The children are the bait to catch the adults and deport them. You always want to use what the fish desires most to set the hook.I am ashamed of our government for this policy, and I am doubly ashamed that they chose to put this children’s gulag in my home state. I certainly would not wish it on anyone else, though.
11
Children already disadvantaged in multiple ways shuffled around and sent to a desert!!! What does this say about our values. Does anyone recognize how wounding this may be for for the victims of such callous disregard of the vulnerability of these young people???
Gretchen Spiegel
10
What trump and his henchmen are doing, along with for-profit, greedy concentration camp owners, is disgusting, and America should be ashamed. The NYTimes should post daily on its front page the numbers of children being kidnapped and held without their parents and how many children are being held in the concentration camps.
17
There is something decidedly wrong with the citizens of America. Every single one of them knows their families came to this country as immigrants. Every single one of them knows had their grandfather's or great-grandfathers and mothers not come to America their lives and the lives of their children would be markedly different, and probably less prosperous. Yet, they blithely recite the most specious arguments against other people simply trying to do the same thing for their families.
America's shame is embedded in every comment here trying to fault mothers and fathers desperately trying to save their children's lives and their own. These people had no way to understand the hearts of America had turned against them in such a cruel way.
My Grandma used to say "God don't like ugly", her country way of saying, God does not appreciate it when humans are cruel just because they can.
9
November
November
November
Hopefully even a fervent anti-immigration activist would see this and admit it is not who we are -
Back home in November, maybe, just maybe, voters will say "I do not want someone who goosesteps their agreement with everything and anything trump says or does."
6
There is no excuse for deliberately causing children to suffer. None whatsoever.
12
I hope I can post this. I know what this is like. My very educated
and affluent parents declared a hundred years war the day they were married. One day before kindergarten they had a terrible fight and then they dressed me up in my sunday clothes that we went to church in every Sunday and told me that they were going to 'send me to an orphanage' and didn't want me anymore. Worse they pushed me towards the other and said "Here you take him, I don't want him' as I screamed in total terror and horror for over an hour. They were also laughing at my terror and helplessness. I was totally betrayed by my own biological mother and father. However that terror in such a sensitive developing brain was so intense, that I was never *ever* the same again, even today as I type this.
Now I know this goes on behind closed doors of the well off because I was there everyday surviving the beatings yet to come, however I never thought I would see my own government here in the USA become a tool for childhood terror and serial tramua as exists in so many other underdeveloped countries of the world.
If this is what we represent to the world now, it's all going to come back to bite us very hard. And as I finish this out I want to thank my maternal grandfather, a musician and overworked factory worker, who saved my life early on 'simply by taking me in his lap at the dinner table' and holding me, and thus saving me as the precious child I was and always will be deep inside.
12
Thankyou NYT for not letting this move to the background. As a mother my heart cries for what these kids and their parents are going through. I don't often use words like evil, but this truly is. We have to keep at this - protesting & calling our representatives and doing everything that we can to get them out of this terrible situation and reunite as many of these children with their parents as we can.
8
From a practical standpoint, the parents of children who smuggled their, or some one else's children, should be additionally charged with child endangerment. ....The facts would justify it....Removal of the children from the offending parents is standard in that situation for U.S. citizens, even if the parents weren't incarcerated for other crimes.....Cruel perhaps, but legally justifiable, in my opinion....A Central American marketing campaign explaining the new procedure would be useful also.
9
The parents who exposed smuggled their children across the deserts of Mexico seem to be blameless in this publication. Though you know that likely 1,000's have died making the crossing and are often abused in multiple ways before crossing the border....These parents are not heros. They are child abusers...
If a U.S. citizen exposed a child to those kind of dangers, the children would be taken from them by the government. They get taken now for much, much less egregious abuse.
14
So parents and their children fleeing gangs, poverty, corruption and violence in Central or South America are innocent victims who need America to take them in and provide them the essentials.
Yet American citizens living in cities facing gangs, poverty, corruption and violence largely due to drugs and crime flowing across the border are on their own. The same with Native Americans facing similar issues on tribal territory. They all get labeled thugs and predators.
Keep it racist America. The feigned compassion for illegal cheap labor is laughable.
9
The country that I chose to become a citizen of is now operating concentration camps. Concentration camps for children no less. I couldn’t possibly be more ashamed!
15
I am so sick of reading comments by folks who point out the illegality of these children being here and blaming the parents. Why do you think they fled in the first place? Murderous gangs trying to recruit their kids. Violence in the streets. Drug cartels. Go ahead, scapegoat the mothers. But how do just shrug your shoulders at helpless children being herded into a tent city. Who's to say a few dozen won't be trafficked for sex or slave labor? How would they even be missed? God this country has become so cruel and cold.
21
republicans are criminals - the current administration is an enormous criminal enterprise.
12
Kids in tents and now the winter is coming.
Another Guantanamo, but now on the mainland?
Will it be less than a mass kidnapping, which is due to cardinal punishment in some states?
Time for somebody to write "The Ugly American II"?
Who is taking care of all these children, Red Cross or US Immigration Auth.?
8
Sigh . . . I am so so tired of the NYTimes -- and its readers -- using the word "immigrant" in this context.
I was an immigrant. Applied to be such before I entered the US. After months of observing all procedures, getting lung x-rays, demonstrating that I would not be a burden on the country, etc., etc., I was granted immigrant status, then entered, got my green card (which was never! left at home, lest I be accused of being "undocumented" -- what a quaint term in this context), and, after schooling, working, establishing myself as worthy, applied for and received citizenship. I will never forget that day in the Baltimore Federal Court building. Even now, half a century later, its memory brings tears.
These folks are not "undocumented immigrants." They are, in Federal law, "illegal aliens." They are no more entitled to be here or receive benefits that would a thief be entitled to live in the store he broke into and then asking for consideration on the basis of his need for cash.
15
@Texas Liberal
They are human beings.
16
Sooner or later, Trump and those who follow him will drive this whole nation stark raving mad.
7
What sort of parent pushes their child across the border unaccompanied by any family member, except perhaps for another sibling? To what end? Where is that fact mentioned in this ludicrous debate?
13
The NYT Editorial Board needs to cleanse their brains for a refresh. --
Hit Congress on immigration -- Australia and Canada each has effective, selective immigration policies. Why can't Congress establish a group to come up with a framework?
We are such an unintelligent nation, with such inept elected officials.... :)
6
The Hague should charge the Trump administration with 'crimes against humanity' over this.
20
A Harsh response to a nearly intractable problem by
the Government.
Why no mention of who encouraged these children to
enter the United States ?
What solution does the Editorial Board have for the
short run and long run.
8
Disgusting!
Grotesque!
Unchristian ... if you care about that.
9
That the current situation is unfair and inhumane should be obvious to any informed and fairminded observer.
What to do instead, and how to do it, are less than obvious, however.
A particularly nasty aspect of this policy of immigration-restriction- by-mistreatment is that if it is later lifted (unless done very carefully) there is liable to be a surge of pent-up demand that can then be seized upon as justification for the harsh treatment policy in the first place. Striking terror in would-be immigrants thereby becomes a self-rationalizing phenomenon.
Ultimately, where there is a fundamentally incompetent and unfit president, fundamentally elected to be a wrecking ball, and that president commits a series of impeachable offenses, the only remedy is an impeachment process leading to resignation or removal.
6
How can this be tolerated? Keep it in the news. It’s horrifying.
7
@ Larry Gr
Consider this. If a child is sexually or physically abused by his parents, it is the parents fault. is it not? Why should the taxpayer spend money for lawyers, social workers, foster parents Etc? The state did not cause the situation, so why should it obligated to correct it? Is it perhaps because we regard children differently than we do adults? Do we see children as more in need of our help and more deserving of it? Do we have a natural sympathy for children - even if they are not our own or of our own race or ethnicity?
4
imagine if a court case regarding the holding of foreign children on American soil were to make it to the Supreme Court and he was to cast a deciding vote as to whether this is an American practice that can continue or it violates an element of our reason and being that must be abolished.
3
Is is easy to imprison children with no one to protect or defend them, it is harder to do this to adults that may just find lawyers. In years to come this dirty secret made up of children incarcerated in cramped shelters in the desert for months leading on to years, will come back and back again to haunt the Republicans who allowed this backward and evil policy to continue.
Please vote these people out so we can find sane and sensible immigration policy that we can live with. These are scapegoat children that have no solution in sight and I pity them with all my heart. They are victims of a vindictive policy,
and they have done nothing to deserve this severe imprisonment. This policy is like a dirty family secret swept away behind closed doors so no one will find it out. Actually it is cruel, vindictive, short sighted, unnecessary, evil and totally against what this country has always tried to be. It is a stain on the US reputation that will come back to haunt you. It is shameful that it is allowed to continue. It is corrosive to all who allow it to continue and IT MUST STOP.
8
Let's suppose that our immigration policy toward illegal immigrant families and unaccompanied illegal alien children was different. Let's imagine that upon arrival they'd all be guaranteed housing, food, medical treatment, educational support, and anything else they needed to live comfortably in the U.S. What do you think the result of such a policy would be? I think we all know the answer to this one.
9
Nobody forces anyone to illegally invade our country. If you don’t like the treatment - go home.
15
Let's make sure a catastrophic election like this doesn't happen yet again:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
4
Some number of commenters offer an opinion like this: "If this will defer them from breaking our laws and dragging their children here, then keep doing it." This echos what the Trump administration has said.
But in the US justice system (I know because I was born and spent the first half of my life there) punishments and deterrents are measured to be proportionate to the offense. We don't sentence someone caught exceeding the speed limit to be executed. We usually don't even sentence them to jail time. Yet we could end speeding right away if we would only sentence offenders to die. Or maybe stash their children in tents out in the desert.
Now, since immigrants are still crossing the border, we need to do something worse. If inflicting severe pain on people works, maybe we could torture those children. (Oh, whoops, we already are, psychologically torturing them. Now what? Pulling out fingernails? Let the parents hear the screams?)
This is why the claim that the "end justifies the means"(if it works, it's the right thing to do) has come to summarize immorality, and it is how the Nazis arrived at the Holocaust. It worked to rid the country of Jews. This article's photo of the empty shoes, animal toys, wire fence and guards is an alarm bell that the US has already gone too far in that direction. There is sadism in these policies — an intent to cause suffering far beyond what would be warranted by reasonable deterrents and punishments.
8
Why is this an issue? If the illegal aliens stay home in their country then no issues or problems.
Don't dump your kids in the United States.
Don't invade our country. The US is a sovereign nation, respect our laws.
Issue solved.
If their country has economic problems then start a revolution.
Don't give us your problem.
17
There are economic problems in the US so we should hold a revolt. I would love a revolution against this administration. A good revolution would stop people coming here & would have good citizens leaving. By all means a revolution in our economically unequal country.
1
Jesus. We need the Times to keep at this. Please get photos however you can of this tent city.
I am reminded of the Japanese internment camps.
WHY AREN'T WE BETTER THAN THIS??
6
@AJ Why? You think there was something wrong with Japanese internment camps? The Japanese attacked us in cold blood. Had I been in charge internment camps would have been the least of your problems.
3
the only way this hideous situation can be solved is to reunite these children with their parents.These families were legitimate refugees and should have been treated as such..instead we have white men leaving this grotesque stain on the USA because they are racist and fear mixed race people..deploable.
5
The crisis actually began with the United States enacting laws that we (and the whole world) knew we weren't going to enforce. Everything that has happened since, flows from that.
We all benefit from the work illegal aliens do in fields and restaurants and slaughterhouses. We think they should be grateful to live beneath all of us for the great favor of looking the other way at their immigration status in our virtue signalling, sanctuary cities. Shame on us. All of us, Both sides have had opportunities to push through all encompassing, humanitarian legislation (Obamacare, anyone?) and have consistently chosen not to. Nobody's hands are clean.
7
@Working mom: Reagans amnesty was the time to institute a national ID system to make it the last time amnesty would be the only humane way to deal with the situation.
7
Hate was substituted for love in the so-called family values party. Separating the families was an atrocity. Putting children in what are essentially child prisons with guards to prevent them from escaping, without schools, without any licensed care, and a host of other issues we don't even know about is a crime against humanity.
This entire episode will go down as one of the most shameful in the history of the United States. Every single person involved will one day have to face his or her maker and account for why they essentially tortured and deliberately harmed the most innocent among us.
8
Oh really, "rot"? Just stop the farce of caring unless you can answer the question of what to do with the next quarter million kids surely on their way and how to pay for the current 100+ thousands already here without ever asking for a vote on the question by the people.
17
@mikemn Try feeling a bit of empathy, it might change your life!
6
Just because you obviously don't care about the welfare of immigrant children does not mean that many of us are being false when we decry the inhumanity of the Trump administration. The government decided to keep them in this country, therefore it is the government's responsibility to either find temporary homes for them or to provide the care necessary so they aren't damaged any further. That includes education and medical care in shelters and not surreptitiously moving them in the middle of the night.
5
The Trump administration's treatment of immigrant children is a crime against humanity. Please do not let this story get buried by all the other scandals of this administration until all the children are reunited with their families and justice is served.
5
The intentionally inflammatory title of this piece is a disgrace.
And it is dishonest.
There are places on this planet where detained people literally do, rot away, in detention.
The United States is not one of them.
This isn't Russia. In Russia, people still get sent to camps outside of Magadan, and they do rot.
These children are clothed, fed, bathed, have medical care, and are very, very, far from rotting away.
Perhaps the Board would have been happier had they not been caught, and were able to wander across the south Texas brush country.
I worked out there, in the remotest areas. I have seen, and smelled, the corpses of illegal immigrants who were out there too long without food or water, and died of exposure or dehydration.
Maybe that is a better fate for them, in the Progressive paradise.
But not in the United States.
15
The premise of this article is flawed. This administration did not cause this situation. People coming into this country ilkegally caused this problem. If they didn't violate the law and enter this country ilkegally then there would be no detainment or deportation problem for them. They are responsible for the fix they find them selves in. The children are put into the fix they find themselves in by the decisions of their parents.
The practices happening to these criminals are benefitting the children because many have been found not to be with their parents. How many were heading to work house slavery or the sex trade? If only some are saved from such a fate it's worth it. American Citizens detained for committing crimes are separated from their children also and often the children are turned over to CPS or even put in Juvenile Hall. Children can't be let go on their own and if they have sponsors who are legal in the United States maybe they will be turned over to them. They can't be turned over to illigal immigrant criminals. That would be foolhardy. There's no guarantee that they wouldn't be found in the same circumstances if those people were detained and deported. Guardians in their place of origin is the best place to send them. That way they are safe at home when the parents are deported and can go back to them.
The USA is not responsible for these people being here. Bringing children along to break US law is putting the children at risk.
17
@Leroy, If I ran into 7/11 for something and I left a child under age 12 in the car, I could have my child taken away and I could possibly go to jail. Yet if I dragged a child across a hot, dangerous desert and illegally into another country, you are welcomed?
5
I hope you or any member of your family did not come into this country illegally which includes a tourist visao, work Visa or educational related Visa and just stayed.
2
NYT- Do not let us all off the hook. I'd love to blame someone else but I know that these young children being put into tents in my democratic country makes me guilty to this care of children. As an American who is a Christian, I can't seem to put into words how angry I am at the irony of those who profess to follow Jesus but really follow a gilded Trump. I want a bright and warm light on these children as a truth to our recklessness as Americans. NYT -BANG on the doors of whatever is happening in our name, under our watch.
6
@Trerra, one can generally take consolation that this system makes one's vote worthless one way or another. I don't feel any personal responsibility for spitting Trump at the world.
3
My understanding is that during any instance when a crime is committed, adults are separated from children. In this case, we have little idea if the kids in question are their parents, The adults crossed the border illegally (which is a crime under federal law) and endangered the lives of these kids they brought with them and the Trump Administration is doing its best to address this policy which has been in place prior to the President taking office.
It is a fact that in Mexico has the highest rate of kidnappings in the world, especially of children. I would be willing to bet the kids are being used by illegal immigrants in order to apply for asylum into the United States. It makes no sense to reunite children with adults who brought them since there is a high probability they are not the children's parents and may even be involved in other criminal activities too.
This isn't in the best interests of anyone and it is clear The New York TImes is virtue signaling.
14
The USA, beginning with Reagan administration created in many cases the turmoil and pervasive lawlessness in these countries that these children are fleeing, and our only option is to put these kids in what are essentially concentration camps, from where, no doubt, they eventually will be deported back to where they came from? By that time, they will hate this country so much, that they will become terrorists, without an ocean to cross, just a stupid border wall. What has happened to our humanity? Just following orders? Who exactly gave those orders? We need a protest march in Tornillo Texas to show the world we are not passively accepting this holocaust. We are better than this.
3
Now that the pedophils, psyco-sociopaths, and other deviants have had to flee their cushy space in the Catholic church they have to find somewhere to go. This is shaping up to be the same sitution-an administration that provides safe haven for degenerants to live their pathologies to the fullist at the expense of innocents.
2
Rot?
4
Bus them and their illegal alien parents south of the border, and let Mexico support their Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Ecuadoran and Mexican brethren.
Problem solved.
12
We already know detained asylum seekers develop post-traumatic stress , psychiatric disorders--and health implications that persist.
It's inhumane. Another cruel measure was after the Executive Order, Trump insisted Congress cease legislative means to address immigration policy.
65 children per day were separated from parents at the border as reported this past June.
It's costly--2018 budget sums for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement listed a $319 average per diem rate per family bed in a detention center. Tent shelters were $775 per person per night.
This scholarly article is both heart-breaking and chilling:
https://www.kff.org/disparities-policy/fact-sheet/key-health-implication...
4
@One More Realist in the Age of Trump: Most of this incarceration is performed by Trump's buddies in the privatized prison industry.
7
The costs (human and otherwise) are being shuffled along in the darkness (where did the press go ?) so that it can be brought up again when a Democratic administration has to clean up the mess. (shattered lives and all of the massive costs there of -usually court cases and settlements)
This is the ''modus operandi'' of republicans - shrinking government on paper, while downloading all costs to the taxpayer, and skimming off tax theft for the top.
Nothing new to see here - which is exactly the point as 99% of the press descends on Washington to watch a man talk about beer, while children/babies are being ripped away from the family.
Just disgusting on so many levels - in particular, the human one.
7
This is outrageous! What, will we have our own Nauru now, like the Australians, where children commit suicide? This is not the America I grew up in and love.
6
The 9/12/18 NYT article titled "More Migrant Families, and Guatemalans, Are Trying to Enter the U.S.” said, "The data also show that Guatemalans make up an increasingly larger share of migrants, alone or in families, who were apprehended or sought asylum. This year to date, about 42,757 Guatemalan migrants in families were apprehended by the Border Patrol, the data shows, the largest share of any country.”
An 4/12/18 article on the Wilson Center’s blog New Security Beat titled "Beyond Violence: Drought and Migration in Central America’s Northern Triangle", said that in 2016, most unaccompanied minors were Guatemalan. It said the violence in Guatemala is concentrated in 2 areas, but only 20% of Guatemalan migrants were from these 2 areas. The rest came from areas where the homicide rate is comparable with the U.S.
The researcher wrote,"Guatemala has some of the highest rates of poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all of Latin America, which are now further intensified by climate events.”
Different websites say that, in comparison to those of other Central American countries, Guatemalans have been the least educated, and the least likely to practice contraception. Their undereducated, overpopulated country does not have enough resources.
We could try to help Guatemalans, in their own country, by explaining family planning and making contraception widely available, by encouraging education, by working with Guatemalan farmers, and by providing food aid.
