What would Jesus do?
15
KEEP WRITING, Charles Blow. We need your voice.
23
We are a species of genocide and cruelty -- the 20th century has given us the tools to do so on a massive scale: the Nazis, Stalin, Pol Pot- Khmer Rouge, Mao, Hiroshima, Nagasaki etc. But none of this is new; from the pogroms to the crusades we love to incarcerate and often murder the "other" usually of a different religion or race. It can only be changed by massive and vigilant resistance . Trump and the Republican party have decided that the hatred of people of color will be the force through which they rally their base. It will either be resisted or we will end up with our own version of nationalist fascism -- if it is not already here. As to the term "concentration camp", of course they are , no ovens yet but they hold civilians against their will . As to the "don't try and get into the US "-- when we destroy the economies and political systems in other countries where are people to go? Where did your ancestors come from and why?
14
These are concentration camps sans the death chambers, that’s all.
When you’re held against your will, your freedom curtailed, and then a third party becomes responsible for your upkeep and well-being ... its a prison, without a trial.
And if anyone hasn’t heard yet, per NPR this morning:
“U.S. Border Patrol agents have located four bodies by the Rio Grande in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, near the U.S. border with Mexico. Three of the deceased were children — one toddler and two infants — and the other was a 20-year-old woman.”
I guess we’re a nation alright with murder of our own kids (Sandyhook) and we didn’t take any measures against gun violence.
What are the chances immigrants babies held in cages, separated from parents or dying en route to the border for asylum would bother us. We are apathetic and numb.
I really don’t know anymore what needs to happen for us to react like Hong Kong... actual footage of babies dying... what?
18
Concentration camps brings to mind the horrible arrest of Jews and "others" who the Nazi regime did not want in their country. They tortured them by taking their young from their arms, separating the men and older boys just before they gassed them. Those who remained in the camps to work until they died were tortured mentally wondering if any of their families were still alive. Psyche torture is as old as the first human who wanted something from another human. These are not detention camps. There are torture chambers where children are being sacrificed in the name of immigration reform. We can now be counted as one of the countries that allows our government to torture innocent children. How does a 2 yr. old walk out of the camp? It is futile for any of us to believe we are not at fault for this demented policy to exist. We are free unlike like the Germans to protest and bring about change quickly. Yet we do nothing. Have the GOP won the psyche battle and have stripped us all from all human decency? Apparently the answer is yes. Now we know how the Germans felt who can smell burning corpses but could not do anything because they had a gun to their heads. What is our excuse?
18
Where are the voices of the Christian leaders?!?!! Where is the church?!!! All the missionary work around the world but now America's southern border needs these leaders to "...cry aloud and spare not!" Intervene with their voices for these children and people, for "...the least of them."
12
In Nazi occupied Europe there were hundreds of concentration camps, where inmates were treated like slave labor, and only a relatively few death camps, which contained industrialized murder facilities. Slave laborers died in concentration camps from being worked to death, but those who could no longer work, because they were not being fed an adequate diet, but refused to die, were shipped to death camps, where they were gassed and incinerated. Also, there was continuous turnover in the concentration camps, as inmates currently being held were replaced by new inmates coming from the occupied countries. That's why the German rail system was so important to the Nazi's plan for the elimination of all Europe's Jews. Americans refuse to admit we have created concentration camps along the southern border just because we are not running death camps. This is hair splitting and typical American rationalization. Americans like to pretend that the evil things done elsewhere can't happen here. They can and do, and rationalization, as can be seen in many of these posts is enabling. Trump has no problem with this because all Americans do about it is wring their hands, gnash their teeth and write stupid stuff comments at the NY Times. Little children, although not being treated as slave labor, are dying in America's concentration camps. America has slunk to a new moral low.
9
I think concentration camps a bit beyond the pail. But if he could, if he would, put Hillary in one as he would the truth telling press, just as he lies as each humans breathes air. This needs to be in his face each and everyday without fail every time he tells one! This alone should be his . . . impeachment offense! Why is he even tolerated, this is what is beyond the pail.
