President Donald Trump

[onejayhawk]

I would have more sympathy if we did not do the same thing to citizens. Child Protective Services, or whatever they are called where you live, take children from parents constantly.

J

[Sour Masher]

I would have more sympathy if we did not do the same thing to citizens. Child Protective Services, or whatever they are called where you live, take children from parents constantly.

J

They take children from parents unwilling or incapable of giving them the love and care they need. I'm sure mistakes are made, but by and large, you have to be a pretty horrible and abusive parent to lose your children in this country, and even then, showing improvement gets them back.

Are you equating parents trying to bring their children to the US so they can have a better life with parents who physically or sexually abuse their children, or despite the opportunities this country provides people, choose drug addiction over feeding and caring for their own children?

And if you think CPS is a bad program, why does that make you less sympathetic to immigrant parents? That makes no sense.

[B-Fly]

I would have more sympathy if we did not do the same thing to citizens. Child Protective Services, or whatever they are called where you live, take children from parents constantly.

J

I agree with Sour Masher that this comparison is absurd, J. There is a huge difference between taking children from parents based on an assessment that the children are at risk of physical or emotional abuse and neglect, and taking children from parents whose only "crime" is seeking asylum in the US. Seeking asylum in the US is perfectly legal. They're not even "illegal immigrants" - they're conducting themselves in accordance with federal law. Sure, the US has the right to deny the request for asylum and force the family to leave, but there is no justification for taking young children away from their asylum-seeking parents.

[gcstomp]

Remember when the settlers came here to the new world, and the native americans greeted us by forcibly separating parents from their children, we now celebrate this as thanksgiving. Good times. Of course this is evil taking place on a grand scale, and people deliberately conflating the good of CPS, with the evil of ICE is disturbing.

[Hornsby]

The balls on these people seriously, THE BALLS!

CBS This Morning

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@CBSThisMorning

This just in from @davidbegnaud: Border Patrol has reached out to @cbsthismorning and said they are "very uncomfortable" with the use of the word cages. They say it's not inaccurate and added that they may be cages but people are not being treated like animals.

Hey Border Patrol, fuck your "feelings" on this issue...stand up and do what's right.

[Sour Masher]

I guess Trump ran out of ways to spend tax payer billions on the existing five branches of the military, so against the advisement of military personnel, including Mattis, the Air Force, Trump has ordered the DOD to immediately begin the creation of a sixth branch--the Space Force. Making space great again, one tax payer dollar at a time. Maybe we can build a space wall too, but we will make the aliens pay for it.

It gets harder and harder to know what is real news and what is an Onion article.

[revo]

I guess Trump ran out of ways to spend tax payer billions on the existing five branches of the military, so against the advisement of military personnel, including Mattis, the Air Force, Trump has ordered the DOD to immediately begin the creation of a sixth branch--the Space Force. Making space great again, one tax payer dollar at a time. Maybe we can build a space wall too, but we will make the aliens pay for it.

It gets harder and harder to know what is real news and what is an Onion article.

Other countries are either laughing their asses off at us, or enraged, because Dumb Donald obviously is totally unaware there is a long-standing worldwide treaty against colonizing and militarizing outer space.

[heyelander]

Other countries are either laughing their asses off at us, or enraged, because Dumb Donald obviously is totally unaware there is a long-standing worldwide treaty against colonizing and militarizing outer space.

treaties-shmeaties...

[revo]

treaties-shmeaties...

Apparently. "Star Wars" ran into the same issues back in '83.....

[onejayhawk]

They take children from parents unwilling or incapable of giving them the love and care they need. I'm sure mistakes are made, but by and large, you have to be a pretty horrible and abusive parent to lose your children in this country, and even then, showing improvement gets them back.

Are you equating parents trying to bring their children to the US so they can have a better life with parents who physically or sexually abuse their children, or despite the opportunities this country provides people, choose drug addiction over feeding and caring for their own children?

And if you think CPS is a bad program, why does that make you less sympathetic to immigrant parents? That makes no sense.

They also take them away from parents arrested for criminal behavior.