14
@ann: Trump supports the dictator making Guatemala Hell. The guy really has his head screwed on backwards.
5
Science Daily just reported a summary of a study of children kept in Romanian orphanages that shows "that children reared in very stark institutional settings, with severe social deprivation and neglect, are at risk for cognitive problems, depression, anxiety, disruptive behavior and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder." This is exactly the "strategy" taken by Trump. Brothers and sisters are not even allowed to touch one another. How are these child prisoners going to fare when they are a bit more grown up? Their lives are being destroyed to please the sadistic whims of Trump and the aptly named "ICE." Meanwhile we are entertained by the spectacle of the appointment of a man who might be one of the worst Supreme Court justices ever. Another Trump deflection. Don't think about the children.
6
@Mike: The Catholic Relief Agency sure didn't warn adopting American parents about this.
3
Our immigration system or lack thereof is such a complete and total mess.
This would not happen if we had control at the border - via a wall, or by cracking down on the traffickers, or by having agreements with migrant-exporting countries.
The children are being used by the immigration advocates, and also by their parents, who hope that the children will be leverage for the parents' entry to the US.
The majority of Americans do not want open borders and in fact actually want control. The control should be humane, especially when children are involved. This editorial failed to demonstrate that this policy is inhumane. And no, the administration did NOT create the crisis, the traffickers did, and the parents did.
13
@Philly: Since when has tearing children away from parents been considered humane?
3
The administration took these children away from their parents and prevents them from leaving with relatives. The one thing that is certain is that they cannot continue to take in many thousands more, this will become the US humanitarian crisis that resembles those of a third world country. A solution that works has to be found. Ignoring this crisis and putting it out of sight is insanity, pure and simple.
3
I must disagree that Trump Administration officials have “struggled for solutions” to the crisis of these children. I would agree that they have struggled hard not to get caught for their lies, their inhumanity, and their indifference.
4
A dry corridor runs through Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The farmers there have a difficult time raising enough to eat even in the best of times. When a drought strikes, especially during an El Nino year, many go hungry. Despite this, people have continued to have lots of children, and they have neglected to focus on having their children get an education that would enable them to make a living in an occupation other than farming. Many children are never sent to school. Others go for only a couple of years.
Guatemalans are the least likely to practice birth control or to educate their children. Their country is vastly overpopulated and undereducated. Most of the unaccompanied minors are Guatemalan. They come from regions there where the murder rate is no higher than it is here in American cities. They come here to find employment.
Rather than trying to help them here, away from their family and culture, it would be better to help them in their own country. We could offer them food aid, introduce plants or ways of planting that require less water, encourage them to attend school, and encourage American philanthropies to offer them micros loans with which they could start tiny businesses.
Meteorologists are predicting an El Nino year which will make the Dry Corridor drier than usual. We must intervene to help the people who live there before even more of them migrate here.
13
@ann I thought the Republicans were against birth control and abortion. And public schools.
How can any of these Republican policies help Guatemala?
3
If this and other resources will defer them from breaking our laws and dragging their children into danger ,then stay the course. When nothing's done wrong gets worse.
6
They are helpless and we are not.
3
The US President engaging in human rights violations with the GOP support. These kinds of government action the US used to abhor and publicly condemn before the UN. How low can we go? And for how long?
3
I don't know, but if you were to ask me I'd suggest not crossing the border illegally would put an end to the problem immediately. And everyone would win...
16
Those left behind to die from local drug wars will lose. This is not a win win situation. Nobody wins, but those who have resources can lessen the crisis. The rich countries cannot live their rich life styles behind walls, eventually the walls will be breached. We have to be smart and creative and try to find something that works. Right now we are hiding and doing nothing that solves anything.
2
The only thing that will stop immigrants fleeing for their lives is to shoot them at the US Border.
2
One shudders at the thought of what Trump and the Military-Industrial Complex will do in Iran, if his rodomontade is allowed to express itself and come to fruition in this make-believe bogeyman he is working on as regards IRI. The U.S. Government has destroyed countless children's lives in the Middle East, without the slightest compunction.(not to mention the infrastructures in which they formerly dwelt.) Immigration may be a problem, but only for those of the political persuasion which ignores the problems of the less fortunate in favor of the largesse of the few who direct the miscreance of the plutocracy.
3
I lived 9 years in the US and some of the worst people I have seen in my life were immigration officials. The way these officers treat people is plain horrible. Just what you see in the airports is enough for getting an idea of what kind of people you're dealing with. Once in Atlanta, I heard an officer saying to one of his colleagues, "I would put all these people in a gas chamber"... he was referring to all of us who were in that room where you are taken to answer further questions. I think this horrible thing we are seeing with these children in Texas is just a little taste of all the abuses these immigration officials are carrying out today especially now that their actions have been reinforced by an immigration policy that is everything but human.
4
@chquintana: Foreign countries reciprocate by singling out American tourists for extra scrutiny.
4
It is hard to focus on all of the attacks on our values in out names.
Unless we do something to stop this (vote) this IS who we are!
1
Thank you for shining such light on the wrongdoing of the officials, totally unacceptable harm to children. This failure of democracy is due to the toxic divisive politics of the Democrats and Republicans.
We solved religious conflicts with the First Amendment. We need to extend that. "Congress shall make no law regarding immigration or the free exercise thereof." It worked with religion; it is an exemplar for other divisive issues. Let's end this toxic politics. Please vote all Democrats and Republicans out!!!
2
@Betty Ann: The Kavanaugh nomination to the Supreme Court is aimed directly at the "Establishment Clause" in the Bill of Rights that prohibits faith-based legislation in the US.
1
Something must be done right away to rescue those thousands of children from the government's sending them to a tent city in the desert. Otherwise, their brains and memories will be forever damaged. The cost of mental care over their lifetimes will be huge and they still will not be normal. Can a federal judge come to the rescue? Can church congregations help? Our president and his administration are so terrible. What can be done? Surely, the federal judges can make this cruelty of tent city living for thousands of children to stop.
3
The fact that this story fights for space on your front page shows how morally bankrupt and racist the United States really is. If these were little white kids there is not a chance this would be happening. While Canada continues to deal with reconciliation for the tragic treatment of aboriginal children in residential schools, the United States is launching a Mexican version of the same abhorrent system that separates children from their families. This is tragic and EVERY AMERICAN who has not taken some action to protest this is complicit. The only innocents here are the children.
2
"These centers are concentration camps, The US with concentration camps — inconceivable but true."
These centers are concentration camps,
@
Anne Sherrod
British Columbia
are you not familiar with a definition of concentration camps?
concentration camps were created to hasten the extermination of the Jewish people through gassing, hard labor and starvation.
In no way are tent cities comparable to concentration camps.
11
Outrageous!
3
Amen, You've summarized the situation perfectly. I wish I knew how to send Anne Sherrod's remarks to everyone I know. Yes, NYT please PLEASE keep on this subject. Something must be done.
3
This is obscenely cruel to both the children and their family. It is both un-American, and socially repugnant. American citizens nationally have to demand that this stop, and that the families are reunited. It isn't a political issue. At this point it isn't about being lenient with illegal immigration laws. It is about decency and humanity.
I am in support of strict immigration laws, and stopping illegal immigration. But transgressions in that regard have been made by business people of all political affiliations. It is a lie that Democrats support illegal immigration any more than republicans. Also, it is not a racial issue. I am not biased against any people of any nationality, race, or religion. I simply respect the laws, and only want people immigrating here who respect our immigration laws as well.
At the same time, the USA government has been engaged in activities internationally that have resulted in the destruction of social stability; such as in the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America. We have a responsibility to the people who we have impacted to help them rebuild; both in their country, or here if it is that extreme.
Nonetheless, even if people have come here illegally, we need to treat them as we would want to be treated. With dignity and humanity. We are not Nazis!!!
We are Americans, and we need to have higher standards. The highest standards.
Reunite the families! Find a way to either help them enter here as citizens, or return home safely.
2
"Draconian", "Herodian" Concentration Camps" "Evil" "Criminal"
Many of the words printed here.
1. Many of these so called children came here unaccompanied
2. Their parents neglected them by either letting them go or leaving them behind
3. This didn't happen overnight
4. When in doubt place blame on trump
Your anger is misplaced, this is not a concentration camp and by continually using those words you diminish its meaning. The blame should be place on the parents and no one else. We don't owe anyone entering our country by illegal means anything. Ask a legal immigrant their feelings on this.
13
@Margo Channing: So why did Trump kill aid for family planning?
Two major things drive mass migration: overpopulation and climate change. Trump's policies exacerbate both of them
2
@Steve Bolger Thankyou for mentioning overpopulation, which is an even more serious problem than climate change. At the world's current standard of living, we would need between 1.4 and 1.7 earths to sustainably support our population. But the world doesn't want their current standard of living, they want ours. Can't blame them for that I suppose. Just as carbon emissions are every country's problem, so is population. The world, including the US, is full up. Sorry, but we really have no more room of immigrants, either legal or otherwise. There are multiple good reasons why immigration is bad and none, upon close examination, that are good. If only we as a nation could have a rational discussion about this! But, no, we won't, and it will result in the eventual destruction of the biosphere, the carrying capacity of the earth, and our global civilization.
I am impatient, and I look for ways to take action. As an artist, it occurred to me that artists might be able to create something beautiful that could be large enough that the children could be able to see it. A sculpture, some sort of hopeful image that might allow them to keep going until we can get this solved.
I intend to contact all the artists I know, and just try to DO something. A landowner who will give us permission is all we need. And as I think about it, music could be used in the same way. Beauty serves the soul, and we need it.
1
I agree with Anne Sherrod who requested that you continue to report on this subject. With the news focused on the Kavanaugh situation, the plight of these children is fading from the forefront of thought for most people. The fact that individuals working in the various centers cried when these children were moved is just one symbol of how inhumane the policy described in this article has become. Regardless of the reasons as to why these children are here, we must remember that they are children. We must remember that they are running from situations in their home countries that are extremely dangerous, in ways the most Americans cannot imagine. Yes, we have a crisis on our hands with the number of children that are here, but I believe that we can come up humane methods of treatment to deal with the situation. It is already expensive to house these children, but let's find ways that treat them with respect and humanity. Let's find a way as a country to care for their needs and to make sure that they are not physically or sexually abused. And let's find a way to send them back with relatives and friends who are willing to care for them, without checking the legal status of those individuals at the moment they arrive to take care of a particular child.
4
Next, Stephen Miller will tell Trump that to send an even stronger deterrent message to asylum seekers we should start a program to waterboard these children, and maybe deprive them of sleep or force them into excruciatingly painful body positions.
2
The NYT is wrong. Trump didn't create the issue, the parents who illegally crossed into this county with their children created the issue.
20
@James
Yah, right on! So let's take a pound of flesh out of those poor kids and teach their parents not to mess with the Good Ol' US of A.
2
@Andrew
So you want to give the parents and their kids a free pass for breaking out laws? I don't think so.
Shame, shame. The religious right is more concerned with saving embryos than saving living, breathing young children and older children, most of whom have seen the pits of life and have no hope of digging out of those pits. Not only have they lived them, but they now have been thrown into quarries in an attempt to live somewhat of a good life. Shame, shame.
7
"Hundreds of Children Rotting in the Desert"? Concentration camps?
The title says less about what is actually happening and more about the decision made by Sulzberger Jr to steer the paper towards partisanship, identity mobilization, "intersectionality" and societal change. There is nothing about the criminal irresponsibility of the parents, the agenda of illegal immigrant advocates and the right every country to decide whom to let in.
Child protection agencies remove kids for much lesser infraction than forcing your child to march across the desert.
20
@Kai
You wrote: 'Child protection agencies remove kids for much lesser infraction than forcing your child to march across the desert."
Yes, but when they remove the children they don't arrest and confine them to a child prison in the very same desert! WHY IS THIS SO HARD FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND?
1
I've been reflecting a lot lately on the theme of people from developing nations wanting to immigrate to First World Nations, and often doing so illegally, and I think it would be helpful to look at this and similar tragic situations within a larger context, and try to be cognizant of the several themes involved.
One of the main themes I see is people are fleeing failed nations to come to more prosperous countries. Consider the trajectory...do we want everyone from every failed nation in the world to come to First World countries? The result is that you simply import to successful nations, the same problems, crime, values, cultural patterns, etc that likely caused those nations to fail.
Another theme is that groups of people who are intelligent, educated and skilled, are being expected to support more and more people who have little education and lower skill levels. People with lower intelligence levels and/or education and skill levels are not well suited to succeed in increasingly cognitively complex societies. This happens both within a nation and internationally. To some extent, we are morally obligated to help those who are less gifted or skilled among us, as our brothers and sisters. But this helping cannot go too far, to the point where it creates dependency or enabling of indolence, lack of initiative, refusal to cooperate and/or develop skills. In other words, those who are receiving help, owe something back to the nation or society that's helping.
9
@Oakbranch: The US looks less attractive to people living in foreign countries every day. Now immigration is driven by population growth and climate change in third world countries. To address this, Trump shut down all US support for family planning in these nations, and pulled the US out of the international agreement to reduce climate-changing emissions. You really have to watch what these clowns do, because whatever they say is lies.
1
@OakbranchThe point that you have missed is that rather than being the poorest, and those lacking in initiative, and skills, people making the many people taking the risk to come to America are self-screaened as the the best from their societies in terms of income, initiative, education, etc. It may be horrifically expensive, in terms of their country's currencies, to make the journey to America. They accept great risk. Go into immigrant communities in America and you will be impressed with the level of entrepreneurship exhibited. They may arrive with little money, but often make up for that with initiative and skills that will benefit America.
2
@Don R Yeah, it will make us richer (as if we weren't already rich enough), and it will make their country of origin poorer. We suck up the talent and resources of the world for ourselves, impoverishing every place else. Where is your sense of ethics and morality? Do you not care about the societies depleted of their talent?
No one is rotting in the desert. This type of headline is one of the reasons the NYT is loosing it reputation as a fair arbiter of the news. The issue under discussion is serious and it would be far better if these children were with their parents or other family members. However, manu of these children were sent unaccompanied to the US. Whose fault is that?
19
@TW Smith: In other words, who would care if they just disappeared?
1
@TW Smith
Just because they are unaccompanied does not mean the USA has the right to treat them like human garbage.
2
Horrible doesn't begin to describe this policy. But, certainly forcing children to live in a desert with no schooling, no parents, no hope will certainly help turn at least one or two of these children into the criminals or terrorists the President seems to believe they are. Think th eplan of the Nazis to prove that Jews were lower than human beings - closer to slimy rats. While the Trump policy is not quite that bad at this time, it seems to have the same goal - prove the inferiority of a group of people and get rid the country of them one way or another. Think the vicious ads of Jews compared to vermine. One advantage the Jews had when they were forced from their homes into overcrowded ghettos, given only enough food to barely keep alive, little medicine etc. and eventual stuffed into trains for days with no water, food or sanitation to get to death camps was that educated adults secretly started schools, theatres, synagogues, etc. In Warsaw Ghetto at first there were two Catholic Churches for those who had converted, but were still "Jews" for Nazi purposes. Some musical compositions, artwork and even historical archives came from these doomed people. In contrast, these poor children have nothing - no adults, no schools, and no chance. If this kind of treatment is indicative of the coming America Great Again, it is a very sad commentary on our countries ethics, morals and humanity.
2
I can only think about this......these children and the children of thousands of displaced peoples who have no home will someday grow up. They will grow up and remember the unkindness of people and our government. What a wellspring for terrorists to employ. What a shame for Christians, and atheists alike to take "pride" in.....cleansing our country.
What a shame, what a shame.
4
"Herodian" policies.
1
This fascist detention program is simply establishing the legal precedent for activating NDAA 2012 arrest and detention of US citizens (article 1021 no warrant arrest; 1022 no right to trial for "duration of hostilities.")
The bankrupted and collapsing global military empire is about to implode on itself and, within decades, "Lock them up!" will be the chant of a well armed and deputized "Real Amerika!"
7
@John in Laramie
Yes, John, the seminal meta-causal problem, as you correctly note, and call it a "collapsing global military empire" is, unfortunately, IMHO, not yet 'collapsing' (nor even sufficiently 'exposed', recognized, nor perceived by 99+% citizen/'subjects').
The description that some, including myself, who write and acknowledge that "Democracy in America?", "How Democracies Die", and even the "Washington Post's" mast-head slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" mention as possibly causing the death of democracy is a Disguised Global Capitalist Empire.
Prof. Robinson diagnosed:
"The U.S. state is a key point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups around the world to resolve problems of global capitalism and to secure the legitimacy of the system overall. In this regard, “U.S.” imperialism refers to the use by transnational elites of the U.S. state apparatus to continue to attempt to expand, defend, and stabilize the global capitalist system. We are witness less
to a “U.S.” imperialism per se than to a global capitalist imperialism. We face an empire of global capitalism headquartered, for evident
historical reasons, in Washington.”
Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity, 2014 Robinson, William Cambridge University Press.
I tend to describe its 7 sectors as; corporate, financial, military, media/propaganda, extra-legal, CFR related 'Think-Tanks', and dual-party Vichy-political facades of faux-democracy.
"We'll see what happens" Emperor Trump.
1
We can save a fortune by repurposing these tents for the Republican reeducation camps that we'll need in the near future.
4
This situation is just more evidence—as if we needed more evidence—of a White House and a Congress that refuses to do its job. Sheesh, our leaders can’t even do right by children! The problems in America go a lot deeper than a partisan supreme court confirmation process, a cowardly GOP, or a narcissistic and ignorant president.
3
Putting children in substandard housing in the desert reminds me of the internment camps Japanese-Americans were forced to live in during WWII. We know how history looks at the internment camps. They are considered a national shame. At least the Japanese-American kids had their parents and siblings with them, and schools were set up for them. These kids in Texas who are behind fences don't even have a classroom.
4
Trump has trouble caring about anybody but Trump. Does he care about the kids in detention camps? He barely acknowledges his own two youngest children. He certainly doesn't care about anyone else's children.
4
It is often hard to tell a person’s age. European countries have realized that some of those who are seeking asylum are not as young as they claim. They are not minors, and so, they are not eligible to be placed with families or for some other benefits and considerations. The European countries are now X-raying the hip and wrist joints of some asylum seekers who claim to be younger than they look.
At least half of the Central American "minors"who have been coming here are males who claim to be between the ages of 15 and 17. How many are actually older? Those who are 18 and older are not eligible for the special status and benefits of unaccompanied minors. It is harder for them to get permanent legal status. Shouldn’t we be X -raying those who may be older to get a better idea of their real ages?
19
@ann X-raying the kids? Why don't we just shoot 'em?
3
@ann
OMG. I am running out of things to say to try to move your hearts.
But x-raying people?
Putting ANYBODY out there in a tent in the desert is obscene.
You'd better pray this administration doesn't get around to you and yours.
Remember what happened in Germany.
2
@ann As if the inhumane treatment of breaking up families and sticking other human beings in substandard detention should only be a concern if someone is REALLY a minor.
I don't see how the moral issues raised by this dreary Administration would be assuaged by X-raying the kids stuck in the desert. No wonder I can't sleep at night.
2
It is impossible to overstate the irresponsibility and willful neglect of parents who bring young children illegally across the border. Apparently, the parents sometimes do this out of cynical calculation that in the past had allowed them to use their kids as passports. Protection Services in Brooklyn and San Francisco take away the kids for much lesser infractions.
