Cities Cut Government Contracts for Immigrant Detention as Protests Grow

Kudos to communities who have the conscience not to participate in th barbaric separation of children from families.The children did not make the decision to come here and it is inhumane to punish them.Families should be held together.To communities who see dollar signs in detaining children, shame on you- examine your morality.Who knew ICE had so much money to establish centers.It would be great if an agency had that kind of money to build health care centers.

on one hand I understand and support those that object to the Trump immigration policies, and decide to end their contracts, to remove themselves from participating and contributing to his policies and the mistreatment of immigrants on the other hand, those that stay in, will get more funding, and they're level of concern for fair and humane treatment of immigrants is less clear either way, we need to keep the our eye on what our government is doing to immigrants, and not let them be mistreated simply because they want to come here

".... lucrative ties …. My very first thought when I originally read about the mistreatment of these helpless children was, who is making money off this? After all, what does Trump do that doesn't inflate some bigshot's wallet? Preferably his own.

The United States' only saving grace will be the moral strength of it's towns and villages. At this point the country has to admit that it owns the broken ruler that has taken power. Americans can no longer say all of this is Trump's doing. Trump represents the entire United States, you are all responsible for his actions. These towns are starting to rebel and state that Trump's actions are not representative of American values. Be strong and be true.

It is immoral. Children should not be separated from their families. Asylum seekers have broken no laws. Someday, any community that participates in creating detention centers where people are held will be sued or shamed. You do not participate in atrocities. You do not break international law or the Geneva Conventions for the treatment of refugees. Especially you do not harm children. The trauma of the separation alone causes lifelong damage to children. They are innocent. If you don't want to be compared to those who created concentration camps, then don't do it. There will be a price to be paid in the future. Trump, Sessions, Kelly, Miller, Nielsen and the others may yet be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. Selling the health and welfare of children is pretty similar to providing facilities for kidnappers. So don't.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner: "... for me the line is with our children." How did the children of illegals and asylum seekers become "our children"? As a lawyer, Turner should be able to express himself more precisely. Turner: "I do not want to be an enabler in this process ..." OK, but with all the Federal money available, that just means that someone else will get the money instead.

A terminated contract is a broken contract. The breaker pays out the contract. A lot a tax dollars saved. For some reason, I am thinking the ones terminating are small time, so the big business- friend of someone in the government, prison system will be making even more money

How great is it to know there ARE some entities that value VALUES over money!

What kind of civilized country 1. separates children from parents and 2. with no tracking policy? We may expect this in terrorist nations, third world countries with no technology, countries led by militants. Ashamed to call myself an American.

ICE is what it is, and its move to internment camps and children in cages makes clear what that is. Now the question is, who are we? When will we rid ourselves of this stain on our collective conscience and disband this testament to the worst among us?

But it is a jobs program! There will be other takers.

These communities are showing a moral and ethical sense lost on Republicans in DC and among Trump supporters. Tragically, there are plenty of places run by Trumpers who will gladly hire Arpaio like figures to run Trump's concentration camps.....

I don’t care how Jim Hissong feels. If in his work he is enabling and supporting immoral and racist programs, then he also is immoral and racist. He don’t get to have his cake and eat it too.

Bravo my fellow Americans. We must all stand tall against fascism.

vote out gop to have any hope of saving America; ray sipe

"Small Government" Republicans bringing you billion dollar no bid contracts to build child prisons funded with YOUR tax dollars (but not the millionaires since they got a tax cut). That people support these policies and practices at all has caused me to lose whatever faith I had in this country's potential as a force for positive progress in the world.

Perhaps simple humanity prevails in the end. We (both "regular parents" and child development experts) know how damaging separating children from their parents is, I'm both a parent of adopted children who were abandoned by their parents (and have seen the impact on my sons first-hand) , a social worker, and a member of the group that developed the UN Children's Rights Convention. International law regards Trump's action as torture. https://www.justsecurity.org/58269/zero-tolerance-detention-children-tor... Trump clearly thinks this is just an impediment to his white supremacist aims - ridding the US of its infestations of "furriners". This strategy depends on the acquiescence of companies, local governments and child-caring professionals. When the American Psycholgical Assocaion realized that it had members who developed "enhanced interrogation" ie torture, they updated their codes of ethics to forbid this. Let's hear it also on this issue from social workers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers associations, the ICE union....

in idiomatic modern english, to "cut a deal" is to successfully conclude the negotiation for a deal: to make a deal, agree on a deal, wrangle an opponent into a deal. to "break a contract" means to unilaterally renounce or repudiate a contract. Cities Break Government Contracts for Immigrant Detention as Protests Grow

And...what about the U.S. Airlines who stated (to much fanfare) they would not participate in transporting detained minors? They still are "unknowingly" transporting them.