4
I don't take offense about the truth. Concentration camps don't need gas chambers!!! The Japanese Americans were held in concentration camps in American soil with 1862 or more deaths. Death occurred. It don't matter if death occurred from the horrible sicknesses brought because they were locked up, to me is the same. Death is death. People want pretty words to ease their mind, so like that they can ignore things and go living their lives. Lets see the nice words to ease your mind...Internement camps. Holding camps...or like the news call it summer camps. How nice... I'm so tired of people painting a rosy picture of the horrors our government does to people!! We need to wake up and stop painting pretty pictures with words! Torture, abuse, killing adults and children. Do you think killing is just gas and guns? Geez! I think the more I get to know the human race the more I ask why are we still here? I don't believe in any particular God. I dropped them all years ago. But one thing I know..that is innate to my whole system is compassion. We are here, please, please lets take care of each other. Not matter what color, what religion, what ethnicity, as a species we all belong to each other. Our children are crying, our children need love...yes our children, because they are the children of humanity. All the children of Mankind! Not their children: OURS!!!!!
16
As Günter Grass' "The Tin Drum" during Nazi Germany points out:
Ordinary citizens just stop growing, developing and maturing... and remain dwarfs... that way American citizens are just not measuring up to the task History is given them right now.
10
So let's talk about the term."concentration camps" and not talk to anyone associated with Yod Vashem, the ADL or any other organization that actually deals with the term or is in anyway Jewish. Typical.
4
I have to admit, I haven't read all 1,400+ comments (who could) but I've read a lot of them and two things are clear. First, the debate over whether the detention centers are concentration camps is pretty worthless. If AOC (and her supporters) are trying to equate the centers on the border with Nazi concentration camps, she nuts. The migrants came voluntarily; they were not rounded up as the Nazis did. In addition, they can leave and return home any time they'd like. I bet the Jews would have like to do that. But she's not nuts, so her intent is just another attack on Trump. What's new?
Second, in all the comments I have read, not one commenter had any suggestion of what to do with 100,000 illegal migrants who come across the border monthly and now number in the millions. Mr. Blow, his followers and Democrats never miss an opportunity to criticize Trump and his administration but never propose a better solution. If they have one, we'd love to hear it.
11
Wondering when an MLB player will pull a Kapernick and protest what's happening to his Hispanic brethren
2
Hitler did not start out murdering 6 million Jews and millions of others. He started out encouraging his cult followers to beat up those Germans who disagreed with them.
He started out detaining people at borders.
He started out lying about everything he and his cult were doing.
Sound familiar.
t rump is not Hitler; but he is dangerous and We the People had better do something about him.
Vote. You life depends on it.
So does the planet's.
18
Charles - you have captured my horror and distain.
I am gobsmacked Americans have not poured onto the streets in protest of these atrocious human rights abuses. I have been perplexed (and horrified) at why America is not more outraged at what is happening under their watch. Has Trump and his minions managed to “other” these asylum seekers so much that American can’t see them as people, have lost their ability to empathize with other human beings, can’t see the inhuman conditions at the borders? “Othering” is one precondition to the worse kind of human rights atrocities. It is a slippery slope...and America is on the decent.
Please, America, find your better angels and come out on mass to say ‘NO. STOP’. Process these people in an expedited fashion so they can either be admitted to the country or be sent back if they do not meet the legal definition of a refugee.
I thought America was a Christian nation? Am I mistaken? What is happening at the border is antithetical to Christ.
6
I am a fan of Charles Blow’s writing and also enjoy seeing him on TV where he is articulate in voicing well thought out opinions on issues of the day.
That said, I take tremendous exception to the opinion voiced in this piece.
The conditions in the detention camps certainly need our attention and the stories about the children are heartbreaking. But let’s not forget that these children were brought to this country by their parents, who made the decision and took the risk willingly. Notwithstanding the danger they are trying to escape, this distinction is of utmost significance. No children or adults for that matter, are being dragged from their homes, their possessions seized and at times shot on the spot. If they survived that ordeal, they were herded onto trains, worse than cattle, and if they survived this next phase, they arrived at the true concentration camp, where most were immediately gassed. This was after all the goal of the final solution.
Words matter, Charles Blow knows that. In fact he often says just that, at times in an attempt to explain why white people or other ethnicities, do not understand how certain language associated with slavery or the oppression of African Americans can be so (understandably) painful. Black face, and “boy” come to mind. This is why his (and others) insensitivity to the use (misuse) of the charged term and how painful it is to Holocaust survivors and the Jewish community at large is so perplexing and so hurtful.
Words matter
13
According to the latest Liberal logic, it would be against the rules to deport anybody at all.