On the other hand, separating children from parents is unconscionable and unacceptable. The immigration advocate proposals would -paradoxically - increase the number of families willing to imperil their kids. The only solution is to disincentivize border crossing by making the crossers automatically ineligible for status.
20
@Kai
Many of these children came here unaccompanied.
3
@Kai
Immigration law is not the issue here! It's how the USA deals with children of people who break those laws! Children do not deserve to suffer for the sins of their parents! Again, I ask: why is this so hard for some people to understand?
2
Please keep reporting about this.
It's a horror.
I can't believe this is happening in the USA.
Thank you.
12
So the solution is to continue to place the newest group of illegal immigrants with illegal immigrant sponsers, essentially no questions asked, in perpetuity? That's not a good policy either.
Any administration faces a no-win situation on these issues, particularly when minors are involved. Either you seek their expedited removal when detained at the border (unless they claim asylum), when due process protections are at their weakest, or you detain them in camps within the country indefinitely while their cases are processed in immigration courts. The numbers involved, and the slow pace of processing, make it costly once they are in the country. Turning them around at the border tends to shock the conscience of those who have become accustomed to low- or non-skilled immigrants freely entering.
And people wonder why the chimera of the border wall was such a potent issue for Trump.
22
Sorry, Dems. Trump managed a slight revision of NAFTA and he got his Supreme Court pick after all. The midterms are over, and we lost. Trump can put as many children in concentration camps as he likes. The time to stop him was in 2016, and you all failed.
4
@Randy Thompson
These are not concentration camps, these children came here under illegal means not torn from there homes and put in tents. Perhaps your anger should be directed where it belongs. On the parents who neglected them in the first place.
13
@Randy Thompson Why should this atrocity be only limited to Dems? Are you implying that those who vote with the GOP and enable Trump are fine with all of this 'Administration's' policies?
The GOP controls both houses of Congress. They could have stopped him, if they felt like it -- but the party of Trump appears to be morally bankrupt.
And the Midterms aren't 'over.' Neither is Mueller's investigation. I have faith that the rule of law will catch up with Trump and his mafioso-style tactics, which he confuses with real governance.
1
@Margo Channing
Randy - your empathy for the plight of innocent children brings tears to my eyes. Tears of rage.
You want to punish the children just because it's too hard/expensive/time-consuming to punish the adults.
And your position that children are being "neglected" because their parents are trying to find a better life from them stinks of xenophobic ignorance.
1
So, where at all of the Right to life folks who hold human life sacred? Or is that only white American lives? Where are the sponsorships from the Evangelicals who want every woman to keep her child, regardless of how it was conceived, its health, or economic ability to feed and care for it?
7
give me your tired, your poor
yearning to breathe free
wretched refuse of your teeming shore
send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
this was ok for your grandparents, but it's not okay now.
I see the Statue of Liberty weeping.
9
@ Pottree
My forbears and father came through Ellis Island, they needed a sponsor to get here, they needed to pass strict guidelines, were quarantined if sick and some were even sent back to their home countries because they couldn't pass muster. So please spare me Ms. Lazarus' (socialist) rhetoric. Times were much different then.
8
@ Pottree
It's a poem, not a policy.
And it's mounted on a statue, not a statute.
1
Under cover of darkness hundreds of children whose only crime was to come with their parents to the U.S. to seek a better and safer life are transported to a tented prison camp on the Texas border. The next thing we will hear is that Sheriff Jesse Arpaio is consulting for the project. I am embarrassed for our country and the cruel but accurate image it sends of us to the world. Shameful.
5
Establishiing concentration camps for children is just one appalling policy of this criminal administration. Let's not forget, additionally, Russian mobsters, laundered money, trafficking, emoluments, disrespect for the rule of law, elevating corporate "persons" above human persons, making permanent the recent tax cuts in order to slash the safety net, the continuing effort to appoint a Supreme Court Justice whose main job is to elevate corporatism and to protect the president from the law. VOTE!!!
4
The alternative is the policy during the Obama administration. Undocumented parents in the US funded the journey to America for children they left behind - many times paying smugglers to bring these children to the US. The US government then funded and completed the children’s journey by flying the children to their waiting undocumented parents wherever they were living in the US. Certainly the NY Times editors read the accounts of children being raped or left in the desert to die or the parents being “held up” for more money at the last minute. This paper applauded the US government and the parents for being accomplises to smuggling. No doubt the new policy has put a thorn in the process. Thus the indignation about putting the smugglers out of business!
10
"Immigrant advocates argue that the true purpose of the new sponsor requirements is to find, arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible."
This sentence should read "illegal immigrant advocates argue...." This clearly displays the Times' outward bias on this topic. Casting those of us who oppose illegal immigration and fair the enforcement of existing immigration laws as being "anti immigrant" is inaccurate and divisive. Speak the truth please.
17
What kind of person does this to children? Think deeply about it.
Evil, insane?
3
@inquiring minds
Simple answer......the parents.
4
@Margo ChanningI agree to,disagree -- enormously.
1
What a shamelessly disingenuous article. The NYT was one of the media outlets fanning hysteria this spring about how the government had "lost" children because some of those placed with sponsors missed voluntary government check ins and there was one case of some children being placed with traffickers who forced them to work on an egg farm. These stricter vetting requirements, which were called for by media outlets including the NYT, are a direct response to that.
As far as who created that crisis, it's the parents who have no respect for our laws or for the legal immigration process that has allowed millions to move here.
The Trump Admin may be nakedly nativist or even racist, but the liberal media and politicians have just as biased an agenda to shift the racial makeup of the country via any means legal or illegal, good for the country or bad for the country. The share of our population that is foreign born is at an all time high. It's common sense to restrict immigration to those who can contribute not those who want to take from the social safety net or who commit crimes. But the liberal response has been hysterical outcry at not giving greencards to those who are on public assistance and creating sanctuary cities and states to shield even convicted criminals from deportation. Birth rates and intermarriage will already lead to white Americans becoming a minority in time. We shouldn't let in people who can't contribute simply to change the racial dynamic faster.
23
So just who are we calling hysterical?
2
@JP I like brown skin people. I go to the beach as often as i can so i can look more like them.
1
@JP
"These stricter vetting requirements, which were called for by media outlets including the NYT"
Somehow I doubt this was what the NYT or any sensible adult had in mind when they called for stricter vetting.
All Americans should be ashamed of this decrepit act by the Trump Administration, which has separated parents from their children while trying to cross the border. We must speak out. Trump's policy has left thousands of children stranded in unhealthy camps, devoid of any comfort, questionable quality of food, no education or activities, and surrounded by a chain link fence. And, in many cases unable to even find their parents. To top it off they move these children in the dead of night so that they are undetected by American communities. People and families from countries all over the world living in terrible conditions or afraid for their safety at home seek the borders of the United States. Seek the promise of our country. The tent city built by Trump to house children - without their parents - is deplorable and literally looks like a German concentration camp of WWII. We've always done better than this.
2
These children’s PARENTS did this. Last I heard, protecting your kids and preventing them from doing dumb things is a large part of parental responsibility. But let’s just blame the President.
21
@Michael Sherman
When did punishing children for the errors of their parents became OK with you?
1
Nothing hyperbolic to see here.... "Children Rotting". These are children being detained in air conditioned tents, being fed well. But it is a Gulag right... right.... We in America do not have to accept the Open Border ideologies, we have the right to accept of refuse immigrants. We will not allow our prosperous nation to be drained of its resources via the welfare state, which will be the clear outcome of this "take them all in, house them and fund them" ideology.
15
If we had a big wall to stop the illegal border crossings this would not be a problem. Word would quickly spread and the illegal migration would stop. No one travels thousands of miles across multiple countries with common languages and cultures to escape from a problem in their home village. People learn how to exploit weaknesses in our immigration system and they play us for fools. Any problem given by people illegally entering our country can be found in abundance right here. Threatened by gangs? Afraid of gun violence? Victim of sexual or domestic abuse? It's all right here. Does that give Americans the right to fly to New Zealand and claim asylum from the U.S.? The do-gooder policies that have accumulated in our system are the driving cause of the problem. We need to either get smart and fix our immigration problems or just capitulate and open up the borders for 7 billion people to come on in.
11
We would be first to object to another nation using migrant children as a political tool. Refugees deserve the same hearings given to immigrants who reached Ellis Island. g is an outrage. Some of the parents have been deported in chains and handcuffs on flights under cover of darkness. there are families who will never be reunited. Children have been placed in foster homes without parental consent. If that constitutes kidnapping is the president culpable?
4
Once we are liberated from the the daily barrage of criminality by Trump and his minions, Republicans in Congress should have to pay for their role as enablers. If McConnell, Ryan, Cornyn and other members of the leadership had had the courage to stand up to the administration, this tragedy may have been avoided.
1
Our elected official should hide their heads in shame at failing to reach a compromise on immigration reform. Tens of thousands of individuals, including children who are among the most vulnerable members of society, are suffering needlessly because of Congressional inaction. This partisan squabbling most stop and a just and humane plan put in place. Vote in November and press your representatives for meaningful immigration reform.
Thank you for this opinion piece and the coverage of the tent cities to which children have been moved. As other readers have said, we must not lose sight of the children because of the Kavanaugh issue.
2
The democrats had a chance to come up with a good immigration policy when they controlled all three branches. They did nothing. Why do you always leave the democrats off the hook? This is not a defense of the current administration, but it did inherit a untenable situation.
9
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to partner with a struggling airline and send families who have NOT gone through US customs legally back to their origin as a complete unit? It’s a quandary like homelessness that needs IDEAS!
Face it, America as the land of opportunity was always a sham. Borne of genocide, built by slavery, the regular guy has better odds of being incarcerated for poverty or skin color (Japanese internment?) than to hit the capitalist lotto. This is Las Vegas, people, the winners get a big billboard, but they are one in a million.
Yes, we at least have opportunity to change cultural norms and work to right the ship for the greatest good, but that takes work, hard, frustrating half-steps, not magic wand corrections by autocrats. Bring ideas, volunteer, our greatest strength has only ever been in our unity, commonality, ingenuity.
Please vote.
2
I am ashamed of our government and I am also ashamed of our people, who allow this to continue. We marched for science and for women. Why not march for children?
4
It was bad enough that George Bush gave us an extra-judicial concentration camp in Guantanamo (funded at vast expense by the taxpayers). Now we have a concentration camp for children (hurriedly transported in the middle of the night) on the Texas border. If Guantanamo is any example the children will languish there for many years to come.The defenders of this inhumane and immoral policy who blame young children and their poverty stricken parents (who are simply hoping for a better life) are simply bizarre and macabre. This will do more to besmirch the reputation of America worldwide than any other counterproductive measure that Trump and Fox News can devise.
3
When unaccompanied minors began surging the border in 2012, the media reported that at least half of them were males between the ages of 15 and 17, many with gang tattoos. What was not reported was their levels of education. Most rural Central Americans have little education - at most, a few years.
It is difficult, if not impossible for many of them to now go to school to learn English and to learn what it is necessary to graduate from elementary and middle school, let alone high school. It is of no surprise that most drop out.
Their poor education does not allow them to do much besides back breaking work - work on farms and on urban work crews that could be (and is being) taken over by robots. They are currently being employed because their employers can pass much of their support on to the taxpayers. (The government subsidizes low wage employees in multiple ways.) In the not-to-distant future, it may be cheaper to buy and operate robots than to employ undereducated workers. The unemployed will then become totally dependent on government support.
Many of those who are having trouble in school or who work in poorly paying jobs (not to mention those who cannot find work) turn to gangs for friendship and financial support. They start having children at young ages, have many children, and could become a permanent underclass in our country.
2
"Hundreds of Children Rotting in the Desert" not only brings to mind "Emperor Trump’s Draconian Policies" --- but also the ageless wisdom of Yeats' and Shelley's poetry in "The Second Coming" and "Ozymandias", as well as the prescience of art in Madonna's "Ghost Town", all of which allude to the inexorable history of collapse into "desert" and "This world turning to dust":
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=madonna+ghostown+lyrics&t=ffnt&iax=vid...
And which, for the many reasons of Empires always collapsing from; wars, racism, political hubris, economic deceit, dangerous ideology, et al. should teach us the ageless lesson that:
"We can't be an Empire"
1
The Trump administration committed a crime against humanity by separating children from their parents and wards with no intention of reuniting them nor returning them to loving relatives. It’s clear and simple. What they have done will affect these kids for years to come. The administration’s failure to comply with court orders has not been addressed by the Congress, which makes every American complicit in this crime. We live in a democracy not a dictatorship, we can use our authority through the Congress to make this right, we can compel the administration-to fix this or remove Trump from office and replace him with someone who will. We have that power.
The continued incarceration of thousands of children who entered this country without permission should not extend longer than to find a safe home for them. The prolonged keeping of them is inhumane and must not persist. Again, we the people are responsible not that narcissist in the White House. Trump holds the office of President but he’s not serving faithfully as he swore to do. He’s our employee, so it’s up to us to correct his mishandling of his responsibilities. This is not a reality television entertainment show, it’s real life.
4
This is an atrocity. And no, them being here illegally does not free the government from their responsibilities to treat children humanely and trying to minimize the damage. I can't believe someone is even putting it as an argument. Children, in the very least, have to be in appropriate facilities and in school, not in a camp in the desert, no matter how they got here. What if tomorrow some citizens or residents are stripped of their rights and send to camps, as was the case in the past? The argument would be they are illegal and not government responsibility? Government decides. who is legal and who is not, but government must deal with any human being according to human rights and child rights principles or this is not the right government for a country that wants to consider itself civilized.
1
Am I missing something? Why can't we just send them back to their respective country. No more problem. Simple fix.
10
@David Because they would probably be shot by members of the criminal element that have a big hand in running those countries.
I remember one women attempting to enter this country with her 8 year old son saying, I want so desperately to get in. My two older sons have been shot by gang members, and i want my youngest son to live.
2
Tomorrow I'm going to Tornillo. This tent city is wrong. We are breaking the hearts of these children and many will become gangsters, in reaction to this imprisonment and injustice. They will be filled with hate. The US has always presented itself as a land of justice but we have lost that appearance internally and externally. We need to remember what Jesus said, "Whoever would cause one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a milestone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea." I will go to protest; to take pictures; to apply for a job; find out whatever I can. I don't live in El Paso but could just end up staying.
2
A few commenters have asked what they can do. One possibility is to donate to Justice in Motion, which is searching for the children's deported parents, or donate to or volunteer for the ACLU.
See http://justiceinmotion.org/family-separation
Also, see https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/deportation-and-due-process/...
2
When unaccompanied minors began surging the border in 2012, the media reported that at least half of them were males between the ages of 15 and 17, many with gang tattoos. What was not reported was their levels of education. Most rural Central Americans have little education - at most, a few years.
It is difficult, if not impossible for many of them to now go to school to learn English and to learn what it is necessary to graduate from elementary and middle school, let alone high school. It is of no surprise that most drop out.
Their poor education does not allow them to do much besides back breaking work - work on farms and on urban work crews that could be (and is being) taken over by robots. They are currently being employed because their employers can pass much of their support on to the taxpayers. (The government subsidizes low wage employees in multiple ways.) In the not-to-distant future, it may be cheaper to buy and operate robots than to employ undereducated workers. The unemployed will then become totally dependent on government support.
Many of those who are having trouble in school or who work in poorly paying jobs (not to mention those who cannot find work) turn to gangs for friendship and financial support. They start having children at young ages, have many children, and could become a permanent underclass in our country.
12
@ann, Could become a permanent underclass? It's already happening.
1
The detention of unaccompanied children drastically increased under Obama, beginning in 2014. Obama was plenty punitive. But he was reacting to a huge influx. Due to overcrowding, many were mistreated beginning in 2014.
Trump has had the time to improve conditions. But mostly conditions have gotten worse. Most of us want humane treatment of children regardless of our views on immigration, Separated children hit a nerve. Unaccompanied children should hit a nerve too.
I was 9 years, 1945. old when i read about the concentration camps and saw the pictures of the living skeletons waiting to be released. Our country was the Good Country. Never would i have believed that what is happening now to children would ever be a possibility. Snatched late at night and sent to a USA concentration camp in the Texas heat. I don't care if the tent or tents have air conditioning. No further schooling, little legal help. Are they at least being properly fed? Or will we in the not to distant future see small skeletons? The horror of it all.
3
Out of concern that foreign minors were being brought her to be trafficked in the sex industry, Congress passed an anti-trafficking bill. It requires all minors who come here from countries, further away than Canada or Mexico, to be entered into the formal asylum process. The irony is that Central American parents now pay drug cartels to bring their children here. No one knows what the cartels do to the children while they are bringing them here or how many they abandon along the way. The very law that was supposed to help children who are brought here to be used as prostitutes may actually be encouraging parents to put their children in the “care” of those who could be molesting them or worse.
While the media is focusing on the sheltering of children once they arrive, it is ignoring the parents who are having their children come here under the “protection” of drug cartels.
The children who come here and are given asylum become eligible for all sorts of government benefits, and are soon eligible for green cards. Once they have green cards, they can petition for green cards for members of their families.
One wonders how many parents have been paying drug cartels to bring their children here in the expectation their children, and by extension themselves, will get government benefits and perhaps become eligible for green cards.
13
Except these kids are not IN any “refugee process,” formal or otherwise.
Nice try. Just not remotely true.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/trump-blames-own-border-policy-on-demo...
Did get an ugly chuckle out of the notion that Trump gives a rat’s about kids, though.
1
@Robert That is completely inaccurate. They are not eligible for the administrative adjudication called expedited removal due to the anti-trafficking law cited, but they do in fact go through regular immigration proceedings before an Immigration Judge. The problem being that the Immigration Courts are massively backed up. NYC is giving out hearing dates in 2022 for asylum merits hearings.
Politicians from both parties have used issues like immigration to win elections instead of finding long-term solutions to those issues.
Don't forget we have the "Dreamers" issue not resolved yet. These kids are future "Dreamers" and unless a solution is found, politicians will keep doing what they do best: divide us with issues like immigration while they line up their pockets and those of their donors.
Democrats want to change the second amendment, maybe they should be willing to review the 14th amendment also.
There are more than 1.000.000 kids, American kids who go to sleep hungry every night. But nobody talks about that. It's not front pages news.
I'm not in any way supporting Mr. Trump policies, but as someone said in the comments, those kids' parents are the one responsible for using their kids as a way to come into the country illegally.
7
"If the administration ended the crackdown and worked in good faith with prospective sponsors, they’d be in the homes of friends and relatives. Of course, these arrangements can also be imperfect, but in most cases, they will be far better than an indefinite stay in desert tents at taxpayers’ expense."
When I read about this yesterday, I was simply appalled. This shameful use of children as instruments of extortion to rat out other undocumented immigrants is beyond immoral--it's amoral.
Of course we need immigration overhaul, and had the two parties been more open to compromise, we would have had it by now. But the Tea Party Republicans, naturally, gummed up the works in 2014 when there was a bipartisan bill that passed one of the Congressional chambers but stalled in the other because of GOP intransigence.
Enter Donald Trump, and his young ideologue on immigration issues, Stephen Miller. These two men between them have done more to damage immigration policy than any other people in our nation's history.
Instead of fixing the problem and keeping children safe, they are deliberately using the issue to shore up support from Trump's angry base.
It's deplorable, shameful, and a stain on America's legacy as a nation of immigrants.
12
@ChristineMcM
Did I miss something? Did Obama fix this problem? Cause if he did his solution didn't work out as expected. Not a trump supporter by any stretch but this is not all on him no matter which way the editorial board wants to skew facts.
