This is false, by the way, no matter how often it is repeated. The facility might date back to Obama or before, but the lack of hygiene supplies (and the justification for that lack) is pure Trump administration. Which shouldn’t be surprising – the Trump administration is on record advocating for harming migrant children for deterrent purposes.
Based on the words of Stephen Miller and many others in the administration (and Trump himself), it’s exceedingly clear to me that these brutal conditions on the border are useful and positive for their desired policy. I think it should be clear to you that having these facilities in brutal conditions is what they want on purpose, not something that they just happen to have due to incompetence. They’ve said again and again that they want to deter migration by making things like this very unpleasant, up to and including harming children through family separations.
You are flat-out wrong.
The “no soap or toothpaste” complaint came from evil Obama’s deliberate policy to harm children. That guy’s a fucking asshole! Agreed?
Welcome.
I think you’ll like it here.
I hope it does some good…assuming it happens. Basically, to me we are in the triage stage. We need to fix the immediate issues and patch the problems. That means money, material, personnel and logistic support. Once the immediate issues are being mitigated THEN I think we need to start looking at the policies and what the actual goal here is, and start doing some systemic restructuring. IF we are going to increase border security and actually hold those caught trying to illegally enter the US in the numbers we have been doing it, and IF we are going to be going after those already in the country, rounding them up to process them back to their countries of origin, then we need to figure out how to do that better. Or, not. I’m a fan of opening up the Visa program to allow seasonal workers to enter the US, do the work they are doing, then go home again. I think that, alone would help a lot with the problems we’ve been having, as if you are a person wanting to do that work in the US today, you almost HAVE to stay because it’s such a bitch to get back in.
Then we need to start addressing the issues happening in Central America that are causing a lot of the current problem. Those countries need to be assisted and stabilized, and in the long term they need to be made economically prosperous. We don’t have a big issue with Canadian’s streaming illegally across the border, and, ironically, we don’t have that big an issue with Mexican’s doing that either anymore (contrary to what seems to be a popular belief), because those countries have both got jobs and prosperity at home. Right now, many countries in Central America are melting down or on the brink because of Venezuela’s melt down and literally millions fleeing certain starvation, which is destabilizing the region and causing lots of folks to head towards the US.
This does not support your position (and your characterization is factually false):
The “motion now at issue” is regarding the requirement for conditions to be “safe and sanitary”, per the “Flores agreement” (from the 90s, IIRC). There have been many disputes about what is “safe and sanitary” (regarding a wide variety of characteristics) for decades, including in the Obama administration. But only in the Trump administration has it specifically been about lack of hygiene supplies and blankets (among other complaints), and only in the Trump administration has a lawyer argued that hygiene supplies and blankets are not required for conditions to be “safe and sanitary”.
And only in the Trump administration has it been the policy to purposefully make children suffer for deterrent purposes. It’s quite reasonable to believe these facts are related.
HD, is it Obama’s problem to fix, or Trump’s?
This isn’t getting you anywhere.
For some, it’s obvious that the whole point is NOT to fix any problem, but rather to ASSIGN BLAME.
You are flat-out wrong. The unsanitary conditions that gave rise the complaint existed during the Obama administration. Here is some additional documentation on the case.
Just for fun, I was wondering how hard it would be to take in 4 of these children, and do it on the paltry sum of only $750/child/day. Here’s a tentative budget I came up with.
**4 kids, one year, $750/day/kid
budget = $1,095,000**
Salary – me, executive director of child procurement and oversight = $150,000
Cook – I don’t like cooking. 20 hours/week @$30/hour = $31,200
Cleaning – I don’t like cleaning. 20 hours/week @$30/hour = $31,200
Gardening/pool maintenance – I will be too busy. 20 hours/week @$30/hour = $31,200
Psychologist/counselling. Probably a good thing for these kids $200/hour, 3 hours/week/child for one full year = $124,800. A big ticket item, but worth it, I think.