If you can get one foot in, you’re in is now our immigration policy?
What strikes me is that these Liberals are apparently not very well travelled.
Having lived and worked in multiple countries, it is apparent that most normal governments have standards for who they let live in their country for a relatively short time and much stricter standards for who they allow to have permanent residency.
And they enforce them as a sovereign duty.
It is striking that we have people advocating a complete dereliction of that duty.
Free for all, bring a kid. You can stay.
It truly is utter nonsense.
12
I guess I'm running low on empathy right now. I feel sorry for the immigrants, but their actions put themselves in the detainee situation. No one else put them there. They can leave anytime. Using the term 'Concentration Camps' in the headline is inappropriate and inciteful.
14
No....They may not be concentration camps of Germany
in 1944.....
But this is not Germany in 1944, this is the United States in 2019.
8
Does it bother Charles Blow that the greatest president of the 20th century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signed an executive order after Pearl Harbor demanding the internment of innocent Japanese American citizens in special camps?
3
I understand the term “concentration camp” was always applied to the Holocaust, which was the worst human horror imaginable.
To many now, look upon this horror to children and babies, families is the worst policy in my lifetime. While not taking anything away from the Holocaust, I still see this evil as a concentration camp and most of All promoted by The President of the United States, a leader of our Nation as Hitler was.
These innocent people, children and babies have done nothing to deserve this. They only wanted a safe and better life for their family. The rhetoric and actions to warrant this is against not only our Constitution but the 10 Commandments and teachings of the Bible. “I knocked and you let me in and gave me food”.
4
Progressives are making a huge overstatement in equating border detention camps with "concentration camps". The people in "concentration camps" were rounded up by force and forced to leave their homes and once they had been forcibly placed in the camps, they could not voluntarily leave.
In the border detention camps, people are there because they are awaiting adjudication for claims of entry into the USA. They can leave the camps at any time by merely requesting repatriation to their home countries. They are in the camps, because it is the only way that they might legally enter and remain in the USA legally. They are there voluntarily. When was a "prisoner allowed to leave a "concentration" voluntarily ? Never. This is problem of immigration laws. Only Congress can solve it. To date, Congress has refused, and continued to blame the mess on the President, who can only deal with existing laws.
10
As usual, Mr. Blow sanctimoniously condemns the problem but does not offer a solution. Our Southern border is being overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who are incapable of providing themselves the basic necessities of life and the infrastructure needed to meet this need - caregivers, residences, medicines, etc. etc. - simply does not exist and cannot be put in place tomorrow by waving some governmental magic wand. Again, Mr. Blow, we all know the problem - what is your solution? Perhaps as a start every pundit at the Times could agree to house a couple of immigrant families at their own homes as - we are told - this situation is comparable to slavery and the Holocaust and I'm sure they would be more than willing to do no less.
8
We need a national demonstration that takes place at our borders, at the detainment camps and on the national monument in Washington DC, with hundreds of thousands of people. They can't ignore us all. We need to do it over and over again.................We need to demonstrate in front of Mitch McConnell's office and in front of EVERY Republican lawmaker who is holding funding hostage to restrictive immigration policies in order to obtain their agenda. Those who are using these children for political reasons. We need an emergency bill that funds whatever it takes to have these children placed in humane conditions and reunited with their parents. Enough.
4
So here is what I don't understand. Mr. Blow writes a terrific column making completely clear (among other things) that these detention centers are indeed concentration camps. Then the Times' editors undercut the whole point by putting the term in the headline in quotes, as if they were not!
2
"Everyone counts or nobody counts."
Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch.
2
@treabeton
Everyone counts but everyone does not get to live in my nation.
6
I can understand the hurt survivors feel when the term concentration camp is used in any context other than the Holocaust. The word has become irrevocably connected to extermination camps. But, how do you describe a situation where tiny children a confined in filthy conditions, without access to basic necessities, like diapers, soap and nutritious food, and some are dying. What strong words do you use to describe this horrific situation? Detention camps just doesn't do it for me. Torturing children is a crime. I think these jailers and all who are responsible should be prosecuted. These children's parents are desperate, Kristof wrote that children are dying from malnutrition in Guatemala; some from gangs. But whatever choices parents make, abusing children is still criminal.