7
@Margo Channing: President Obama tried and tried to fix this problem but this is one for Congress. All a president can do is tinker around the edges of EOs (executive actions). Comprehensive immigration reform falls on Congress. I was referring to the legislation that the Tea Party ultimately nixed when one part of Congress approved it--I think it died in the house, after being proposed and approved by the Senate.
There was nothing President Obama wanted more than to reform our immigration system. President Trump does not, because it offers him a useful foil to keep riling up his base. And yet, on the executive "guidances" (implementation rules) there's is much he's been able to do, as we see with the empowerment of ICE, the family separation policy that sent kids and toddlers and little babies all over the country (many still not reunited with their departed parent(s)), some of whom ended up in cages.
The legacy of the Trump administration cruelty on immigration rules regarding housing of children and the immigration crackdowns in general have been horrific beyond belief, as this article points out in abundance.
1
This merciless torment of immigrants is evocative of the brutal treatment of Native Americans, of the Trail of Tears.
How apropos that Trump has chosen to exalt Andrew Jackson, who presided over those atrocities, by choosing his portrait to hang in the Oval Office.
I ache bodily for the suffering being inflicted on these vulnerable people, on little children. I look at the pile of tiny shoes in your photo and see the poignance of a toy giraffe and a blue elephant - small comforts taken away - and I weep.
This is a cancer on the soul of our nation. It is institutionalized sociopathy.
9
The fact that only 200 or so people commented means people have forgotten this horrible situation with children losing their family.
5
Our passions have moved on...to the issue of whether or not a "brilliant jurist" is a blackout drinker (congressional hearings have definitely established the he likes to drink a lot of beer).
Shame on the United States of America for failing to live up to its billing as a place where the desperate might find succor.
Double shame on us for electing and seating a President and other government officials who revel in ordering their agents to summarily reject and even abuse would-be immigrants and asylum-seekers.
Worse, Trump and his ilk use their cruelty as a selling point, boasting of it at campaign rallies while attendees flag wave approvingly. Are they oblivious to the fact that not so long ago, someone almost certainly let their ancestors over the border or off a boat dock as well? (Not too many POC attend those rallies.)
Perhaps their forebears did better with the paperwork and legalities; perhaps not. The point is this: a nation governed by those whose stock and trade is using the misery of those in need for political or economic gain is a nation in trouble. Cheering Trump supporters may ignore it now, but Donald Trump will throw them under the bus when it suits him. It's not just immigrants he disdain. It's everyone who can't or doesn't make him "richer."
No, the US can't save everyone. But when we boast of that fact-when we stop even TRYING-we reject our core values, our legacy. The world sees this and rightfully mocks our hypocrisy. I hope the anti-immigration crowd wakes up to reality and votes for Democrats next month. I think it's our only hope.
5
With an exaggerated headline like that, let’s not lose our composure. We don’t want to look like them. Things can’t rot in an air conditioned tent, it’s like a refrigerator.
6
“...vulnerable brown-skinned children...”
Editorial Board, you needn’t go any farther. The permanent degradation and debasement of these “alien,” non-white children are the object and purpose of this administration.
Donald Trump’s attorney general, Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions III, has gone out of his way, with his xenophobic “zero tolerance” directive, to punish the Hispanic culture. What better, more visible and gleefully-evil way to accomplish this concentration camp mindset among the young people, than to sever them from every and all emotional, psychological and material support?
In foolishly thinking that this divide-and-destroy mechanism would discourage others from Central America and Mexico from coming to America, the administration wants to both please its “base” and send a hard message to non-white would-be immigrants: “we don’t want you here.”
The Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, pulled a deeply reprehensible and dishonorable bait-and-switch on those who might come forward to help these children: entrapment. In failing to deal with anything like good faith with these “vulnerable brown-skinned” people, America is now in violation in one of its stated and cherished Christian ideals: succor for the orphan and the poor and the needy and the hungry.
We are the wealthiest nation on Earth. We are also among its most base and mean-spirited, all in the name of some “holy” cause: racism.
16
These children....foreign nationals all...should be immediately deported back to wherever they came from....wherever that may be. They didn’t just emerge from a cabbage patch. Deport them back to their home countries where their own governments can deal with them. It is not the responsibility of American citizens to shoulder the burden of raising...and financially supporting....the children of foreign nationals.
21
These children are coming here at the behest of their illegally present parents. The word is out now that those coming to 'sponsor' these kids will be screened for criminal and immigration violations. Naturally, the 'sponsors' interest in self preservation means kids are being left in the government's care.
During the Obama administration, the illegal alien 'sponsors' would come to collect their children with no consequences and the government basically complicit with the entire illegal alien smuggling operation.
Now Trump is finally going after the sponsors and illegal aliens in general as any responsible President should. The open borders policies espoused by the NY Times and Democrats are the reason a buffoon like Trump is our President.
Mass legal and illegal immigration is not sustainable environmentally, socially or fiscally. Time to take a break and slow legal immigration, stop illegal immigration and deport all illegal aliens.
17
The holocaust references are needlessly over the top. These children are not headed to the gas chamber, or the crematoria. They are properly fed and clothed. I'm sure the pile of shoes adn toys were placed there by the photographer--to make the shot seem pathetic--and iconic.
More hyperbole from the left--meant to inflame, not inform. Obama's policies were exactly the same--for unaccompanied miners--or those crossing with adults they were not related to. The camps have existed for a long time--this did not start with Trump--although liberals would love us to think otherwise.
19
Yeah, nope.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/05/trump-blames-own-border-policy-on-demo...
Nice try, though, I guess.
3
@Jesse The Conservative
If Trump is making America great again, you'd think he would want to FIX hangovers like this from previous administrations. Instead he just goes to rallies and whines.
2
Their parents and Mexico created this crisis. We drop them off on the other side of the border and let Mexico figure this out.
17
This is disgusting. I don’t care how or why it happened, but the honest truth is that we now have an internment camp for children sitting in the desert.
The richest country on earth can’t even find homes, education, and personal care to these kids. We send them to a camp with next to nothing. It’s despicable.
8
The Trump Administration, including Trump himself, and the rest of his criminal enterprise, should be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity. This is SICKENING.
8
The people who created this crisis are those who crossed the boarder illegally with these children. And by the way some refuse to take them back.
25
What is the moral Senator Cruz doing? Of Governor Abbot?
3
"Crimes against humanity" are CRIMES! Who is responsible? The Commander in Chief! Impeach, try, convict, sentence.
3
does not matter the color - all lives matter equally. Consistent and fair enforcement of immigration laws and any and all laws - needs to be fair and consistent regardless of anything else.
6
I see a goal here as the number of refugees we accept into the United States dwindles to zero and the number of deportables swells into the thousands. We are becoming one of the nations creating refugees rather than receiving them.
This is my country now. Being cheered by mobs in red hats claiming in vulgar unison with their leader that they and this are what make America great.
4
America the Fearful
Where refugee children
Too dangerous to be here
Long for the freedom
That guns enjoy
2
The dark and bloody hand of the Goebbles-of-DC, Stephen Miller — Trump's senior advisor — is all over this hideous and cruel situation. Miller has the empathy and compassion of a pothole on the I-95, not to mention he white nationalist leanings. And given that he wrote the grossly embarrassing speech for Trump's UN standup tragi-comedy, it is clear the White House is oozing with racism, fear and loathing targeting any non-white group — American citizens, and immigrants alike.
What is happening now in this remote part of Texas — what other state would let Trump get away with this cruelty? — is another version of othe internment camps that imprisoned Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. I grew up in West Los Angeles and had several friends whose parents were sent to Manzanar in the Sierra-Nevada foothills. The fact that they remained committed to the United States after the war, says volumes about how their patriotism was light years beyond anything this White House and the entire Republican Party has shown us.
When will this madness and shame end? Not soon enough.
Vote in November.
4
Yes under cover of the "Kavanaugh" ploy, Trump is running amok. Oh and don't forget: PROSECUTE RUSSIAGATE!
1
Why are hispanic voters so complacent about Nov midterms? Do they not care?
2
@MoneyRules
Simply put those that came here as immigrants applied and became legal US citizens, with emphasis on LEGAL. Ask any immigrant who applied and received citizenship how they feel about those wanting to forego our laws and cut in line. The answer will surprise you.
7
As though Gitmo itself isn't enough of a travesty now we have Gitmo Jr. for children. I am ashamed to be an American.
3
Trump engages this cruelty because he can. It fits where the Senate simiultaneously is determined to elevate a child molester to Justice of the Supreme Court. "My country 'tis of thee; Sweet land of liberty". Hardly.
3
Get the camera crews and go to Texas and document the conditions, the rules, the life of these kids and put it all over social media and worldwide media. If this is not news, what is? As we try to determine if a ranting candidate for the supreme court is telling the truth under pressure, 2000 kids are rousted in the middle of the night and herded into a Tent City near the Texas border. Who are we? Put the bright spotlight on this inhumanity with hopes it will somehow stop and we can begin to gain back some dignity as a society.
6
I guess shipping these people back to their native countries is out of the question. Why?
25
@Maureen By law, they are entitled to apply for asylum. Those requesting asylum are entitled to due process including a legal review of their asylum claims. Just packing them up and shipping them home denies them their rights by law. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/minor-children...
@Cindy What tends to happen is that "advocates" encourage the filing of asylum applications that do not state a cause of action for asylum under law. Asylum is available to those who are in danger from their government or groups who have the acquiescence of their government, on account of who they are or what they believe. It does not cover street crime, mistreatment by household members, etc. but the majority of the Central American child claims are predicated upon fears of private-actor crime or domestic abuse situations. Kids don't realize that these situations are not grounds for asylum, so they are easy to convince by advocates--so they hang out in the system instead of going home to their families.
1
@CindyWe need to change our laws regarding asylum. Asylum was never intended to become an immigration shortcut.
Summer camp for brown kids. I truly hate the Trump Regime, with the fire of a thousand Suns. But that’s just Me.
VOTE in November. Save these innocent Children.
2
Sadly, if this president had a brain he would know that he also doesn't have a heart. He is apparently driven by his digestive track, which delivers his gifts to the world.
5
In reply to NYT commenters and others in the GOP who believe that, because many of these children illegally came to this country in the backs of vans, hidden in trains and walking for miles under cover of darkness-my question to you is this: does that mean that WE should lose our collective humanity and intentionally show these children evil?
How do people, especially people who brag that they are extra-good because they are Christian, have that much hatred in their hearts? And don't tell me this is financial, when you happily look the other way for a president who has spent $79 MILLION on 147 golf course trips in this presidency. This is your hatred showing - impure and simple.
8
@common sense advocate
Put up or shut up. Go sponsor some of these kids yourself. That means taking in, feeding, clothing, putting them into school and giving emotional support. Give YOUR time and YOUR money if you feel so passionately about the humanity of it. And remember, there is a never ending stream of humanity coming from south of the border needing YOUR money, time and compassion.
5
@common sense advocate
Generalize much? You automatically assume that those commenting here who want laws to be obeyed are members of the GOP. Such a blanket statement, and probably not true either. These children were left behind by their very own parents who came here illegally they are the ones responsible for the plight of these kids, not trump, no the US government. No matter how you slice and dice this those are facts. Were you this vocal when Obama did this very same thing?
3
Stop blaming Trump. Blame the parents who cross the border illegally and they drag their litter of kids with them. Oh the NYT headlines of kids rotting is nothing more than something to attract the bleeding hearts. Put the blame where it belongs On the parents who put the kids here. It time we stop holding these kids. If you cross the border illegally with a kid you should be deported same day, no questions asked. As for those kids here and their legitimate parent is also in detention .. reunite them and deport them. The rest of the kids need to be sent back to their country of origin and let their government handle them. NOT our problem. Asylum seekers need to be made to wait on the Mexican side of the border and not here. Make it mandatory that asylum seekers file at the US consulate in Mexico and not at the border. If a person crossed the border illegally and seeks asylum and is caught that person needs to lose all rights to seek asylum along with any child they have with them. Deport them and send them packing with no chance of visa or asylum.
17
I realize that this won’t slow Trumpists down for a second—they’re driven by ideology and racial hatred, not facts or reason, so why would it?—but here are the actual numbers. It should be hard to look at them and keep bellowing at Obama, but of course it won’t be.
By the way, the guff about anybody cheering for open borders? Also complete hooey.
3
Three years ago, this would have been unthinkable, but we've done it - we have normalized putting little brown children in concentrations camps. And without too much fuss, really. Church leaders calling this out, demanding protests, reminding their congregations that Baby Jesus was a refugee too - not much. If these kids were from Norway, or even white, it would probably be a different story. Good job, America! And special shout outs to DJT, his wife, feckless daughter and Kristjen "I didn't know Norway was a mostly white country" Nielsen!
4
Hurting children as a deterrence against adult behavior is despicable. Just despicable. What kind of people do this? Of all the lame-brain, off the wall, and terribly damaging actions the Trump administration has taken, Hurting-Children-As-Policy is the one that will come to define them.
9
American concentration camps, "family values", and I spent a lifetime believing we were better than that...
5
So, in what "backward, third world country" is this horrible, inhumane treatment occurring?
3
This is all part of the plan. Because if you think the migrant issue is a problem, wait until you see how bad it gets as climate change devastates Latin America (the USA's economic and imperial devastation will look quaint). So they're starting now, a long ranging plan to dehumanize these immigrants and refugees. That's why Trump and the GOP want the wall. They want us comfortable with an America where xenophobia is the standard, where locking migrants in cages is de rigueur, where a militarized Southern border wall patrolled by armed guards repelling environmental refugees is just one more thing to despair about.
7
@Angry,
You give me optimism for the future. If the US tries to save everyone it ensures one thing only: that our own people will suffer.
It is too late to save everyone. We have to prioritize our own people.
1
So all of you apparently have the shortest memories on earth or just blind to the fact that these "children" were crossing illegally, yes illegally during Obama, Bush, Clinton etc. You do realize this yes? Good. Because you ranger however short sided and biased should be placed squarely on the shoulders of those that actually abandoned these children in the first place. And that would be, wait for it....The Parents. Not trump, not Obama, not Bush or even Clinton. all of these pols and actually our senate decided not to follow our laws and things like this continue to happen.
22
What kind of people think its ok to hurt children? What kind of a country have we become?
4
Pulling children from their beds and their sleep in the middle of the night - anyone with any sense of decency would know that this is wrong.
4
Do we still have a notion - that our country represents the very best that democracy has to offer? Are we a people - who invokes God's blessings for that success?
We hear our President routinely say, "We have the worst immigration laws in the history of the world, okay? It's a joke... It's insane."
No, Mr President. What we have - are laws for due process for asylum seekers. What we have - are judges protecting the vulnerable. And we established our BEST principles.
This administration is intentionally callous to all. Our HUMANE processes were sorting out illegal interlopers. But to popularize themselves and their "corporate" immigration plan, this administration ignored our real capacity for greatness: compassion.
Some wage earners cheer this administration's gratuitous elevation of callousness. Why?
The Republican reform plan will prioritize immigrants sponsored by their countries' multi-national corporations. Followed by an expansion of foreign worker visas (the "big, beautiful gates" promise).
Don't fall for the lie that Republican changes will be good for American workers. If Republicans pass their immigration reforms, real competitors will come. That's the second good reason for rejecting this heinous election strategy of parading child prisoners into tents.
2
The U.S., on orders of the dt administration, is blatently guilty of psychological and Human Rights abuse of immigrant children. I'm ashamed of US society and our policies that turn a blind eye to children living in poverty or those kidnapped at the border. The damage to child development will undermine the health and wellbeing of these children well into adulthood.
2
Enforcement needs to begin with employers. Start arresting red stage MAGA hat wearing farmers dependent on undocumented workers.
5
Cruel, criminal and barbaric policies — they have white nationalist Stephen Miller's sadistic fingerprints all over it. Sick, power-hungry people without empathy have no place in government, yet Trump and his circle seem to enjoy visiting cruelties upon the most vulnerable — helpless, frightened children. We've learned nothing from atrocities of the past if we allow this to continue. Call your congressional representatives to voice objection, let them know your vote is dependent upon their actions to solve the unacceptable crisis Trump has created by separating and imprisoning these children.
Vote for candidates with humanity, those who will put an end to this unconscionable cruelty.
3
Why does the number of children held in detention (concentration) camps keep rising? What is our government hiding from the american people? It is beginning to sound like a third world dictatorship where children are removed from families & placed in brainwashing camps to make them terrorists.
4
An atrocity to say the least. The consequences of this vile policy will haunt these families and children for the rest of their lives. This grotesquely inhuman act is shameful - another stain on this country. I hope its creators will be soundly punished to the fullest extent of the law.
The countries behind most of these mass movements/destabilization of countries in the Middle East, Central America and North Africa are also the countries which take the least responsibility for the consequences of people fleeing these regions
9
I agree with Jill M...this is an incubator for hate for the USA and surely recriminations from many. Beyond all else, this is simply WRONG.
Can this go to the Supreme Court and can the Court order the administration to correct the situation?
Please, all of us need to complain.
3
I am surprised the UN did not call out the United States on this last week. It is a humanitarian crisis.
4
It's not a crisis, it's a situation knowingly created by the parents of these children and their governments. If an American citizen sends their kids unaccompanied to a neighborhood park or leaves them unaccompanied for 15 minutes in a car they can go to jail but we are suppose to reward the criminal parents of these kids. The answer is simple, send these kids back to their home countries and stop trying to game the system.
18
@Hellen
These children experience horrific gang violence in their countries. Try to have some compassion.
@Vickie
When did you ever care about the gang violence experienced by American children?
What ever happened to parental responsibility?
No one has a right to send their children to enter the US illegally.
18
Though I understand the sentiment of your comment, it can be utterly difficult for some of us to imagine what must be going on for a parent to finally decide to send their children to another country for safety and a better life. I cannot think of a single parent who would carelessly send their child away without a life or death reason. We should be careful not to judge something we likely don’t understand fully.
5
@Andre Hoogeveen
Perhaps if life were so tenuous in these countries the parents should have thought twice about having multiple children. It is not our responsibility fro taking in every child left behind by their parent.
@older and wiser
You're right. But punishing the children is an evil response.
This read like some post apocalyptic novel and yet this is America under trump, this is how we are showing the world how we make America great again. Is it any wonder they hate us.
5
This terrifying story should be getting at least as much attention as the Kavanaugh hearings. By the way, do Trump supporters and others who think immigrants deserve to be mistreated realize that non-citizens in the United States have many rights under the U.S. Constitution? And if you do know this, why do you not uphold the Constitution? What kind of patriots are you?
9
This must stop. These are crimes against humanity. This once proud country, which is deteriorating rapidly by the actions of a corrupt, immoral, near sociopathic leadership, has taken the worst lessons from history and the "war against terrorism" and is inflicting them on the most vulnerable people trapped by American hegemony.
7
Our immigration laws are a mess and need to be changed, but Democrats and this paper (pardon the redundancy) have decided that they have more to gain by demagoguing the issue rather than making the compromises necessary to get a bill though Congress. When you look for someone to blame for the plight of these kids try the closest mirror.
10
This is a travesty of monumental proportions and the children are suffering. What can we do to get them to a safe and secure place asap?
4
This should be an all hands on deck moment. Instead Trump, Sessions and Miller are perpetuating the disaster that they created and they are proud of it. The longer this tragedy goes on this cruel and unusual punishment will only get worse.
5
This is how democracy finally dies and is replaced by a high-tech, amoral oligarchy: the moral core is hollowed out, leaving only a wasteland of false moral equivalency and fanatical zero-sum individualism, by the desensitization of the population to moral abominations.
