pub’s for getting us into this mess by having Trump pull the trigger on this mess without a single thought to how to logistically or fiscally support it and them just playing along.
What the ACTUAL fucking short version? A FUCKING pox on both your houses, you stupid shits. How’s that?
The problem isn’t funding, the problem is that the agencies holding people in concentration camps want conditions to be as bad as they can legally get away with. This won’t be fixed by giving people who think that they don’t need to provide kids with soap and toothpaste more money. Also on the allegedly ‘unbiased’ article
Calling for the abolition of ICE is not equivalent to calling for no detentions, it’s a actually a conservative (not right-wing) position calling for us to go back to what we had in the 1990s. ICE is a recently created law enforcement agency, it was only created in 2003, so clearly it’s possible to have functioning border controls without that specific agency. Similarly, “criticisims of border patrol protocols” is not equivalent to calling for no detentions at all, it’s criticising certain positions. Any article claiming to be unbiased that paints things like ‘lets get rid of this recent addtition and handle things like we did in the 1990s’ as a radical view equivalent to opening the border is clearly highly biased.
Well, I actually did check, just to make sure who we’re talking about wasn’t a historian, or otherwise had relevant credentials.
She doesn’t. She’s an editor at RedState. And the “crux” of her argument boils down to “But we really neeeeed the concentration camps!”
I’d appreciate it if we all would refrain from contradicting the opinion of countless relevant experts with the terrible arguments of right-wing media editors.
I never said the article was unbiased…I, in fact, told you not to read it because at a guess it was from a conservative author and probably publication. So, with that out of the way, I disagree. Funding IS the issue. That and just poor planning, as well as political fuckupery on both sides. Trump et al got us into this mess, and the Dems are, IMHO, trying to score points on it instead of trying to fix the core issues.
I’d be hesitant to ascribe the label “well-run” to much of anything the government does, but I recognize that they’re in a bit of a bind with the recent surge in illegal immigration overwhelming their current infrastructure and they seem to be scrambling to catch up. It probably would have been easier if Nancy had agreed to President Trump’s request for additional border security funding. Oh well.
No. I’ve thought the AAP has been pushing a partisan angle for a long time now.
You’re absolutely incorrect. The problem is policy. Who they are deciding to hold, for how long and rather public admission that these harsh conditions are meant as a deterrent. They grafted these policies onto the old detention infrastructure and you thnk funding helps because then the old infrastructure might manage the new policy.
In my opinion (and others), funding is really not the issue. The reason that there are poor conditions in the children’s isolation camps (calling them “concentration camps” seems to hurt some people’s feelers), is not a lack of money.
It’s not that ICE can’t afford soap. Or a way to clean the children’s clothes. It’s that they DON’T WANT TO. The position of this president and his administration is that conditions for these children should be made as terrible as possible, as a deterrent. To send a message; “The USA is a terrible place to come for asylum. Don’t come here. We don’t want you. You will be treated terribly and your children will be put in cages with no hygiene.”
More money will not help when those in charge don’t want to spend money to improve conditions. When the VERY POINT is to give them poor conditions.
The reason this is so unconvincing is because we have the words of Trump, Trump officials, and Trump advisors – they instituted the family separation policy for reasons of deterrence. In other words, they wanted to harm and threaten to harm families so that migrants would be afraid to come. Harming children and families wasn’t a bug, but a feature – it was what they wanted to do. Further, we have on record Trump officials arguing that these children didn’t need hygiene supplies and blankets, and other barbarous nonsense.
The article above is just trying to spell out the kindest fairytale to make Trump look as good as possible. When we look at the whole story, including Trump’s words and the words of his administration, it’s clear that harming children is part of what they’re trying to do (not because they’re mustache-twirling villains, but because they think harming these children is helpful to deter migrants from coming – still monstrous, but not cartoon-villain monstrous).
Well, you are disagreeing with me, even though I did mention this. I said funding was part of the problem. There are many others. In the short term, however, I think funding and increased manpower and logistics support are important to fix the chronic issues in the short term. I’m unsure how anyone thinks that the best way to solve this is to score political points or debate deeper policy positions or program infrastructure while we have an immediate problem, to be honest. Should we be looking at the deeper issues and policies down the road? Absolutely, especially our immigration and refugee system. But right now we need to fix the chronic problems with a bunch of folks who have illegally attempted to enter the US and need to be processed in as humane of conditions as possible. We need to address the issues with families, especially since it’s a bit more complex than many in this thread seem to realize, as children have been abducted and used as cover for folks trying to get into the US. There are a host of issues, but I think that right now, the immediate one is to try and start actually solving issues, not fucking around more or pointing fingers. YMMV…it almost certainly does, since just about everyone in this thread is against seemingly everything I write on this subject.
The irony of the fact that my own family came to the US illegally and basically in these same conditions and areas isn’t lost on me.
That would make a whole lot of sense if Democrats hadn’t already offered Trump BILLIONS in additional border security funding, provided it wasn’t used to build The Wall.
Yeah, like I haven’t blamed the Pub’s for getting us into this mess by having Trump pull the trigger on this mess without a single thought to how to logistically or fiscally support it and them just playing along.