8
Why aren't we "in the streets every day demanding an end to this atrocity?" Has America's moral conscience been mortally wounded under the Trump administration? History will record this atrocity as a damning indictment, not only of Trump, but also of the American people who remain silent.
7
@treabeton
People yawned when the police killed Tamir Rice and made jokes about it.
And as far I can see that was a worse crime.
So I'm not getting the outrage that foreign nationals are being detained.
4
Sleep deprivation can actually cause death. If you have any doubt, you can you can actually learn more about the topic using the Google search engine. Just type in the question.
2
I am with Mr Blow - these are concentration camps. The Merriam-Webster's definition is "a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard..." The monsters in the Trump administration must be called to account. So much for "Western conscience."
10
Trump is purposely using systemic child abuse to discourage anyone from crossing the border.
Child abuse is wrong -- period.
There can be no excuse, no justification.
That is not what the United States should be doing.
10
@TomL And how would you help? What's your plan?
4
It's the good Christian Hispanics now, will it be us next? We should now face that question with serious public debate and preparation.
2
Trump is on his "Me Too" legitimacy campaign--as in " I am a legitimate President" with George Stephanopoulos and then Chuch Todd--would love to see him with CNN Jake Tapper trying to defend these "camps". Tapper's deadpan looks alone would send audience howling.
2
I think we’ve found the perfect summer camp for Barron Trump.
4
Whether they are called concentration camps or third-rate daycare centers or kennels that are unfit for dogs, semantics isn't the issue.
The horrible conditions in these detention places
are inhumane, unsanitary and dangerous living conditions for children.
The government would quickly put children of U.S. residents into foster care if these conditions existed in their homes, and adult protective services got involved.
In some cases, this torture, inhumane and unsanitary conditions, would result in criminal action against parents or worse, children being put up for adoption.
But the U.S. government in the 21st century under the presidency of a depraved and nefarious soul can get away with it, and nobody in the Republican Congress and the so-called "Pro Life" movement utters a word.
Let's not pretend, if these children who involuntarily brought here by adults had blonde hair and blue eyes, Trump and the Aryan nation in the U.S. would be outraged.
10
A man lucks out wins the presidency. Not of tragic proportion under normal circumstances. Skip the psychological appraisals extreme self indulgence best described as a man void of principle. Valuing oneself need not rob the person of compassion and empathy. With Trump caring reserved for family and a handful of friends.
A man of character would never punish families, parents and children with forced separation. Nor, torture them with maltreatment. A values transplant or infusion of principle not cures for what ails Trump. He rejects and repels the need for change.
Even the Nazi P.O.W.'s during WW2 were treated better.
3
Sure, the big Lineups to the gas chambers were a joy. The scratches on the wall were intended as fine art and the skeleton like figure were confirmation of a “good diet “ at work.
Yeah, the “concentration camps” at the border are definitely worse than those in Poland.
8
The "Trump Camps" would not exist if the detainees were blond, blue eyed Norwegians seeking asylum. Quite similar to the concerns by US citizens and media when blond, blue eyed Yazidi children were fleeing over the Sinjar Mountains of Iraq in 2014.
4
I took a minute to look up the definition in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp)
- Internment centre: check.
- National or minority groups: check.
- Reasons of state security: check.
- Executive order: check.
- Placed on basis of identification with a particular ethnic group: check.
- no indictment nor fair trial: check.
Like the Encyclopedia Britannica, other dictionaries reference the specific (and common) usage of the term in connection with Nazi concentration camps but also give other examples. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concentration%20camp
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/concentration-camp
6
In WWII the Nazi ran two types of camps:
Work camps
Death camps
The Spanish invented the concept of reconcentración, that is displacement and concentration of families of insurgents in 1897. The intent was terror. Don't feed and of course women and children would start dying and forced their Boer fighters to come in and the war they were winning was lost.
The US used them in the Philippines in the nastly war there.
Barbed wire and automatic weapons made control of many by a few and go ahead and dig holes in the ground to escape the cold like and animal.
So could we keep the terms clear.
I think to call the border facilities concentration camp hits the mark dead on in terror.
5
Evangelical “Christians” have, for decades, sought to convince the American public that unborn fetuses are being murdered through abortion. Where is their outrage that innocent children, who are already here, are being subjected to unspeakable cruelty and neglect by Trump and the Republicans? Their hypocrisy is shameful and is based entirely on the fact that these children have dark skin. Disgusting!!