People think this is bad; this is just the GOP getting started on the long game. Once they know people will swallow this, watch them push the new "boundaries" of the acceptable.
7
Please keep on this subject. Everyone is riveted to the Kavanaugh issue, myself included, but what this administration is doing to immigrant children is the very worst thing they have done. First they stole children from their parents, and despite court-enforced efforts to reunite them, there remain orphans created by the illegal actions of a government whose officials admit they were trying to cause maximum pain and anguish to the parents. Now they are using the unaccompanied children to lure potential caretakers to incarceration and deportation. These centers are concentration camps, and having to go to tent cities shows the massive number of children being incarcerated in them. What do they mean, they have no other places for them? This is the nation with military budget of over $600 billion — and thousands of children have to be housed in tents in the desert? Are you just kidding us ? The US with concentration camps — inconceivable but true.
356
@Anne Sherrod Even worse, it is a US CHILDREN'S concentration camp.
@Anne Sherrod Unfortunately many Americans follow Trump, Kavanaugh, and the Kardashians because of their intrinsic prurience.
2
@Anne Sherrod
Well said!
1
More facts, less spin please. Your featured photo is reminiscent of art installations featuring the shoes of shooting or mass murder victims. Upon closer look, these are brand-new shoes with the plastic connecting hanger still in place. Donations? Who knows, but nobody is dying based on living in temporary shelters. With the huge upsurge in minors being brought across the border, existing facilities lacked capacity. I'm sure there would have been just as much criticism in these pages if kids were kept in overstuffed ones instead of being moved to the new facility, or if they were housed in criminal jails with the adults who were remanded for criminal prosecution, or if they were released to people who had not passed background checks. Other than simply declare the decdes-old immigration statutes null and void, what could the authorities do in this situation that would be approved by the NYT?
15
Working Mama: "With the huge upsurge in minors being brought across the border..."
False. The article even points out "in fact the influx is no greater now than it has been for the past two years." What changed was the policy implemented by Trump, making it more difficult for anyone to care for the children. No maternal sense of compassion for refugee children, torn apart from their families, now being housed in tents in the desert, without schooling or legal services? It's unacceptable to visit such cruelties upon children, they've done nothing wrong.
More empathy, less indifference, Mama.
Tens of 1,000's of people are arriving at our border monthly. The situation as it is, is untenable. What are the options? Allowing all who show up to just come in? For that is what is basically going on right now. There must be control measures. This is perhaps not the best way to deal with the overwhelming problem of illegal migrants but seriously, what are the options? How is this to be quelled or managed? Other than allowing all to enter without question, how is this to be remedied? I have yet to hear any ideas other than open borders. And that's not a good one.
12
Perhaps if you started with real numbers and dropped the open borders lie, we could get save the human decency and what America’s spozed to be for later.
1
@Robert 50,000 people per month may be a 'drop' but its still far too many. 1 million deportation orders being ignored is de facto open birders.
@MS
I have yet to witness a single person who has advocated for "open borders" and I'm beginning to suspect that this whole "open borders" mantra is simply another Trump tactic to stoke the irrational fears of his base.
That being said, there needs to be a dialog about immigration reform. In the meantime, hurting children as a deterrent to illegal immigration is abhorrent and should not be permitted to continue.
I, for one, would appreciate some practical advise on what we can do to end this horror.
Thank-you.
7
I am physically ill from reading this. This nation is now earning a reputation for cruelty that equals or surpasses everything we quickly condemn the rest of the world for. All who put Mr. Trump in power and those who even now refuse to put checks on his behavior must take responsibility for this atricity. I'm a loyal, loyal American, and cry every time I recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing The Star Spangled Banner. But now, for the first time in my life, I wish I lived in another country.
30
While there are a few commenters here with the usual justifications for ignoring or justifying the problem so they don't have to think about it, the rest of us know that is this is indeed cruel and unusual punishment. And if it's so great, why did the government feel compelled to yank children out of their beds in the middle of the night. Hoping no one would notice under cover of darkness no doubt.
11
I am by no means a Trump supporter or of anything emitted by him. But, by the Times' own reporting in recent months, and just today in the Times' article on the boarder camp, didn't this whole retention business get formulated and implemented in Obama's time? The problem is the the United States has no coherent immigration policy or laws. That's all of our fault. Pinning it solely on Trump or political group or another is not going to get us out of the morass we let our politicians create over the past several decades.
18
@Joe
The economic boom started in Obama's era too but Trump takes credit for it daily. All Trump has done is make a bad policy exponentially worse.
This is how populations of angry, disturbed young people are formed that have everlasting resentment against the people that did this to them, whether through war or by placing them in camps. The Palestinians who grew up in prison camps formed an implacable anger against their captors. If efforts aren't made quickly to solve this situation, and to place kids with families who can take care of them, the US will face long-term consequences.
14
@Jill M
Anger should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the parents. No one else. We did not do this to them the parents did.
2
I am ashamed of my government’s actions. Congressional inaction. What the Trump Administration’s executive orders have now created—judicial impotence.
I am ashamed that American citizens can blame a complex issue on children.
Socio-political, economic and global policies, decisions and actions (some taken by US interference) caused the chaos and crisis in Central America. Children are victims of adult decisions. Not pawns in a chess game.
Let’s offer hope to the future.
Provide decent conditions for these children. Education is vital. Literacy. Herding them together like cattle is psychologically and educationally detrimental for their development and for ours.
Shame on anyone, including the Trump Administration, for thinking they should be punished for seeking a better life.
While these children are in our charge, instill in them the best of us. When and if they leave, maybe, they will take the better part of us.
8
Thank you for speaking out. Please dedicate reporting resources and remind us constantly of this malicious outrage.
6
What pains me most is these guys then stand in line as "pro life" and do not care about the child that is born and standing at our door and they do go to church i presume and boast of Christian tradition that makes even the Pope tearful.
19
@weary traveller
Yes, good point--the "pro-lifers" need to be demanding that they be allowed to foster parent these kids. It would put their energies to good use.
2
To suggest or infer (as many of the commenters here are) that the United States owes nothing to these children is ridiculous: the policies of colonial and post-colonial powers have contributed immensely to the situations these children are seeking to escape. They are here because of the greed, the war mongering, and the pillaging carried out by the wealthy and the powerful and their lackeys, which includes a large number of Americans. If nothing else they are here because America is the largest exporter of guns in the world and, not surprisingly, parents don't want their children in (pseudo or actual) war zones.
10
US policies have destabilized Central America for decades (honorable mention to Jacobo Arbenz here), but responsibility with imperial nations such as ours is entirely a one-way street.
For what it's worth, you chaps still have a way to go before you are as awful as we British were. I just pray that's not the Number 1 spot Trump is after...
2
Having such an atrocity occur in any country, let alone this one, is nothing less than an assault upon humanity.
Trump has been the source of this, and continues to be regardless of the vast protests by the majority of Americans. His inhumane policies, in many areas, are anti-American.
In a more rational, peaceful time, if this had happened elsewhere, the U.S. would have filed suit in the ICC for human rights abuses against the offender. Note that Trump has given the finger to the ICC rather than risking being held accountable for his crimes.
It is incumbent upon US, ALL Americans, to hold him criminally accountable on behalf of these children and others suffering without due process or ethics.
13
The grim view of identical tents in a barren land surrounded by fences only brings to mind the view of Auschwitz and similar warehousing of people the rulers despise.
And no schooling?
Nice. Bullies always pick on the weakest. This is an immoral administration and we need these children freed and returned to their families. We can find anything on earth if we want to, but it seems little too much for our administration to make an effort because, and I guarantee you, someone is making money on their imprisionment
15
This is horrible to hear. But it is misleading to squarely place the blame on the U.S. government. Families from Latin America send these children, who are probably scared and do not want to be separated from their loved ones, on dangerous journeys to the U.S. Those that have legitimate asylum claims are dwarfed by "frankly" opportunistic migrants who simply want to take advantage of free education, food stamps and other public services. While the motive to send one's child on this cruel odyssey may be born of parental love, it asks other families to shoulder their burden which is wrong. I hate Trump and the political benefit he seeks to reap from this. But the rules that encouraged this practice must end including loopholes like sponsorship from resident families who are themselves illegal. The sooner this realization slows these illegal immigration attempts, the better.
18
wait a minute: look at Trump, look at Sessions, look at McConnell. listen to what they say, how they say it, what they do, what they want.
damaged goods, all of them, destroyed at a young age. now,rather than sympathy, they want revenge, they see nothing wrong in makimg the lower orders suffer as they so clearly did.
and rather than calling them out, a big chunk of American society cheers the bullies on.
8
The Trump administration is playing a cruel shell game with these children who have been separated from their parents or sponsors.The younger children did not choose to come here and do not speak English.They must have nightmares about separation from their families and the regimented lives they must live in tent cities.There cannot be enough adults to maintain order during this”incarceration”,let alone offer any caring for the children.Trump wants a wall on the border- instead they settled for immigration camps.They have no intention to develop an immigration policy.
5
Desperate people do desperate things. This explains the parents’ choices. What explains the choices made by our government?
12
With the Supreme Count nomination of such an unfit jurist, this Independent voter was really getting pumped up vote for Democrats then you had to muddy the waters with more illegal immigration advocacy.
I believe, as faulty as Trump has been in many areas, there is one area, illegal immigration, where I support his policies.
Several articles ago, NYT presented situations where minors had been released to caregivers who either disappeared and thus the teenagers were unaccounted for or many of the teens were trafficked.
Which is it NYT, should the Trump administration hurry up and just release these minors to anyone who shows up to pick them up or should these prospective caregivers be vetted.
I believe these teens should be handed over to officials in their home countries.
6
Wrong! This is the result of the government mishandling of a situation for which there was no plan, just a knee jerk reaction. Callous disregard for thousands of underage children is wrong. Wrong on so many levels. Wrong from the beginning.
4
Trump supporters are people too!
They walk on two feet. They have voices, they put words together, like, "lock her up!" They have feelings: they hate unions, hate education, hate immigrants, hate women, hate people of color; they love too. They love guns, guns, guns, the Confederate flag, guns, white power, Donald Trump, guns, and of course white power.
Immigrant children can rot in a desert because Trump supporters are Christians too.
Trump Christians have heard of the Golden Rule, but believe it is Trump'd by the White Rule: "White is power, keep it! Do unto non-Whites as you will." Trump Christians read the Bible where they find God's words to remind them they are better than non-whites who are not God's children, barely human, a plague on Christianity and America, the land of Jesus...if only he were white.
Trump is not my president. You don't have to respect him, nor the office he has soiled. He does not speak for America which is very close to death. Our enemies are celebrating, laughing at the joke of which America is a punchline.
What Trump supporters have done to America can be reversed. They are small people...in number and mind. The real question is, do decent Americans care enough to act? Will decent Americans raise their voices, move to the streets, march and vote?
11
My reaction as a Christian to those Christians happy with this policy is simply "have you not read the Bible?"
5
Perhaps Trump could allow a couple dozen kids bunk with his family at the White House? Or maybe the Republicans could temporarily adopt all of the children and let them stay with them at their homes, just until they are repatriated with their parents? Just a thought.
3
@Lawrence Imbodenor YOU could do that! great idea! what, you don't want to spend your time or money on the children of irresponsible parents who want to be rid of the burden of their own child, and instead wish to pawn them of onto the US taxpayers? how cold. pony up, big mouth, adopt or sponsor 1 or several of these children, and give generously to charities involved in helping these kids...that will ensure that many, many more follow.
3
Incarceration of children in for profit jails / gulag is an outrage that needs to be kept on the front page . Thank you.
4
Nice gratuitous race card at the end of the article. In any case, the only solution to illegal immigration is the enforcement of the law, which means deporting illegal aliens, holding businesses that hire them accountable, and punishing those who help them hide in society. These kids did not magically appear here. They were sent by their families trying to use them to circumvent our immigration laws.
23
@QED
Using children as bait to find undocumented immigrants and purposefully hurting children in an effort to curb illegal immigration is simply wrong.
1
@QED
"Nice gratuitous race card at the end of the article."
So you think this would happen to white kids too? Or are we not allowed to discuss the race of immigrants?
1
Can't we just immediately re-deposit people who sneak in right back onto the other side of the border that they just sneaked across?
19
@MIKEinNYC
That is known as "expedited removal" in the immigration laws. At present, controlling federal case law bars minors from being adjudicated under expedited removal. This is why many adults travel with children, in the hopes that if caught they will get to stay for an extended period while they and the child await trial together.
4
The Failing NYTimes just doesn't get the strategy here. Those who even think about seeking refuge in the US will see what's happening on cable news and stay put. They all watch Failing CNN and Failing MSNBC, right?
4
Prisons for children are not made better because they have be in place for a longer period of time. Indeed, it is clearly arguable they are logarithmically worse with each passing hour in custody.
This is not a cattle feedlot.
This is not an animal shelter.
This is more akin to a marshaling yard for the horrific trains in 1940's Eastern Europe.
If this country of over 325 million cannot absorb a bolus of 15,000 children (0.0045%) they we are not and never will be "great again".
Consider how you might feel if it were your child in federal custody. For those who doubt a double standard because of the skin color of these children, I need only offer two words as a rejoinder: Natalee Holloway.
2
@LarryGr: Ah, the the American taxpayer. I wonder what the taxpayers have to pay for these concentration camps for children who we are told must pay for the “crimes” of their parents.
There are many groups of immigrants and one group is those who come seeking asylum under US and international law. These people are entitled to a fair hearing before an immigration judge. But these people do not have lily white skins and they don’t speak English and do not understand that we have a racist government with a president who see these people as animals and criminals and if he could he would march them into the dessert and shoot them all.
This is a police state operation. These people have had their children taken away and this appears permanent and the reason for this is terror, so that brown poor people will be too frightened to come, whether to escape terror and violence at home to receive the same here or to seek a better life for themselves and their families.
What’s next having the ICE goon squads question every Hispanic not born of American parents who were born in the USA arrested and have their citizenship revoked and deported to who knows where, because that is not the concern of the American taxpayer?.
We have a Trump regime which is steeling us blind and if after the election the GOP still controls Congress the stocks to buy will be companies which build concentration camps which Justice Kavanaugh will rule is simply infrastructure.
1
What kind of country builds a gulag just for children? What kind of country uses children as hostages to ‘defend’ itself from people seeking sanctuary? What kind of country turns children into political prisoners just to please the xenophobic and racist segment segment of the voters?
The handwriting is on the wall for America. Who dares look?
1
This is an abomination. It is nothing less than a universal violation of human rights. Our front pages, our media in general, have recently deluged us with the sordid young life of a now questionably moral SC nominee. I am not saying this is wrong. But until now we have buried the downright abuse of brown-skinned, immigrant children who will be psychologically scarred for years to come if not for life. The Trump administration is tryannical. His Congress is complicit. We, the Americans who witness this and the too many who actually support it, are no better than those mentioned above. We can stop this, you know. And our Christian Right which insists on saving the unborn can instead insist on saving the living. But they, we, choose to build ghettoes, internment camps, corrals fit for animals which will become lice-infested, disease-ridden. For now, nativism and bigotry with all its ugliness are winning this war between decency and evil. We can not let this present paradigm be the final victor.
5
Shame on Kirstjen Nielsen and her minions at Homeland security for this gratuitous cruelty, a typical Trumpian republican trait. This will come back at some point to haunt her and this entire administration.
5
Dear Editorial Board, don't you think the use of the term "rot" is a bit extreme? Rot indicates the death or dying of the thing that is rotting. Can you actually say these children are dead or dying. Of course not. So the use of this word is either poor grammatical judgment on someone's part or strategically employed to convey the wrong picture of reality. Whichever it is I take umbrage at its use in the context of the actual story
and suggest that in future the Editorial Board curb it's anti Trump negative enthusiasm with proper factual verbiage.
20
So you are in favor of treating children in this manner? Would you prefer the terms “physical and psychological abuse”?
2
"Left to rot" has been traditionally used to describe someone who has been incarcerated--e.g., "rot in prison"--especially those without any hope of getting out. The usage is quite apt.
2
@Ross Stuart
This is an EDITORIAL. This is where opinions are expressed. If you don't like the opinions, read the news articles and form your own. Warning: read enough about this issue and you might get sick to your stomach.
"Ripping children from their beds"......"Letting children rot in the desert".
This is the type of highly charged, over-the-top partisan hyperbole that discredits so much of the left-wing media--including the NY Times. It is not meant to inform--but to inflame.
No mention is made that Obama's policies were not so different. If it could not be proven that children were related to adults they crossed into the U.S. with,--or if they were unaccompanied, they have been placed in detention centers. That has been our policy for years--and it started well before Trump.
For many who were no doubt the victims of child sex trafficking, it's difficult to argue that they are not better off.
"Ripped from their beds...rotting in the desert". This would be more laughable--if so many liberals didn't believe this--slavishly and unquestioningly.
26
If anything gets me to burst out laughing these days, it’s seeing Trumpists wail about hyperbole.
1
@Robert, when the Left is so completely out of power, as it currently is--there is not much left, other than hyperbole. So you're all forgiven.
Why did the administration put this "new" tent city of children 30 miles in the scrub from El Paso in the middle of nowhere? Well, to avoid scrutiny of course. Why do they wake kids in the middle of the night to rustle them off to this tent city? Well, to avoid them from "escaping".
We need the TV networks into this tent city 24 hrs/day, 365 days/year until this repugnant tent city is dismantled. The American people need to know what is going on down there in our name. And we need to get this "prison camp" closed down ASAP.
This is NOT the right way to deal with illegal immigration.
11
Ignorance and racism (I mean nationalism) is what promotes the unnecessary death of many.
3
What about the responsibility of the parents for breaking US law and bringing them here illegally?
17
Trump cares about children.
EPA environment stewardship?
DeVoss?
ICE?
Undermining ACA?
No!
1
Round them up in the middle of the night, pack them off to "re-education camps" and furnish them with "Trump Youth" uniforms. It will be difficult to send them back to rat out family and friends, however, if you lose track of who and where you snatched them from in the first place. Are they being fed Big Macs, chocolate cake and 2 scoops?
1
Its not a crisis. And Trump did not create it! Let's stop the outright LIES from the NYT Editorial board.
The problems are caused by people ILLEGALLY crossing our border.
Pure and simple. No quibbles, no fancy left wing excuse.
If the illegal crossings stopped today, there would be no more such problems. We'd just be left to deal with the remains of past ones.
If Bush, Clinton, Cush, Obama had actually enforced the law and stopped illegal immigration across our southern border, this would not be happening.
If the New York Times would get on the right side and support Trump in stopping illegal immigration, if Nancy Pelosi did,
etc. there would be no new problems. The old ones would go away as people were reunited and returned to their legal residence countries.
Stop making problems worse by supporting crime, New York Times.
19
@Doug McDonald
Hey Doug - the issue is not whether illegal immigration is illegal. It is. Full stop.
The issue is whether warehousing children in the desert is a moral solution to this problem. It is not. Full stop.
The New York Times should talk to some expert psychologists about how sociopaths are created. I cannot think of a better way to create new terrorists and other criminals than traumatizing and long-term damaging of children. What kind of lifelong hatred of the United States will be embedded in these thousands of children and teens? What kind of mental health costs medical costs criminal justice costs will we the taxpayers have to pay for in future decades, because our government today created thousands of disturbed human beings through the Nazi-like actions of Trump's government. Even in jail so there are educational programs libraries and Mental Health Services. These children and teenagers have none of that. Adolescent brains are quite disorganized while the developmental process is rearranging everything. I cannot think of a worse situation for teenagers to be in. This is horrendous sadistic government action. the long-term consequences will be grave for all of us, not just for the victims.