I agree with Sour Masher that this comparison is absurd, J. There is a huge difference between taking children from parents based on an assessment that the children are at risk of physical or emotional abuse and neglect, and taking children from parents whose only "crime" is seeking asylum in the US. Seeking asylum in the US is perfectly legal. They're not even "illegal immigrants" - they're conducting themselves in accordance with federal law. Sure, the US has the right to deny the request for asylum and force the family to leave, but there is no justification for taking young children away from their asylum-seeking parents.

It fits perfectly when the parents are in prison.

There is also an unfounded assumption that the whole family was together. Typically, the kids are sent ahead on the assumption that we will take care of them.

I guess Trump ran out of ways to spend tax payer billions on the existing five branches of the military, so against the advisement of military personnel, including Mattis, the Air Force, Trump has ordered the DOD to immediately begin the creation of a sixth branch--the Space Force. Making space great again, one tax payer dollar at a time. Maybe we can build a space wall too, but we will make the aliens pay for it.

It gets harder and harder to know what is real news and what is an Onion article.

Will the Washington Post do? January 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/obama-administration-placed-children-with-human-traffickers-report-says/2016/01/28/39465050-c542-11e5-9693-933a4d31bcc8_story.html?utm_term=.f4fd81084200

J

[Judge Jude]

"Amnesty International: "This is a spectacularly cruel policy, where frightened children are being ripped from their parent’s arms and taken to overflowing detention centers, which are effectively cages. This is nothing short of torture. The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes, means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both US and international law."

an overbid? and underbid?
plenty of "Holocaust" and "Japanese internment" claims out there as well

are we all looking at this significant issue rationally?

[gcstomp]

How is this not like the great shame of our history, the Japanese internment camps? Well, we weren't ripping infants from parents even then. The fox justification, that people fleeing death, rape, starvation and seeking asylum in this country are de facto criminals, worse we make them less than human, call them illegals. As illegals putting them in cages, even if they are 2 year olds, is simply there own fault. Wow. Evil on a grand scale taking place in our country right this minute.

[B-Fly]

The best balance/tone down the rhetoric thing I can offer is this. First, we shouldn't conflate (1) asylum seekers, and (2) illegal border crossers not presenting themselves at a checkpoint for asylum. Asylum seekers are not breaking any laws and, while the US government can evaluate their application and deny asylum, there is still no basis for separating families seeking asylum, and yet it's happening. That said, my understanding is that the majority of the detentions and family separations are not asylum seekers, but rather border crossers who were apprehended attempting to come into the US unnoticed. (I'm happy to be corrected on that point.) Still, the law does not require that families crossing the border illegally with children be separated from their children. It does, as written, require "unaccompanied minors" to be held in custody less than 20 days. My understanding is that some courts have interpreted/extrapolated that law to also require that "accompanied minors" also be held in custody less than 20 days, and that some are citing this as the justification for removing children from their parents, since the processing and hearings are backlogged beyond 20 days, and they don't want to "release" the adults who crossed illegally, so they remove the minors and place them in foster care or other child protective service driven environments. All of that still ignores the discretion that the administration has around enforcement and prosecution and processing, as well as the discretion to appoint and assign far more immigration judges and expedite processing for families with young children rather than separating the families. But the President has essentially by his words acknowledged that his Administration is exercising their discretion to heavily invest in "catching" border crossers without increasing resources for processing/adjudicating, and that he's banking on the surge in family separations to force the Democrats hands to fund his wall and otherwise get in line behind his immigration policies. These families and these children are being used as political pawns. (And I suppose a Trump supporter would argue that they're being used as pawns by the left to draw outrage against Trump and the GOP, but since this is all a consequence of the Trump administration's deliberate provocations, I'm not incredibly sympathetic to that argument.)

[gcstomp]

A family crossing border, either thru checkpoint or not, has same motivation. Trying to get to better life. I don't draw stark distinction.

[B-Fly]

A family crossing border, either thru checkpoint or not, has same motivation. Trying to get to better life. I don't draw stark distinction.

I tend to agree from an ethical perspective, but when people are throwing around arguments like "They knew the risk when they chose to come here illegally," I think it's important to clarify that the law treats those presenting at a checkpoint for asylum specifically and differently than those "caught" crossing the border "illegally".