13
Would all of you who oppose the use of Concentration Camps prefer a different name? How about - Trump's Death Camps.
Does this make the situation more palatable to you?
6
@American Concentration camp survivor,
Let's say a thousand people broke into my home uninvited. I try to feed them and provide for them- but I don't have the money and resources.
The living standards in my home plummet. Am I running a 'death camp'?
Maybe we should send the hundreds of thousands sneaking into the country every month to come live with you?
11
Perhaps Americans aren't responding to Trump's family- separation policies in a way that a humanist like Mr. Blow deems appropriate because so many of us are exhausted by the sheer number of outrages that this President has been committing in our names (that plus the inclination shared with his cabinet members, GOPoliticos and Fox News boosters to blame immigrants for the financial problems faced by so many of our native-born citizens). You would think that, at the very least, the President of the United States would be flattered to acknowledge that so many non-Americans want to come to this country to work, find security, establish families, etc., etc. (i.e., the stuff that the rest of us take for granted). Instead, this particular "president" has decided that they're all unworthy of admission and personalizes their fate in a manner reminiscent of that of a homeowner who finds himself with a roach infestation that needs to be handled as dramatically and expeditiously as possible. Considering the nature of this man and his base of racists and ignoramuses, I'm not sure I understand why they don't head out to a more welcoming destination.
comment submitted 6/23 at 11:10 PM
6
I am not sure why Charles Blow and others insist on using the words "concentration camps", which of course invoke images of Hitler's genocide, his goal of exterminating the Jews. What we have on the border today, are horrible, indefensibly inhumane internment prisons. Children are being treated without the basic provisions that any humane society would give, they need warmth, comfort, food, compassion and reuniting with their families. This cruel and unusual treatment, is designed, of course by Trump to dissuade others from coming here, but it is carried out on the innocent children. What could be more repugnant than this heartless assault? There is no defense for this and Mr. Blow is right that we should be united in condemnation of our government action.
Yet instead of uniting us, Blow and others continue to use divisive language, so that we argue about the words rather than the deeds. If he truly wanted us to come together, as I would think he does, he should recognize how the words he uses, can either bring us together in fighting for these children, or tear us apart. Set aside those inciting words, they do not help those children. Let's agree on how bad it is, and how unconscionable this action is so that we can come together, united to help fix this most un-American, inhumane action.
2
No, Mr Blow, the Holocaust is not 'like Slavery', 'or human rights abuse'. You and others should stop doing this.
Calling immigration centers "concentration camps", while technically accurate, is frankly both childish and tone deaf.
Using the term "concentration camp" here, is an unfortunate trend of trivializing the holocaust, hi-jacking the emotional import of the word as it is commonly used, for mere shock value.
There is no reasonable basis for comparison between Nazi death camps, with immigration centers in the US, or anywhere in the world - unless the explicit goal and sole purpose is to physically exterminate as rapidly as possible those captured.
For example, the Bosnian camps dedicated to "ethnic cleansing" circa 1992 appear closer to the mark.
There is no reason for immigration centers to be inhumane. But this too is a symptom of the underlying problem.
Beneath the heated argument about the level of treatment at immigration centers, is the question of why people leave their home countries to come to the US and other developed countries.
Does our wasteful lifestyle, impose ruin around the world, and force people to our home? Are developed countries obligated to accept all who come and want to stay?
We would do better to focus on why people flee their homes, then become enraged at their arrival.
7
I tried to find publicly known information about Kellyanne Conway consulting for former County Executive Steve Levy of Suffolk County, L.I. NY.
That is where much of the hatred and deportation ideas emerged last decade
It bears investigating.
Do you mean concentration camps as in camps where people are concentrated and treated horribly, or concentration camps where they're gassed to death in fake showers and burned in ovens and worked to death?
2
Monster is a strong word. Do you call the mother who was recently found dead with three children a monster for attempting to illegally enter the U.S.? Do you call the families that pay drug smugglers to transport their families through Mexico monsters? Are the people who send or bring children through a desert without soap or toothbrushes or adequate water monsters?
4
When we are debating the definition of what constitutes a concentration camp, we are deep trouble as a nation. By whatever name, these camps should not exist if we have any decency and respect for basic norms of how asylum seekers and migrants, especially children, are to be treated.