3
As President Trump said emphatically during the 2016 campaign, “torture works.”
And especially on Latino children and their parents, right Mr. President?
5
So, in many fewer words, the NYT advocates open borders for adults crossing illegally with minors.
Why not be honest and just say that?
26
@Jeff Guinn
Just because you don't agree with separating children from their parents does not mean that there should not be immigration rules. The problem is that putting children in concentration camps is a BAD rule!
"serves only to deepen the shame of this country’s treatment of vulnerable brown-skinned children"
Under the cover of darkness or in a room off the stairs where no one can hear you --the same mindset, the same behavior.
Sanctuary City: https://www.flickr.com/photos/szpako/28414804167/
2
For all the folks who think people from Central America should be immediately deported, this article from the Washington Post should illuminate why these “illegals” come here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/faced-with-migrat...
3
Trump's legacy is as the Oppressor of Children.
4
I’ve no idea how to reach people who fantasize that we’re being invaded, have this depth of hate for kids, and know this little about reality. And then you have to somehow get to their understanding of demographics, when they cannot even count. Oh, and they also seem to’ve been remarkably inattentive when it comes to reading the Bible. Perhaps if they stopped thumping it for five seconds, and opened to the gospels?
Oh, well. My guess is, you just do the best you can to patiently explain reality, then vote their worthless, oandering representatives the heck out of office.
3
Mexico may be sending us a few "rapists and murderers" as this so-called president claimed in his campaign, but there is little doubt that his policies risk producing far many more as these children's social and emotional development is being permanently damaged. May God have mercy on our souls for allowing this bully to do this to allay the fears that he has caused!
1
I'm a psychologist, and this is criminal. And, as a member of a Holocaust family, the photo of a pile of shoes, wire fencing, and armed guards was re-traumatizing to me even after 70 years. And here I always thought that it was Republicans who always used to yell about "family values." This is just another step in the dehumanizing, dark Trumpocracy that denies any sense of human decency to sexually abused women, people desperately in need of health care, people of color, immigrants, and now their children. Long ago I vowed #NeverAgain and I will do everything I can to see that this continued "zero tolerance" has zero tolerance from the health care community, the criminal justice system, and the American people.
430
@Paul Wortman very well . said. how is this practice even remotely an American.
@Paul Wortman
I guess you missed the part where victims of the Holocaust were actually citizens of their countries and were forcefully removed from their homes. No one forces these parents or kids to leave their homes and cross American borders.
6
@Stanz These are innocent children! There are appeals ongoing to determine eligibility for refugee status. This is America not Germany in the 1930's. You don't treat human beings, especially children that way. Shame on you!
This is a shame of the United States just as Japanese internment is. These children are deserving of peace. This also seems to be about hate for those who are different from yourself. I don't understand this level of cruelty.
1
Find their country of origin and send them back their government and let their government figure out their parents and relatives.
15
“Hundreds of Children Rot in the Desert”
Put that headline and accompanying story on the front page of every Central American and Mexican newspaper. Do it daily for a few months and maybe, just maybe, those contemplating entering our country illegally will instead stay at home and, to borrow a phrase from Trump’s UN speech, work to make their own countries great again.
13
There is no reason for these children to suffer. They should immediately be returned to their safe, comfortable homes in the countries they came from.
11
name and shame the individual people responsible for this cruelty
2
@true patriot That would be difficult since the parents are residing in the States illegally.
6
I am so ashamed of my country. This is truly stooping low - this persecution of children. It must be stopped.
2
I wish their parents would stop sending the unaccompanied kids here that my tax dollars must take care of
16
@NYC Dweller
Purchasing and operating a single jet fighter for a year probably costs more than housing and supporting all the children in your concentration camps for a decade. In fact, providing security for the Baby-in-Chief on 5th Ave probably costs more. Stop whining.
If we treat these poor people so badly, why do they still try to come here?
11
We Americans can end this blight by voting out the GOP starting in Nov. This is the stain on America that will last for many years. These children will come forward as they age and relate stories of emotional deprivation, lack of education, sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the US government. They have no one to turn to now. Horrible what Trump and the GOP have done.
@pb, It can end if immigration laws were adhered too, funny Obama did this very thing and you were what, ok with that? This so called crises didn't start with Trump.
6
First off, they're no rotting in the desert, as the NYT calls it. As far as I'm concerned, the tent city should be on the Mexican side of the border, and the sponsors should be Mexicans, not residents of the U.S. Everything must be done to dissuade anyone from approaching our borders. That includes harsh conditions. A young illegal allowed into the country on humanitarian grounds becomes an adult illegal.
16
It's time to LOCK TRUMP up. Crimes against humanity.
How can anyone on the border patrol do this. Didn't the Nuremberg War trials make it plain that following such orders made one just as culpable the officers in charge with the buck stopping at the head?
2
This article informs us of the gravity of an unbelievable situation. Legal? Illegal? These are CHILDREN. I am truly embarrassed that The United States of America has decided to use their ugly political side to the detriment of innocent children. Their only crime is that they were with a parent period. End of story. Something needs to change!!!
1
The Trump administration did not create the crisis. In Reno v Flores, the 9th Circuit said that minors cannot be jailed with their illegal immigrant parents. It’s interesting that you had nothing to say when Obama was also detaining minors without their parents.
20
This situation of the immigrant children is unbearable and barbaric. And yet there are many here in Israel who say that “Trump is good for Israel.” And they turn a blind eye to these atrocities.
3
I hope the Trump administration and its supporters realize they are potentially raising future Hispanic terrorists, similar to how we helped raise Islamic terrorists in the Middle East with cruel treatment of children and families. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the parallels. Trying to turn responsibility for their plight on their parents doesn’t absolve our compassionate responsibility to treat these children as human, not abandoned animals.
1
More open borders hypocrisy from the Sanctuary City Times.
If leftists want to fix this, all they need to do is volunteer to be sponsors for these children. But they won’t, and they aren’t. Why? Because they have busy lives, they have their own children to take care of, and because in their hearts they know that these children belong somewhere else, not with them.
But their preferred somewhere else is in OUR communities, in OUR emergency rooms, and in OUR schools! Scratch a Sanctuary City, Open Borders bleeding heart and you’ll find someone who expects the migrants to be placed far away from them. They have no interest in paying for their generosity out of their own pockets and communities.
Hence the hypocrisy. They want these migrants off of their consciences.
19
Trump's immigration policies, on every level, from revoking asylum applications for domestic violence and gang violence, to cruelly saying "asylum or your child," to outright blocking people from reaching ports of entry to apply for asylum, all of these are a national disgrace. Shame on the GOP for using immigrants and asylum seeker's children to garner votes.
1
Why are these children being imprisoned without hope of sponsorship or parole? It is simple, they are the live bait to capture illegal immigrants or make false accusations against those who are legal. They are being physically and emotionally abused, used, and traumatized for life in a Southern Border 'Gitmo' tent camp constructed by ICE.
Their collective psychological torture is never to know day by day what will happen to them, where their loved ones are and why they are not looking for them, and being denied love. They are defenseless and now have no formal education or recourse to legal representation.
What happens when they reach 18? Do they get arrested or just thrown back over the border and into the violence they ran from as refugees to America? Trump is a monster. Sessions and Nielsen are fellow monsters perpetuating evil and cruelty against children, and they should be prosecuted in the world court or the ICC that both Trump and Bomb Them Bolton were trying to discredit prior to any forthcoming charges from ICC.
This is not the America I grew up in, and Trump has got to be replaced as the most corrupt, evil, cruel, inept, unfit, unqualified caricature of a man or 'American' president in our history. We need to get him out of office in order to survive him. He is a hater and he has gone viral in his hate for mankind.
2
President Stephen Miller's legacy.
2
Maybe they should have stayed home?
14
Here we go again-- more child detentions. Are psychopaths drafting our immigration policy? How else to explain the deliberately cruel treatment of minors? And putting them in unregulated private facilities makes child abuse a probability. There needs to be access for child welfare watchdog groups.
You advocate a resolution through political compromise. You know that won't happen for years to come. Meanwhile we our losing our humanity.
2
Well stated; now, let's see what, if anything, is going to work to solve this cruel separation of children from their parents, a concoction planned mercilessly by a vulgar and ugly American in-chief (and his acolytes). All this is classic Trump of course, as he is devoid of feelings and where solidarity is absent; but the complicity of republicans is despicable, as they ought to know better. No outcry thus far by the wider public however, and this may be more grave and lasting, the dissolution of the 'Golden Rule' (do not do to others what you wouldn't want them do to you!). And looking the other way -our indifference- is lethal for justice.
1
These children are in the US illegally. They should not be in camps in the desert, they should be back in their countries of citizenship, as their welfare is rightly the responsibility of those countries. So who is stopping this from happening? It's not the Republicans. If the Democrats want to solve this problem they could easily get a bi-partisan consensus to set up a rapid and effective deportation regime and stop letting people abuse the asylum process for idiotic things like having an abusive boyfriend.
19
And this is the only solution to what Trump believes is our "immigration problem"???
An inconvenient truth for Trump, the GOP, and the immigrant haters: "Illegal Immigration Is Way Down and Falling Fast" (Washington Post, 7/25/2011)
The entire Trump plan to take children away from their parents at the border was not only stupid and unnecessary, but cruel and punishing, and the effects on these children will be devastating and for a life time for many. But who cares when blatant clruelty sells big time to the GOP base.
Based on this truly reprehensible and despicable action by the Trump administration against children, we can consider ourselves to e living in a totalitarian society, because this is what totalitarian societies do--take children away from their parents in the name of the state and destroy the space between human beings.
"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men." (Confucius)
The Trump Administration is 0 for 3.
2
This is nothing less than an atrocity. I am ashamed of our government.
258
@Alison Schantz I am ashamed of our nation for electing and continuing to support an administration that would commit such an atrocity. All good people must vote in November and reject the monsters who enabled this crime.
To those who say that the plight of these people is not our responsibility or that of the Trump administration, I beg to differ. Human hardship and suffering is the responsibility of us all. If your next door neighbor falls off their roof and cries out for help, do you ignore them? If you pass a motorist on the road who is in distress, do you drive by without concern? Borders are only for nations to protect their collective self interests; we should help as far as we can reach.
3
@Jonathan
So by that logic are we as a nation responsible to take in everyone who is in hardship? We have plenty of Americans struggling to feed their own families working 2+ jobs to do it and barely scraping by. Perhaps the parents should have taken care of their own kids, not our government.
7
@Margo Channing
I am unaware that immigrant families are the reason behind their struggles. We should be helping both the working poor and the non-working. We should also be looking for ways to help those less fortunate. If money is the argument, we have plenty of examples of waste (e.g. troops in Iraq) and bad tax plans (e.g. GOP tax cut for wealthy) to blame for that and should not use immigrants as an excuse (if you are).
It is simply mind-boggling that this rounding up of people and imprisoning them is happening in OUR United States of America by OUR government.
WE THE PEOPLE cannot say we didn't know as Germans said when Hitler was solidifying his army of destroyers and rounding up Jewish people.
We cannot say we didn't know as the world did while millions were being slaughtered in Rwanda.
We cannot say we didn't know as OUR government arrested and detained citizens of Japanese descent during WWII.
Nero was fiddling as Rome burned. He probably would have been watching football today.
WE THE PEOPLE must not let this stand in OUR America. Not now. Not ever again.
19
Our government has become unspeakably cruel. As a senior U.S. citizen who lives in Mexico most of the time now, i know Mexico's people, to be open, kind and generous. You would never be stuck on the road here without many to stop and help you, to share their food or skills. The sweet and vulnerable children are most precious of all and we are literally destroying them emotionally and socially, all for the "crime" of seeking a better life or to join their families already in the United States. I counsel young people here to not "go north" but rather to continue their struggle here in Mexico for a better life where traditions of family and community are stronger and more sustaining. i believe that life and governance in some central american countries is so toxic that many feel they have no choice if they want to save themselves and their children.
I would disagree with Larry G.and say that the responsibility for the abuse of these children is 100% resting on the shoulders of Donald Trump and "his' Republican congress and party who have abandoned our humanity and embraced isolation, cruelty and an a-moral future
for our country.
13
@Robert Weiss that's great! but why o why, are not the o so generous mexican people and their benevolent government volunteering to take care of these kids?
1
Is there sort of a footnote to the parable of the Good Samaritan that has the Priest and Levite jailing the beaten-and-bloodied man at the side of the road, deporting the Samaritan, and kidnapping and detaining both of their children as barter for a Judea immigration-policy ransom?
Is that how Christians really inherits the kingdom of heaven? Or am I reading that parable wrong?
In any event, I just don't understand self-proclaimed Christian nations anymore, baby.
9
Yet another well-meaning but elitist article from the Times, the message being "let them all in." The poor illegal immigrant children. No, the answer is to repatriate them all, and stop whining about it. Yes, the individual cases ARE tragic. We all should recognize that. But multiply those cases (and those of their parents) by thousands or millions and you have a threat to the social and economic stability of the US.
You know, the Times advocates for environmental concern and worries about global warming...and it is absolutely right to do so. So should we all, because it is a tidal wave (literally) coming to us and short-sighted national governments (shamefully including our own) are not addressing it. But does the NYT not realize that later in this century global warming is going to produce hundreds of millions of climate refugees who will swamp Europe and North America and devastate our societies if we do not harden our borders and (sorry) harden our hearts to human suffering and keep them out?
I absolutely despise Donald Trump, but I can only applaud his Administration's efforts to harden our borders....because we've only just begun to see the tidal wave coming. Defense against illegal immigration should not be a partisan issue, because it soon will become an issue of national survival
23
In the desert there is no rot, just the desiccated remains of the American Dream, scattering in the hot, dry wind.
236
@Corbin
"American Dream"? Illigally invading the US when others are waiting their turn to legally immigrate is not the "American Dream". Breaking our laws is not the "American Dream".
2
Compassion is not the hallmark of Trump and his supporters and their so called values. Sending children off to a camp in the middle of the night into the desert is a misguided and severe way to deal with unaccompanied minors coming across the border. This reminds me of the Japanese interment camps of the 1940s, perhaps even worse. There can be clear minded policy to deal with these children humanely, but a isolated tent camp in Texas is not one of them. This xenophobic administration has no ideas and no plan for any decent immigration policy and this is just another cruel example of the current chaos and lack of leadership that we have now in this country.
6
The US has become a country that no longer inspires people to reach for their dreams, but to fear their worst nightmares.
How can anyone with children or grandchildren allow this to happen? How can they sleep at night?
We -- and the Trump administration is doing this in our name -- are allowing children to be ripped from the arms of their parents and _we_ are allowing these children to be kept in concentration camps.
In the meantime, _we_ are about to put an out of control judge credibly accused of attempted rape and sexual assault on a court that could decide these children's fate.
I weep for our country.
11
@avrds
Are you serious ?
These people aren't coming here because they heard the nightmares were really something.
They're headed this way for a better life, which they know they can achieve here.
But they also know they're crossing illegally, so too bad. The problems their kids have is on them, not us. Immigration laws exist for a reason.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who wait patiently in line for years, follow all the rules, and enter legally.
It is an insult to them, to allow others to flaunt the law.
3
New York Times, will you please name the specific officials who decided that it was necessary to whisk away these children in the dead of night? I want to know the identity of people who could think something like this is okay. It is not a system that has caused these children to go through such a terrifying and damaging experience; specific people had to make horrendously bad decisions for this to happen. We have a right to know the identities of these people, and to howl for their resignations.
8
@Patty
I too would like to know who in the Obama administration did this very same thing, unless you think this is all on trump?
3
@Margo Channing
Remind me, where were the tent cities that the Obama administration used to house these children?
Life does not end at birth!! These children -- and they are not alien; they are human beings -- deserve a life that offers them opportunity for health, education, well-being. Being interned as they are contradicts the "Right to life" rhetoric.....
The conditions these children are living in is not what my father fought for during WWII. Our Constitution applies to all persons.
8
This treatment of children is beyond inhumane. Hiding them in the middle if the night is criminal.
7
This is shocking and outrageous! As an American, a mother, a teacher and guidance counselor and mostly, as a caring human being, I cannot understand these actions. What is happening to this great country? This is not representative of American values! How can we help change this terrible situation???
8
The greatest tragedy of Trump is not only this obscene fact, but the smoke from his perpetual garbage fires: an accused sex assaulter and belligerent drunk on the Supreme Court, for example, that distract from his brutal assault on the weak and defenseless.
Children, people with pre-existing health problems being denied heath coverage, families denied food stamps who once qualified, religious minorities or immigrants who are now treated as the 'other' and the 'enemy' with the enthusiastic participation from our own federal government; these are the real 'enemies of Trump' and his policies, which prey like an opportunistic infection upon our nation.
6
This is a terrible situation. Your language, meant to help, does not. We don't need 'rot', we need focused reporting. These children, all children, all people, need the dignity of clarity.
4
The NYT supposes thousands of sponsors will magically appear, contrary to evidence. The words "rot" and draconian hardly fit their true definitions.
The current situation isn't ideal, but the parents who seek to break our laws need to be deterred.
25
@kwb Facists, always hide behind the law to justify inhumanity. Always. Thanks for the example.
2
It is hard to avoid the suspicion that media concern is largely fueled by the fact that detention is "harder to capture on film." No dramatic images to provide a hook for a lead story.
2
Either send the children back to their home country or place the children under the care of those who complain and they must pay for all expenses.
Put your money, time, and ability where your mouth is.
The NY Times should report this. However, show the international crises. Let people see boat loads of refugees not being allow to port. People starving, people so desperate to get out of poverty, and other nations lock them out.
This is a global crises not a US Trump administration solo problem.
oh! It is getting worse...
13
As much as I hate the guy he didn't start this mess. It has been the problem of past Administrations and do nothing sessions of Congress/Senate who sit on their hands and won't enforce our immigration laws. I wish you editors would stop pinning this on trump. Many of these so called "children" were gang members in their respective countries and you are fighting to let them in? Seriously? Life is hard, we are not the nations innkeeper, ask and LEGAL immigrant how they feel about those breaking the line to get here.
18
These children are in this situation due to decisions that their parents made! They are not the responsibility of the American taxpayers. They should be treated humanely and sent back to their home countries ASAP. This madness of parents sending unaccompanied children across the border illegally has been going on for so long because they just released to relatives and then pretty much get a free pass to stay in the US indefinitely.
20
While the country focuses on the Kavanaugh hearings, ugly things are taking place behind the scenes, this situation being one of the worst. Pressure needs to be applied to this administration to get them to move the needle on this outrage.
7
Yes if you ignore History these kids have no excuse.
Trump is a simple man with a simple mission. Exploit people.
8
There has to be a way to hold Donald J. Trump personally accountable and liable for this kidnapping and detention of innocent children. Find it. Do it.
7
@Edgar Numrich
By that logic all previous presidents should have been jailed long ago for this exact same thing.
4
“Unless limited in some way by the Trump administration, they can speak to scores of people in a few days, if necessary.”
The above quote modifies the entire article and renders its points moot.
Good job Comey. .
1
The Trump administration is creating a whole new generation of Mexican children who will hate the United States with a passion for ruining their lives. These children were introduced to incarceration when they should have been living lives free as children, even if those lives were threatened in Mexico. Nothing is worse for a child than being imptrisioned.