Private school tuition. I think they deserve this, right? $10,000 per child = $40,000
Music lessons, art lessons, swimming lessons… these things are good for kids. $5,000/kid = $20,000
Rent of 6 bedroom house in El Paso:
- luxury home in Loretto/Radford
- 6 bedroom, 3.5 bathrooms
- Den, family room, fireplaces
Cul-de-sac close to schools
Fenced back yard with pool, sauna
Kitchen with granite counters, all stainless appliances = $3,000/month, $36,000 total
Furniture for house:
Bedrooms @ $10,000 each = $60,000 Kids will have to make to with just a small TV in each of their private bedrooms
Living room = $15,000
Other rooms = $20,000
Food - average cost in USA is $2641 per person per year, so lets say $5000 = $25,000 including me.
Clothing, other costs per child = $10,000 each per child = $40,000. We can probably afford soap and toothpaste on that.
Utilities, other monthly incidentals = $2,000/month = $24,000
Cell phones for kids and me $300/month = $3600
Car. I”ll need a 7 passenger Range Rover discovery. = $80,000
Insurance, gas, etc. for car = $15,000
Restaurants Once/week for 5 people@$150 = $7,800
Holiday. Kids should go to Disneyland, right? Hotel and airfare = $7,000 Food = $2,000, Disney tickets = $5000 Souvenirs= $1000 total = $15,000
Christmas and birthday presents for kids = $5,000/kid = $20,000
GRAND TOTAL $789,800
Hmmmm. Better give myself a bonus. $150,000 bonus for doing such a good job.
Total = $ 939,800
You know what? I’m going to just return the excess $155,200 to the taxpayers.
This does not dispute anything I said. There have long been court cases about the “safe and sanitary” requirements of the Flores agreement, which I said multiple times. This is the first time the specific disputes about “safe and sanitary” conditions were about hygiene supplies, blankets, and the other specifics of this case.
Once again:
Only under Trump did CBP “fail to provide adequate food and water to minors, that it did not maintain the facilities at adequate temperatures, and… deprived the minors of sleep by confining them on concrete floors under bright lights”, and did not provide “soap, dry towels, showers, toothbrushes, and dry clothes”.
These were new complaints under the Trump administration. And the Trump administration is the only one that advocated for purposefully harming children for deterrent purposes.
What you are arguing is mostly factually false, and the parts that aren’t factually false don’t conflict with the assertion that it is the Trump administration that denied and then try to justify denying children toothbrushes, soap, blankets, and more. You’ve shown no evidence that the Obama administration denied children these supplies and then tried to justify denying these supplies to children.
Then please stop responding to him. 
I’ll extend this invitation to everyone else in the thread. HD has been posting things that are patently wrong and incredibly inflammatory since he joined the thread, and it’d really be easier if we just collectively stopped responding. There are real issues to talk about. None of them are furthered by interacting with him.
Just to merge in a topic of another thread, I think the kids are owed reparations of $750 a day on top of the absurd amounts that are being spent on their unconscionable living conditions.
Knock it off. Take your campaign to convince others to ignore posters to the Pit where it belongs.
[/moderating]
Well, good to know where the moderators stand on this issue.
This is false. The document I linked above (and again here) shows that the original complaint, filed in 2015 and ruled on and appealed throughout 2016-2019, made the specific dispute about hygiene supplies:
I favor the free movement of people as long as private property rights are maintained. IOW I am largely an open-borders libertarian. I think that the migrants should be free to travel to and fro as long as they are not intruding upon property without explicit or implicit permission.
It appears the govt is rounding up economic refugees and holding them. It also appears that the migrants should know what lies on the other side and still willingly pass into the territory the US govt dominates. This seems different than past concentration camps, but I will accept the definition offered earlier in the thread.
That said, can you please tell me the difference between these concentration camps and your classic refugee camp? Are the migrants permitted to leave and go back from where they came from if they so choose?
The definition offered earlier says nothing about the conditions of the camp. If this is the case, Obama also operated this system of concentration camps regardless of whether he gave them Colgate or Bob Barker toiletries. I’m glad I never supported a president who operates concentration camps.
Same question to you, Will: Even if everything you say is the truth/whole/nothing but, is this Obama’s problem to fix, or Trump’s?
I think agreeing on some basic facts, like the fact that this same sort of “horrendous abuse” of immigrants (like not having toothpaste fast enough) went on during the Obama administration, could go a long ways towards toning down the hyperbolic language.