Local governments should revoke the building and use permits required for these facilities.

I might have advised Springfield or Alexandria to decide differently. The feds WILL find takers -- in Red America, particularly in rural areas. Many detention centers already exist there. The immigrants are farther from good medical care, legal assistance, and church and charitable groups that might help (and might protest abuses). The staff usually are rural people from the most conservative -- and outright racist -- places in America. In some cases the detention centers are located where unemployment is high. The hope apparently is to bring rural African-Americans into the anti-immigrant fold, by giving them job opportunities in human captivity. As staff, they often have little background or training in dealing with people from other cultures, and the immigrants do badly with them. If there were hope that the whole nation shared Springfield's or Alexandria's sympathies, then their protests would be more effective. As it is, they simply mean that the Administration will send more money to the most anti-immigrant communities and solidify its support there; and that the immigrants will be kept in much worse conditions.

Someone should look at the political connections and who is making money out of this fiasco?

The sight of a troop of ICE agents running down an immigrant makes me ask just what is all this costing? What does it cost to pay, equip, and support one of these agents. ...and their job is literally to stop people who want to work, from coming here?! I see the need for a serious look at the return on investment here.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th Congressional District, made abolishing ICE a central feature of her campaign. Nonsense. We need proper border control and enforcement of law and this is not to way to do it. Further it feeds the "takeover" mentality. How? Her district's ethnicity changed rather dramatically and "one of their own" was nominated in place of their long time congressman.

I am a tax payer in Canada. Last fiscal year I paid over $50,000 in taxes and I absolutely do not want one single dollar being spent on folks just walking across the border from the USA into Canada. If the US wants to keep these folks, well good on you. If people like Cortez think that it is good to spend US tax payer dollars on this sort of stuff it is alright by me. However, I would definitely like my government to put in place policies that any refugee traveling through US is processed in the US and not ends up on our border as what has recently happened. It is not the case I am against "poor" folks. What I am against is the influx of people who are not genuine refugees. I am 100% of the belief that these folks are only economic refugees and not refugees in the sense that has been determined by the tenets of being persecuted on the basis of race, religion... etc. A woman being harassed by her husband is not a refugee, a family being harassed by a group of thugs in their city is not a refugee. The local police and other administrative services need to fix these societal issues.

Making money off of misery should be Trump's mantra. There are jobs to be had as guards, ICE agents and of course money to be made by property owners that are willing to rent facilities to the government for the purpose of incarcerating people. Looks to me like Trump was not just focusing on new immigrants crossing the border, but on rounding up those that may have been living here for years and were never given an opportunity to become citizens. Seems similar to another era where people of another faith were vilified, rounded up and sent to internment camps "for their own safety - of course".

This is going to be very unpopular: However I am a LEGAL immigrant and the use of the word " immigrant" infuriates me. These people are here illegally and thus are TRESPASSERS. Immigrants are people who are here legally and who have completed the immigration process. Please get this right. Please do not use the word immigrant just to confuse people, Trespassers belong in jail or need to be deported.

This article should put an end to the frequent assertion that there is no such thing as “open border advocates.” The advocates quoted in the article argue that migrants should not be impeded as they exercise their “right” to cross the border illegally. The article notes that Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have made defunding or abolishing ICE a central feature of their campaign platforms. In addition to illegal immigrants, this would open the border to narcotics smugglers, human smugglers, firearm smugglers, money launderers, etc. That is open border advocacy.

Encouraging. Maybe we can also start making communities, often in rural areas, rethink the goodness of their new prisons, kept filled by excessive sentences primarily dealt to minorities? Suppose you have someone, a parent, who is locked up in your town, hundreds of miles away from their own children. In for murder? Oh, well. But in for selling loose cigarettes, or for similar nuisance charges? Not the right thing to do, especially if you believe having parents staying with their children is key to keeping children from growing up prison-bound themselves.

So, where are all the immigrants going to sleep, if there's no coordinated public policy? Outside? In tents? In the rain and snow?

I think this is the most upsetting event that has happened in the US in my lifetime. I feel very strongly that Donald Trump and whoever supported him in the action of ripping children from their parents is guilty of "crimes against humanity" and should find themselves in the court in The Hague, where the Bosnia war criminals were dealt justice. Trump's unilateral actions are sick to witness in a democracy.