The Trump administration has no plan to solve this crisis that they have created, they are only making it worse. The idea that the US can incarcerate thousands upon thousands of Mexican children who are innocent is insane and deliberately cruel and it is creating a huge problem for the US in perpetuity that will only mushroom as the human costs increase.
8
@joyce
Most of these children are from Central America, not Mexico. Is is a horrible situation, but PARENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CHILDREN. Many were sent to the border alone. If they do not care about their children's well being, I do not either.
4
@joyce "we" ruined their lives? how about the parents that abandoned them at the border, to have total strangers, good or bad, take care of them because they could not or did not want to? maybe you should take personal responsibility for every criminally negligent parent within a 1000 miles of our border. get out your checkbook, i hope it's very thick indeed, because once they learn you will pay for the consequences of their irresponsible actions, they will send plenty more.
5
All unaccompanied children should be immediately returned to the government custody of their country of nationality without an asylum hearing. If their home country is deemed unsafe, they should be returned to the country they entered the United States from. They should never be placed with relatives in the US but investigations should be conducted to see if any relatives in the US helped them journey to the US. If so those should be prosecuted. Also, any illegal relatives they contact in the US should be immediately deported. Simply put, all illegal immigrants in the US should be deported without any hearing but to determine if they are US citizens. Our hospitality and good nature has been abused for too long. You've killed the golden goose.
15
More and more this situation reminds me of Gitmo: Held with no charges, offered nothing but cages, bars, prison cells. No one is responsible, no one will let them stand in an open court. They are denied every normal standard of legal access. No one will say how long either situation will continue -
Are these children to be held for decades like the men in Gitmo?
Are they never to be freed?
Is their day simply marching here and marching there?
Are they to be forever denied contact with the outside world?
Forever be denied education?
Segregated forever by sex?
I demand to know what is planned for these people - both at Gitmo and at "Tent City, Gitmo ll".
United Nations: Enough is enough. Is there no organization that must monitor these two separate yet similar situations?
These children have been sexually abused, physically assaulted and tormented.
Is that trump's purpose? Simply to have someone be abused on his Bad Hair Days?
Why?
Why are we holding these people captive with no rights?
September 11 was almost 20 years ago.
And yet there are still men held without charges.
trump has been in office 2 years - we already have 13,000 children.
How many more?
I call on the United Nations to investigate - and if they cannot find answers to either of these illegal holdings, then the UN must place sanctions on the United States of America.
We have gone rogue.
We have gone outlaw. We have not been a decent country since Gitmo.
Save these "Children of Gitmo"!
Enough.
7
This is such a morality issue for our country; in fact, probably the biggest morality issue of our country ever. The stain will never leave us. As important as a Supreme Clourt selection is, that does not mean the coverage of this horrendous act by the Trump Administration should ever stop. This should be continuous coverage by the media until the nightmare for the chilren is over, if it ever can be over for them because I am sure it will never leave their minds.
9
Heartless, cruel and sickening. This is not who we are as a nation, not even close. We are a nation of immigrants. Our national symbols speak of compassionately taking in refugees and helping those in need. Those who get upset over quiet protests during the anthem should be really riled up about this. It is way more harmful to our national identity (not to mention thousands of vulnerable children!). Of course these are often the same folks who are so worried about protecting unborn fetuses but easily look the other way when toddlers are ripped from parents and children are locked in internment camps.
8
Those here illegally must be returned to their country of origin.
If people are being held and detained it is only because the pro-illegal immigration advocates have forced the government to do so.
Every decade we let this problem fester- allowing millions of people to sneak into our country and steal our resources.
It is time to put the breaks on this. Every illegal immigrant should be deported. Grounds for asylum should be limited to people who are targeted and attacked by their government- not being a domestic abuse victim or poor.
Send. Them. Home. If the pro-illegal immigration advocates continue to stymie our nation and its laws new laws should be written targeting the advocates. They are organized criminal enterprises.
Send the illegals home. Now. No more dithering. We are a nation of laws- not sad stories or poems.
22
Actually, we’re a nation of sad stories and poems at least as much as we’re a nation of laws. Odd that you somehow missed Valley Forge, how our national anthem got wrote, the Alamo, the Civil War, Custer, the Maine, the inscription on Liberty, the....
But I’m sure that I should be ashamed for feeling badly about the plight of kids...excuuuuuse me!
2
@WillT26 If my ancestors had applied your advice, you wouldn't be commenting in this forum. Your family would have been just as "illegal."
Compassion and perspective can go along way to resolving the current situation.
1
@Norma,
Your ancestors chose not to do that. Good for you. You should feel really good about yourself for being such a nice person.
Now, back in the real world, we have a real problem with illegal immigration. The only solution is to deport all those here illegally.
With compassion and perspective, of course.
1
We are still the world's largest economy, no? With resources beyond imagination, really, given our GDP of $19.4 Trillion.
Yet these children must live in tents, in the desert, without access to education, social services, or even the comfort of their own siblings.
This is morally repugnant.
9
We know it must be akin to criminal if they have to do it in the middle of the night.
But what are we going to do about it?
VOTE
6
Let's see: "ripping" the children from their beds, "tearing" them from their parents, "thrusting" them in uncertainty and letting them "rot in the desert"?
No, I think this editorial doth protest too much. Where does it provide the information that that 30,000 to 60,000 "undocumented" migrants are apprehended at our southwest border *every month*? Where does it reveal that the US has one of the most liberal immigration policies in the world and that we have taken in more immigrants than any other country? Those are the real facts*.
*https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
29
@James Even if true. The only real problem with immigration is that it whips racists into a frenzy. Crush the racists, and we have no problem.
1
@Fogger
You are confusing illegal immigration with legal. Every country has a right to protect it's borders and decide whom to let in.
In an article yesterday, the NY Times clearly and honestly described the problem.
“Most of the detained children crossed the border alone, without their parents.”
Most of these children were not actually separated by the Trump Administration from their parents at the border, they were deliberately sent away by their own parents to make the dangerous journey in the hands of human smuggler
Now putting these children in tent cities is the wrong, inhumane solution.
The humane and intelligent solution is to return these children quickly to their own parents in their home country. The U.S. must unconditionally and immediately support this policy of home-based family reunification, even if it means chartering planes to make the journey to Mexico and Central America (mostly) several times per day.
29
Trump's policy for these children is awful. These children are rotting, as we speak in shelters and they will be dying spiritually in the Texas desert.
They are suppose to be our future, future of human race.
I am going to state this again. CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE. One day, they will grow up, and they need to know that they are wanted in this world.
5
It is really hard to believe how horrible are the people running this country.
11
The way the issue is presented here is that these kids are woken and taken in the middle of the night from the shelters they were staying in to tent cities. How traumatizing it must be for those kids.
There is however a major factor not taken into consideration when speaking of these kids and the traumas the US government is supposedly putting them through. And that is these kids were not driven to the border by their parents, far from it. These kids set out from Central America riding the roofs of trains, sleeping on the streets, making their way through the whole of Mexico where they are subjected to the very worst elements of people and are preyed on by both their fellow travelers and local criminals along the way.
So its absurd to the extreme to suddenly see these kids as vulnerable innocent children and that it can be permanently traumatizing if they are woken and taken from the first beds they slept in in months.
6
As the editorial states, these facilities have a mandate not to care for these children, but to "manage" them. These decisions by Trump and the GOP not only eviscerate the heart of democracy, but destroy its core, which is to say the human heart. If justice and mercy are not at the core of our actions, especially in relation to vulnerable children, then every action is an attack on our national soul.
An attack no "border" can protect us from.
We must vote Republicans out of power in November, in both the House and Senate, or risk the triumph of the enemy within over whatever "greatness" we once had. To think that this cruelty will or can be contained and directed only to those from outside borders is pure foolishness. A callous heart will turn, eventually,, on everyone. That is its nature.
9
"rip" "pull" "tear" -- all in the first paragraph. They you can it "could" damage them. How about saying full throttle, it RUINS THEM. Completely and utterly ruins them? Turn them into 100% victims who we then have to look after and spend even more tax payer money on? We have to fix this system, no doubt. But entitling people with a victimship (when what they've done is illegal) isn't the way to do it. The bottom line is, Trump has NOTHING to do with the fact they've made a decision to cross a border which is protected by laws. Stop Trump Trump Trumping everything and come up with a solution. NOT ONCE in your article do you propose anything. You're just victim victim victim.
7
The playbook the Trump regime seems to be following calls for first confining the most disenfranchised population into concentration camps. After society becomes accustomed to that, the regime can expand to other populations.
But I suppose that I can’t happen here.
10
"“Close to 80 percent of the individuals that are either sponsors or household members of sponsors are here in the country illegally, and a large chunk of those are criminal aliens"
Further, the children held are overwhelmingly unaccompanied teenagers.
The federal government is just supposed to release them unvetted to so called sponsors not only here illegally but related to or housing criminal aliens too often in areas where the same gang activity they are claiming to flee is increasingly common?
Please explain how this is good for legal immigrants and American citizens?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/migrant-children-tent-city-texas.html
15
This editorial shows how unnecessarily, blatantly cruel this president, this GOP majority and their voters choose to be. This monstrous GOP cruelty - terrorizing children and devastating their families - is their choice.
I challenge them, all people of decency and humanity challenge them:
Stop preaching about (the all-time low number of) abortions and the joining of mere cells, and choose to help the living breathing lives of THESE terrorized children. Choose LIFE.
6
An entirely avoidable situation. Let’s picture this. I cross into Mexico illegally with my family, including wife and children. I get caught and I refuse to pay bribes. What’s going to happen to me? We are all going to get sperated, wife in a woman’s prison. Kids with other kids. This is the same in all countries. I took my kids there endangering their well being. If anyone is responsible then it’s me. We must take personal responsibility for our actions in this world.
20
@Psysword
Are you suggesting it's ok to hurt children in order to punish their parents?
2
If Americans are not disgusted and ashamed at what their government is doing, they have no soul and have no patriotism. Vote blue in November!
10
All of this from the "God loving" republican president and party. It's a horror story.
I don't recognize America anymore. I'm ashamed to be an American.
9
The Obama administration was better in hiding the problem. It instead just released these children to adults who had no background checks and who would exploit them.
4
Every time I read these editorials detailing and decrying what the Trump Administration is doing I want to scream myself. Trump told us who he was and what he would do if elected--he railed against illegal immigrants throughout his campaign. Dear media, and editorial boards, where were you then? Focusing on Hillary Clinton's emails and low likeability, Bernie Sanders' unsubstantiated claims that he had been cheated out of the Democratic nomination, and Jill Stein's total nonsense. If Trump were not in office, these horrors would not be happening to these innocent children. At least now you could direct your news editors to get on this story and stay on it until this administration is forced to change this policy. Could you start yesterday? It's the least you can do to make up for helping to elect this dangerous man.
9
"...ripping children from their beds in the middle of the night, tearing them away from anyone they’ve forged a connection with and thrusting them into more uncertainty could damage them." Wow! I love melodrama. Did you say Mr. Obama never did this? This editorial echoes a school theme of dubious character: "It's all about the kids." Satire intended.
9
To excuse this policy and strategy by blaming the parents, an oft repeated canard, is nothing more than, to paraphrase, "visiting the sins of the parents upon the child." It's part and parcel of the lack of human dignity displayed by this administration and quite alarmingly, too many of my fellow citizens.
5
This lawless Administration, despite Chief Justice Roberts’s total rejection of the Supreme Court’s infamous ruling in the Korematsu Japanese internment case when rejecting its travel bans, now wantonly proceeds down that same unconstitutional road. Courts, precedent, due process, liberty interests? Why should these trivialities be paid attention to?
4
The Supreme Court has said that all children physically present in the US have a right to go to school. Hopefully the ACLU will pursue this line of attack on this unbelievable policy of isolating immigrant children in the desert in tents.
9
The most chilling aspect is that someone in government thinks it's ok to warehouse kids this way. Regardless of how they got here we used to be a country that would care for children. I hope NYT will stay on this story as it has fallen off the lineup of other news operations.
8
What sort of American apocalypse has crashed on our heads when the government kidnaps thousands of children to take a twisted vengeance on their desperate, impoverished parents?
The deadline to return these children to their families passed months ago. What possible excuse exists for refusing to reunite these children with their families?
Is any other evidence required to prove the Trump abomination--for that is what it is--is evil?
5
@Cindy L no excuses. many, if not most, of the parents don't want their kids back. they want us to pay for them, so they can kick back and make more, with no responsibility for their actions.
1
I can hardly express the depth of my despair and fear of a US president who condones policies that harm so many innocent children. Trump's harmful actions make him a despot, but only because the GOP give him full support thereby allowing him to function as a despot. Do not ignore this reality as all of our lives and our freedom depends on it. They must be stopped ASAP! VOTE!!
6
Are they actually "rotting" or is this really YOUR language?
They should be fed and housed in a decent manner. But being illegally in the US was their choice or the choice of their parents.
It wasn't the choice of the Trump administration.
74
@Ludwig Arriving at the US border and seeking asylum is not illegal. There is no law requiring the separation of children from their parents. It was the Trump Administration's choice to separate them.
4
@Ludwig
I believe you are missing the entire point.
It IS Trumps policies that are determing how the situation is being handled...
It is not about how they got here.
4
@Hootin Annie Annie, I agree with your main point. But Trump has limited the number of refugees to 30,000. Is this too many? Too few? What are the responsibilities of the US? Claiming refugee status cannot be a blank check because then every developed and prosperous nation will be overwhelmed.
It is fine for the Editorial Board to claim that 30,000 is too few and offer arguments as to the right number the US should take. But if they are arguing for "no limits" then let them say so rather than hide behind their dislike of the Trump administration.
And if the EB will not give a number or arguments, then perhaps you can. But there has to be a policy for emotions are not a good guide to fairness.
Thank you for defending the fundamental human rights of these foreign children, New York Times Editorial Board.
Waking prisoners in the middle of the night to move them is what repressive régimes did & do -- to adults. It has the sole purpose of intensifying the trauma & the fear.
There's a physiological response that follows such vicious actions. These children will never be the same. Their stress levels are through the roof.
God help us all: we have a government of criminally inclined sadists, and they want to take over the Supreme Court, too.
85
@Maria Ashot,
All of the heart-ache could have been avoided had the parents not trafficked their children.
All in the US illegally should be humanely deported- as a family. Any illegal relatives they have in the US should join them.
6
I fail to see how the Trump administration created such "crisis"; the crisis was indeed created by those allowed them in. Or is the US government responsible for all those who suffer around the world? It has a "moral imperative" to do so? Funny how messianic notions continue to undermine the US policy, even if they have shifted their ideological allegiance.
17
"Mankind likes to think in terms of either-or's between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities...", John Dewey. While it's true that Trump administration didn't necessarily create this problem, it certainly exacerbated it. And for an administration that seems to boast about overturning decades of bad policy by just about everyone, it's certainly within his power to change it - for the better.
5
@Ferdinandus
It might be helpful to think back to the Obama administration. Why no tent cities filled with children then? The article states that the number of crossings hasn't changed all that much, so what has? I think the child separation policy is the obvious answer. Obama kept families together.
4
@Ferdinandus
What's mine is mine, and keep your hands off it!
Did I interpret your comment correctly?
Many of these kids are trying to reunite with parents who left them behind years ago and have started new lives.
There have been many stories about this, along with the challenges these kids face in trying to start a new life with people they don't know--and may not be particularly welcome--going to American schools where they not only don't speak the language but are far behind academically, and the lure gangs can present. This is particularly the case for boys in their mid to late teens, which many are.
And because many immigrants tend to live in the same communities, school districts can be overwhelmed when the govt moves a large number of kids to the same place, eg 1500 to Brentwood in one year.
This camp in Texas is not going to help anyone, but we need a much bigger, broader solution to the problems these kids have.
16
I read yesterday that we were pulling kids from overcrowded care centers and shipping them to the Texas desert, I could only think "Oh, please don't let us be using trains."
Because, yes, the image of a thousand kids being sent to a camp is just ugly.
These are children. They should not be the ones who are caught up in the politics of immigration, and the ugliness of our attitudes. Caught up in our implacable inability to resolve the issue. If we do not send them to family, then we are responsible to be their family and act as their family. And a tent city in Texas is not the answer.
These are children. When Jesus said "Suffer the little children and let them come to me" the word "suffer" was used to mean tolerate, not injure.
302
Separating children from their families or guardians is a recipe for creating emotional trauma which will leave them vulnerable to any number of developmental delays, educational poverty, and emotional insecurity. There is no Peter Pan in these tent prisons. There is no Wendy. This is not a fairy tale with a happy ending. This is a way to create lost, frightened young people who may become targets for gangs. Not good public policy.
18
@Nancy Connors
Who exactly deserted their children? The parents who crossed illegally that's who. If you are going to place blame please place it where it squarely belongs. The onus is on either the mother or father who left their kids behind.
@Cathy,
They are caught up in this because their parents (or traffickers) have brought them into it. And the pro-illegal immigrant advocates love bringing children in.
1
Crossing a border illegally is not immigration. It is an invasion. No policy is needed.
35
@Ny Surgeon
So to counter this invasion, we need to do the logical thing: lock up the children of the invaders in concentration camps. We don't even need a policy for it!
@Ny Surgeon. these were refugees seeking safety in our country and look what's happened to them.
This is a state-sponsored human rights crime that cannot continue. The damage to these children will result in long-term consequences. Consequences the US must take responsibility for eventually. Exactly where are the Christian values in this train wreck, and where are the so-called Christian voices in protest?
16
Anger, reprisal, fear and manipulation are the hallmarks of Republican policy. Under the current administration these conditions have elevated to the point of illegal activity, breech of public trust and governmental malfeasance.
The real danger here is the support that those in charge of these horrific polices get with the rank and file Republicans. Much like climate change, healthcare, the destruction of the rule of law and attacks on the press, the judiciary and the intelligence community, these policies endanger our integrity in the world and threaten our democracy.
And yet the crowds at Trump rallies roar with approval when he tells them he "fell in love" with Kim Jung Un who enslaves his own people and has done nothing to reduce his nuclear arsenal.
I'll never understand how so many people can be so uninformed.
Vote on November 06, 2018. It's the only way to restore some sanity to a reckless, mercurial and frenetic political party and really make America great again.
12
How are WE letting this happen? What kind of a country is this? The media in all its forms needs to put this in America’s sight constantly. MSNBC, CNN I’m calling you out. It can’t be Kavanaugh 24/7.
People: vote in November for Democrats and our democracy. We can stop this cruelty, but we need people willing to stand up to this administration.
36
This is outrageous. Will you please report on the decisionmakers behind this, and their “logic”? Interviews with names and titles will be read with interest. At what level of government is this strategy being developed? Thank you for this editorial.
59
Shame on our country for this outrage involving undocumented children of undocumented immigrants. Yet this outrage merely takes its place on a very long list of outrages -- children and adults being slaughtered on a regular basis by disturbed people with access to guns, African-Americans being incarcerated by the thousands all across the south and permanently deprived of their voting rights, climate change being allowed to proceed full speed as the Trump administration calls climate science a hoax, women being threatened with death if they come forward to speak about being assaulted by men who have been nominated for high positions in our government. The list goes on and on, and in about 10 days, each one of these outrages is no longer receiving news coverage. We move on.
There is just no end to the injustices that surround us, and implicate us. Until people with different principles are elected to run our government, nothing is going to change.
5
One might have thought that Fundamentalist Christians -- who make up a considerable number of Trump’s supporters-- would have made these children’s plights a special cause of theirs; but if they have, the news hasn’t yet reached me.
101
@A. Stanton,
A zero tolerance policy, now, may hurt some today but save many millions more over the years.
The illegal flow of people into the United States must end. Sadly some lawbreakers, today, are going to have to face the music in order to send a message to tomorrows lawbreakers.
3
@A. Stanton--Their concern is with unborn children, remember? Once the kids are born, they're on their own.
5
Heartless and unnecessary policies. Not just negligent, but purposefully cruel. I cannot fathom the psychological suffering these children must be experiencing, it will affect their entire lives. And what will become of them in future? Of course maintaining border security is very important but so is maintaining our humanity.
8
The horror of the trump administration continues. Whether it’s ripping children from their parents, traumatizing them in the middle of the night, passing laws to destroy our environment, or trying to secure a seat in the Supreme Court with someone who is consistently reported to be a drunk, it just never ends. Voting in November and beyond is our only hope of stopping this national nightmare. That is of course if the laws passed by republicans or the Russians don’t suppress the vote.
12
The New York Times editorial board notes that “Immigrant advocates argue that the true purpose of the new sponsor requirements is to find, arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.” Finding, arresting and deporting as many illegal immigrants as possible is what U.S. immigration laws task the Department of Homeland Security to do. If the editorial board thinks migrants who overstay their visas or cross the border illegally should not be found, arrested or deported, it should urge Congress to repeal the laws instead of criticizing the administration for enforcing immigration laws. The Constitution tasks president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
39
@William Case--No law, no government policy, is superior to the welfare of children.
9
There is no law that makes encarcerating children legal, no matter how you try to spin it. This is Trump policy, Republican policy.
9
@William Case
Where in the Constitution does it stipulate using children torn from their parents as bait to find undocumented family members?
Where in the Constitution does it stipulate hurting children as a deterrent to adults entering the country illegally?
Illegal immigration is not new. Yet, previous administrations have chosen not to implement policy that specifically hurts children as a means to enforcing law. This administration embraces it.
1
I would simply ask everyone to check out Tornillo, TX using an overhead view like Google maps - satellite.
This is WRONG.
28
@AWENSHOKGoogle doesn't update those maps every week. You are most likely looking at an image that was taken before this harrowing waste of youth and our tax dollars began.
The writer did not describe how the children became separated in the first case.
It is truly heartless to allow children to set off on their own to cross the border in hopes of being reunited with parents at a later time.
Each child’s education costs between $12.000 and $20.000 per year. That is without food supplements and medical care.
Why should us taxpayers foot the bill? We should do everything in our power to discourage it
30
@MariaWE taxpayers should foot the bill because it is our moral duty as a wealthy society, one which ignores the plights of our neighboring countries, which we have invaded and plundered in the recent past.
9
@Maria If you read the article, you would know that these children are not getting any education, so that must make you feel great as a taxpayer. Wouldn't want to take away a few billion from the Pentagon's 700 billion budget to help these kids, now would we?
1
This policy is cruel. It forces children to live in an unending feeling of abandonment & fear. Separating them from their parents at the border is the first crime against humanity. Not allowing them to stay with relatives is the next.
I would like any government official (such as the one on the top) to try this on. How would he feel if he were forced to lose everyone he knows? That's nothing compared to what a child suffers.
As a citizen and a psychologist, I welcome whatever stops this policy.
5
Manzanar, Topaz, Gila River come to mind.
“Prospective sponsors are now required to submit fingerprints, and to share their information with federal immigration officers. ”
So, as sad and maddening as this crisis is, that’s the best you can come up with? How about blaming the corrupt governments and criminal gangs in Mexico and Latin America? How about calling for a Marshall-style Plan for economic development in Central America?
Complex problems like this call for complex answers, not finger pointing at those enforcing border security.
27
@Conservative Democrat, while I agree with you about the idea of a Marshall type Plan to deal with the violence in Central and Southern America, in many cases it seems as if whatever aggressive tendencies ICE members and others have held in check have been unchained and sent forth by a vicious, cruel administration. Trump and his ilk must lie awake nights thinking up the next brutal and/or stupid policy they can create, sending America's reputation further down the drain.
2
@Conservative Democrat
Didn't the Obama administration (especially Eric Holder) try to help by sending aid to Mexico? Oh, wait, that was sending automatic weapons to the drug cartels (and then lying about it to Congress). Never mind.
3
The progressive country which take cares of the gender orientation of its teens sent child in a prison inside desert because they are poor strangers. If it was not totally sad, it would be funny. As European in USA, I am losing my faith in this democracy. Next Sunday, I will walk into greenwood cimetery, look at the liberty statue far away in the bay, and take some time to yry to understand why you,my friends, could allow this.
12
Some things are more important than border security, and not abusing children is one of them.
148
I would hope that "common human decency" would be of some help for the children, however, we currently have a toxic mob running amok in the White House, an elected Congress that have their heads stuck in the sand, corporations that will do absolutely anything for a profit and well...., I am not overly hopeful.
39
"How to best handle the cases of unaccompanied minors has perplexed immigration authorities...."
There's really a simple answer, treat them as if they were your own children. Once you do that things will start to fall in place.
One way, instead of some tone deaf insensitive immigration authority handling the children start using an organization like "The National Foster Parent Association (NFPA)". That would be good for starters, at least they know what goes into the proper care for children.
Unfortunately that won't happen, the Administration is just too busy trying to push through a nominee to the Supreme Court with questionable moral character.
6
This administration’s plan of baiting undocumented immigrants to come forward to aid and shelter unaccompanied children is unconscionable. The idea is to round up as many Latinos as possible and using these children as bait for a larger, more nefarious purpose is the very definition of zero tolerance. How many children separated from their families have been reunited with their loved ones after all these months? Does the administration really care? It’s no surprise that immigrants’ mistrust and suspicion have replace the faith and hope they once had for a decent future in our country.
5
In the mid 19th century, the starving Irish fled in droves their homeland and all they knew to come to this country in order to survive. Germans and other Europeans fled their homes mostly because of violent social upheavals, famine and war. Yes, some percentage of these migrants sought economic opportunity, but the majority of immigrants arriving in the US initially faced terrible living conditions, illness, violence and brutal discrimination. An entire racialized pseudoscience was developed, eugenics, which conveniently categorized different immigrant ethnic groups as degenerate races. Of course, Irish, Poles, Italians, Chinese, etc were thought to display inferior physical and mental attributes, along with a strong penchant toward criminality. (sound familiar?) In the demagoguery of the time, they were painted as a danger to the white race.
Here we go again. Were the immigrant great grand-parents of those of us who are of European descent responsible for the sufferings of their children after bringing them to the US? No one else bore responsibility?
A despicable and uninformed perspective in the 19th century and again, today. We are our brother's and sister's keepers, especially our children's keepers, if for no other reason than because there but for the grace of God go I.
51
Another history lesson/lecture about how “we’re all immigrants.” We’ll, it’s no longer the mid 19th century. We’re full. We have our own poor people who can’t find jobs that offer a living wage and benefits. Half the world would come here if they could. We can’t be lax about illegal immigration.
5
This kind of brutality is a good way to produce more and more members of the gangs and bad behavior that Trump says he is protecting people from.
32
There appears to be a systematic approach to harming virtually every demographic on the list. Even the quintessential American Harley enthusiast is on that list. However, what the Trump administration is doing to these children and their parents at OUR expense is amorality and incompetence on a scale that should seriously offend every American. This is not how the decent people treat desperate people. Bark all you want about it not being our responsibility. A bright and compassionate leader would have no part of this horror.
7
" the public has yet to voice its concern" As well as necessary types and numbers of local to national policy-makers of all "colors," genders, gender identities, ages, etc! And undergrad, and graduate students from a range of disciplines, representing the complex areas of wellbeing, delivery of health services. Etc. Where are the teachers and students of reconciliation? The advocates for social justice? What would-/could enable them-US to leave the comfort of home, classroom, the agencies in which they-WE intern, are employed? Where are the transmitors-shepards of Abrahamic,uddhistic and other -ethics..."Do unto others..." and their "flocks," at whatever levels of religiosity?
Where are the folksingers? NOW, You are needed again. Where is a revitalized American "Marshall Plan for Menschlichkeit?"
What would enable boarding-buses to Texas? Surrounding the fenced Tent of the Kidnapped Minors? A non-violent wall of humans of a range of political party memberships, and ideologies, stating in voiced and written words, and body solidarity" AMERICANS AGAINST TRAUMA-AAT! What are these kids doing THERE as each of US reads in the safety of our homes, and other nourishing-sites?
2
Trump makes his money off the misery of others. Fails to pay or shafts contractors, vendors, banks, and workers. Declares bankruptcy after he has taken his money and leaves banks and businesses to absorb the loses.
Trump saw an opportunity in immigration to provide lucrative contracts to private prison companies. I am sure money is being funneled to one of his overseas accounts, not Cayman Islands, but more like Russia.
If there is a way to game the system, that is the way of Trump.
32
When people wonder why there is such a visceral opposition to Trump, they need only look to policies like this for an answer. The treatment of these children is a national embarrassment. I am ashamed of my government. These are children, some as young as four. And, now that they have been moved, there is little to no oversight of how they are cared for. How do the people that devised this imprisonment sleep at night? How do the men and women who guard the children stand hearing their cries? Who are the Americans that agree to participate in this horror?
84
This is so sad. I hate that children are being kept this way. But if we say that you can't self-select for immigration, why would we look the other way in regard to illegal relatives? With the insistence some of these people have to coming here any way they can there was bound to be something like this. Why can't "No" mean "No" here as well as with women's bodies? I am truly sorry some people's lives are so terrible that they would come to these kinds of decisions, but just letting them come is not a answer I am comfortable with either. Sure, 10. 100 or even 1,000, but by the millions????
18
This is the worst tragedy and legacy of the Trump presidency, the thing I can never forgive. How dare us treat children this way. We will pay a price for this.
7
Here, here NY Times. It's about time this was brought back into the spotlight. With all the other garbage we are assaulted with daily from this administration--this one is so important--these are children's lives we are talking about. This is also about the honor, history and reputation of our great united states that is in jeopardy.
I feel like I am assaulted daily from trump's White House and don't know where to look first. But thank you for again making this one important.
42
People will do what they do. They will come here because where they are offers them no chance at a better life. We can call it illegal, but it doesn't matter. The question is, how do we handle it? Clinging to a law and order argument has made the situation worse than it was, but no one has claimed that the situation was good before. The solution is a path to citizenship for any law abiding citizen of any nation who seeks to be a law abiding citizen of ours coupled with improved conditions in their country of origin. The latter is something we could easily help with if we focused on it rather than "winning" trade deals.
2
The plight of these children is 100% the responsibility of their parents and 0% the responsibility of Trump or American taxpayers.
The parents sent their kids off knowing the risks and consequences. There are legal ways to gain access to the US but the parents chose to ignore the law.
Unfortunately children often suffer the consequences of their parents actions. This is in all walks off life.
121
@LarryGr Policy is under the control of each administration. Nothing has changed but our approach to immigration. Many Americans of European descent would not be here except for the immigration of policy of the time was different then. So what is happening is most definitely the responsibility of our government and the voters at large.
Also allow me to agree with one point, children do suffer from the actions of their parents including all of our American children suffer as the result of an administration which is cutting regulations that protect us from pollution and has taken no action on global warming as well as making the world less likely to work with us unilaterally in a crisis. So all our children suffer.
146
@LarryGr That's some nice compassion you have there. No matter whose fault it is (and i would argue about it being 100% the parent's fault) there are still thousands of children who are being held in detention, getting no education, no individual attention, etc. In 20 or 30 years they'll sue the federal government for what's been done to them, but it will be too late for most with broken lives and broken souls.
164
@LarryGr:
When the US moves the children out of the reach of the parents, and outside of the parents' power of action, then the US must see that the responsibility for the children's fate rests with the US as long as those conditions remain.
73
I think that there should be more media coverage of this grotesque policy that caused so much outrage amongst people in the summer.
I also believe that it should not be possible to substanially alter immigration rules and requirements without executive oversight.
In other words The Department of Homeland Security should have to submit proposed changes, such as the requirement of sponsors to submit fingerprints to Congress for approval,
This is particularly important when one considers that the Trump administration managed to go back surreptitiously on their promise to reunite children with parents or sponsors.
17
The solution it to quickly deport them after a brief court hearing. Personally I agree with Trump I don't think lawbreakers from other countries who illegally enter the US are entitled to anything but a quick trip back to their country of origin.
37
@ judyweller
Judy these are children who didn't make the choice that their parents did. There is no reason to punish the children which is what the U.S. government is doing.
5
@ judyweller
These people and their children are here for asylum. Many are escaping horrific gang violence. A life you could not imagine.
2
@ judyweller He doesn't want to deport them...the business of housing them at insanely inflated costs are one of the ways he's stealing money from the government (YOUR money) and giving it to "friends" that in turn donate to him. It's all about making money for him and his crook friends...oh, and it creates a lot of needless suffering too...just to make the Republican base happy.
1
The matter of these kids not being able to get families to sponsor them because those potential sponsors are now afraid to present themselves to federal immigration officials is not going to simply delay those kids from finding sponsors. It has created a situation where they will have difficulty ever being able to find a sponsor.
However this is not an unforeseen problem, it is by design and seen as a solution. And this is because the only reason these kids come in the first place is because they are planning on relatives who are already here illegally to sponsor them. The plan from the get go is to enter illegally and stay indefinitely with those relatives. They won't show up at their hearing anymore than their adult relatives showed up at theirs.
So the idea is that now that entering illegally and then having the government itself transfer them to their relatives where they can stay permanently is no longer possible, this type of illegal immigration to the US will stop.
A policy that blocks an illegal path to gaining residence in the US by jumping the border should be welcomed by American's. There are however those who for some reason desire to keep the path to illegal permanent residency open to those entering from Latin America. If so they should state so clearly and explain why. It is high time for those so supportive of illegal immigration to come out and write a piece titled "why we support illegal immigration".
28
@Michael Stavsen
I am a registered Democrat, active in my local Democrat precinct. I have never heard any of my political colleagues suggest that illegal immigration should be allowed. What we have discussed is the way that asylum seekers are illegally turned away at ports of entry, forcing these families looking for food, water and shelter to cross into the US illegally in order to survive.
2
many people are getting grotesquely rich off the the lives of these children in detention. no doubt, the cost of caring for one child in detention is so high as to make one cringe. to top that off, there is no schooling or legal support. i really have to wonder how can we sit back and do nothing when this is happening. this administration has merely put these children in jails. what has happened to our country?
114
What strikes me in this piece is the statement that the public has yet to protest or that public outcry has been limited. Both are true. But public interest is stirred by media coverage, and I am sad to say that, though I am an *avid* supporter of the media, that I believe the media fell short on this vital task with regards to this story. Even articles from the New York Times were too limited in my view, with not enough attention or coverage given to the abuse these children are suffering, especially during the summer when things were less crazy. So more stories please, and I wish there was some way to launch a coordinated campaign to get these stories out there, between print and broadcast media outlets.
124
Let's see...
these are children that are being sent to live to sponsors. Shouldn't the government at least make sure that these sponsors are who they claim to be and have some basic background checking done on them?
After all, wasn't there all that concern about children sent to sponsors who suddenly went "missing" (much more likely they wanted to remain uncontactable)? Isn't more thorough vetting the answer to making sure that the children don't end up in the wrong hands?
24
To follow this comment -- obviously this tent city is unacceptable, and any "round-up" of immigrants, children or otherwise, must be resisted on a humanitarian basis, and Trump policies verging on nationalistic totalitarianism must be stopped -- but I've tried to keep up with these issues and the concern about unqualified sponsors seems legitimate...what is the solution? more funding for the unaccompanied minor program to vet sponsors? to process sponsors, as one post says, through a different organization? would Congress have to authorize more funding?
Can anyone here outline what a reasonable plan immigration and social service experts are crafting looks like?
1
I am not a Trump fan. Yet I notice that I too try to ignore or merely fly over these reports and opinion pieces.
I want to forget this is happening.
Little kids not being allowed to speak to their siblings,etc. -- it's way too much to fathom.
So, this is happening in the US right now. Not North Korea or a Polish ghetto during WWII.
No matter whose fault this is, it must stop. All effort must be taken for kids and parents to be reunited.
431
IT didn't start by ITself. IT is unlikely to end by ITself. People began IT. Ordinary working people enable IT. BY types, levels and qualities of complicity. Ordinary people "practice" complacency. Willful blindness. Deafness. Ignorance about what is that should never have been Should not be now. Or ever again. WE the People...THEY the People...US the People...IT may BEcome "disappeared." In the media.In reality? Consider: Would any of us, whatever our political beliefs, and principles of faith, actively traumatize a child? By voiced words. Done-deeds. By both acts of commission, and acts of omission? Some salaried people, paid by our taxes are?
As a constrained FBI agent collects "data," to be analyzed into information, and then somehow transmuted into some type, level and quality of usable understandings, and even insights, WHO is collecting WHAT about potential crimes against humanity, by people, and systems, at all levels, wherever, who are to be held personally accountable?
3
The men standing with guns over the children are not there to protect them. They are there to prevent us from learning the true horror.
Blame or praise trump as much as we want, he has many Americans willing to be part of the beginning of the American version of 1930s Germany.
3
@jon,
I agree. These children must be reunited with their parents and deported, as a family, immediately.
5
These decisions will not achieve even the goals of the 'shadow' Trump administration, which might be to mitigate effects of hostility and disregard. It's likely that funding, availability of resources, politics and bureaucracy -the deep state - will be offered up as rationales for this obvious mistreatment of children. It comes down to how we want the people of other nations to perceive of our own. If we want to be seen as a people who espouse sets of values that offer safety, hope, and, perhaps, redemption, yet turn away the most desperate, most in need, then we sacrifice our standing in the human community. We need to ask ourselves whether we are builders or destroyers of communities, to include our own.
22
I’ve been a licensed foster parent for years and I know that even for a kinship placement, a placement with a family member, there is a lengthy process of background checks and documentation. To imply that the process now being implemented to place immigrant children is somehow extraordinary is completely misleading.
40
Our hearts -- and our American identity -- are broken. That said, the media might focus on the desperate circumstances that brought parents to take these risks. We must be able to forcefully counter those who say, "They broke the law!"
134
@J. Matilda. . . Pair the stories of how our guns get sold to S. American countries and the increase of violence there and so of course, people will take a risk of possible entrapment here to avoid certain death where they are. We need more stories of how we are creating the circumstances that send people fleeing terror to our country. We are creating this situation ourselves.
4
@mouseone i agree, many through the "fast and furious" agenda created and implemented through obama and holder. well done!
In the current political climate, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed; I wish this troubling article had included suggestions for what those of us who want these children to be decently treated can do to insure that they don’t disappear entirely.
Besides, of course, vote 5 weeks from tomorrow.
228
@Julia Holcomb Here is a link to an article which lists some organizations that are attempting to help these children. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06/18/heres-list-organizations-are-mob... With the current situation in our country it is difficult to focus on all that is falling apart, but focus we must, especially for these children.
47
@Julia Holcomb
The obvious solution is to revise U.S. asylum laws to automatically deny asylum to anyone who enters the country illegally. This would permit Homeland Security to deport illegal border crossers in a matter of days. It would not have to warehouse illegal border crossers who request asylum after crossing the border illegally.
11
yup voting for democrats is gonna solve our immigration woes. 8 years of Obama in charge did wonders. The duopoly rules. Vote in 3rd parties...think Green, think social democrats, think rainbow but Don't think democrats will fix all.
4