Funny how the Left now claims they don't support open borders, as in unlimited, uncontrolled, immigration, yet they never propose any alternative to at least temporary detention (something almost any alien can experience in routine travels to the US). If a status, let alone identity, is not determined, what else should the government do? Also funny how the Left criticizes some EU states for refusing to hold illegals against their will (they have no problem with those who volunteer to stay in those states and request it), calling them "far right", and yet when the US states fail to cooperate with the federal government, that's "progressive".

I'm really glad to see that some jurisdictions don't want to go along with this, but it's dismal that the federal government can buy support for its policy of separating families by handing out contracts that mean an influx of jobs and megabucks into an area. Also, charitable entities like the Interfaith Immigration Network can support the contract in their area with the argument: "If we don't do it, somebody else will." Such arguments are not known for their moral fortitude. Whoever opposes this policy should denounce it and refuse to participate in it.

I guess as a left of center Canadian I am out of step with my peers in hoping that Trump is the most successful President in history and America is happy and prosperous behind walls that are far stronger than concrete and steel. Every week I visit with friends around the world via my computer where we discuss science technology and the human condition but there is always the elephant in the room: a military and financial behemoth that overshadows ever other superpower that ever existed. Without America the scenes like Canadians replacing the Germans in the Mali relief effort because Mali is of no interest to the rulers of the "United" States. We understand that the scapegoating of refugees from Central America is essentially a result of Reagan's policy and the fixing of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua would have prevented xenophobia and paranoia from being election issues. My parents used the Yiddish expression plotkeh machers to describe America's actions throughout the world.Yours is a nation that destroys cultures and societies throughout the world for economic benefit and then tells your people only you can remedy the situation. This is essentially true but nothing will be remedied when the arms industry benefits so greatly from the continuation of the chaos. Build that southern wall, fear not,the chasm on your Northern border grows wider every day.

Migrants come to our doors, crossing several countries, to escape an abusive relationship or fear or violence. If we take one, then expect to take some 30 or 40 million more. South of the border, domestic abuse in rural communities is fhe norm

Cities to immigrant kids: go live out on the streets while we grownups play politics. Try not to get hit by the cars, oh and by the way, maybe, here's a nickle for ice cream. Now get lost!

Supporting human misery in a private corporate run ICE Detention center in exchange for an economic boom sends the wrong message to Wall Street which finances the political system for their interests, not ours.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the first of Bernie Sanders’ revolutionaries to be elected in a Democatic Primary for Congress. The message is simple: Corporations don’t vote, people do. If you need Corporate Finance to get elected by your constituents, you’re not the best candidate to be their representative. This message is squarely directed at Wall Street embedded Democrats in Congress. The revolution to get corporate money out of our political system is finally underway. Join the revolution and support candidates across the country who Reject Corporate Donations.

The Trump administration needs to understand that this is a humanitarian issue and not a national security one. Treating people like animals is not who we are in America so if states and local governments back away from supporting the federal government it's easy to understand why. We need to learn from history because we are getting ready to repeat it.

State and local governments, major corporations, our allies, all seem to be reevaluating their relationships with the Trump administration. Republican politicians mostly seem reluctant to oppose Trump on much of anything. But some cracks are starting to emerge there too. Perhaps American values aren't dead after all.

Everyone involved in this vile process--federal, local, and contract employees alike--should pay attention to the slow but sure justice that may lie ahead if they participate in Trump's willful abuse of immigrant and refugee children. If these children are "lost" in custody and eventually fostered or adopted, will the responsibility of the enablers who are "just doing their jobs" be any less than that of the Argentine functionaries, social workers and physicians who have been held to account for the adopted grandchildren of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo? Than the physician currently on trial in Spain for his role in stealing the child of just one of the 30,000 leftist or single mothers deprived of their newborns during the Franco regime? The wheels of justice may grind slowly....

First there was the campaign to close the southern border and build a wall to prevent raping, murdering and drug trafficking families from entering. Then there was the separation of children from families and the incarceration of those that may have touched sacred American territory. Then there was the banning of Muslims from certain countries from even visiting. Next it will be the mass incarceration of those who have been here for years and were not given an opportunity to become citizens, even if brought here as a child; then the jailing of Muslims as potential threats to peace and stability; and finally, the jailing of LGBTQ people and those that have had an abortion as people considered to be undesirables. Why not round up all the homeless people as well, and don't forget the drug addicts and those with existing medical conditions and the burden they pose on the health care system. Finally, those that are so poor they depend on government welfare will be given jobs at government camps, the healthy ones assigned to road building teams. Sound familiar??