5
I was on the side of well maybe they aren't concentration camps until I heard the government is trying to claim that soap is not necessary for conditions to be hygenic and safe is children sleeping on concrete. Nope and nope. Call them what they are!
4
Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
4
Mr. Blow writes: "Anyone whose heart doesn’t break upon reading that is a monster. And yet, too many Americans seem perfectly O.K. with these conditions."
I'm not OK with it, but I'm also not OK with the people who do not understand that we cannot be responsible for other countries surplus population.
It's unequivocally terrible that this is happening to those children, but why is there no shaming in your oped of their parents, and the governments of their native countries, that are ultimately responsible for this.
There is no way any decent parent would be endangering their child in an effort to come to this country, just so they can become a part of our shallow and soul-crushing consumer culture. For many, many generations, people in South and Central America lived in modest ways and it was good enough.
We in the US have a right to have a country with borders. If we were giving to those children everything they need, it would lead to endless waves of migrant children being brought here. The US has no resources or responsibility to be taking care of no US children. I guess I'm a monster.
3
Many of these commentators seem to believe that no one is protesting, no one is outraged. This could not be further from the truth. In my community, people are protesting, calling members of our Congressional delegation, giving money to refugee organizations, writing letters to the editor. It is true that people, including myself, feel helpless, but that doesn't stop us--we keep speaking out nonetheless. How can we not?
1
What these camps are called is in no way as important as what is happening in them; children staving, unloved, cold with no beds or blankets and in some cases dying while the camp owners are making millions off the suffering of these separated children.
Empathy in America is at an all time low. What if this was happening to you and your precious child, in one case, as young as four month old?
Let’s stop looking at the tree and see the forest.
5
Several nights ago, my son arrived with his wife & 2 year old daughter for a visit. They live in the USA, but it took 14 months to get the proper visa for his wife. She is from Honduras. Most people are unaware of the chaos enveloping Honduras now - teachers and doctors striking, taxi drivers, truckers, - just about everyone - with military police firing on their own people. Even the National police went on strike. Yet we support the alleged president Hernandez, who is as much a dictator as Daniel Ortega or Maduro. The chief export of Honduras today is refugees. Yet we are a strong supporter of the man many Hondurans regard as "el narcodictadura" No one here seems to know anything about this - very little media attention
We got home from the airport, & put the toddler to bed, & turned out the lights. I did some reading before falling asleep, including the stupid lawyer defending safe & sanitary as meaning no soap, no diapers, lights always on, cement floor in a cage - for children.
I dozed off. Then my granddaughters cries woke me up. A toddler, born in Honduras, awoke in a strange place, crying for her Mama.
I realized that somewhere in Texas, there could be a child the same age, born in the same hospital in San Pedro Sula, with a dirty diaper on a cement floor, for whom there is no soap, no comfort, no safety, no security. But this is ok because her parents are bad bad illegals. So we can jail & neglect the kids in our prison custody.
This is who we are now.
8
Unlawful penal detention camps. That's what they are.
1
Thank you everyone....including Mr. Blow....for your handwringing. Still dont see anyone with an action plan here...
6
Folks, don't get hung up on terminology.
Charles Blow has it right; the term is "detention camps."
As to Americans' "tolerating" this, that's not true. We work, we don't seek arrest or confrontation with police.
If peaceful protests are organized, I'll go.
We do applaud columnists keeping a handful of Trump's worst offenses before the reading public. And Blow and others need to repeat that these people, these human beings, are applying for asylum -- that's legal and their right.
We will not vote for "Republicans" again, as they are aiding and abetting this cruelty and stupidity.
But running screaming through the streets? We expected our institutions would prevent this nightmare and they have not. We are reeling in an existential crisis.
2
The groups running these camps are making a lot of money. Something like $700 per person per day. That’s a revenue generating machine that republican donors who are benefiting don’t want to turn off.
Greed and malice have found a home in the Republican Party.
3
@Deirdre. “Something like”? What does that even mean? What groups are you talking about? If you’re going to spout outrageous “facts”, you need to be able to back them up. Which Republican donors are you even talking about?
3
I look forward to your next column: "What ARE We Going to Do About It?"
10
Charles Blow is a smart man and does, one would hope, truly understand the fundamental differences between the border detainment facilities for migrants, Manzanar, and Auschwitz. He can make his very legitimate points about bad treatment of migrants at the border without resorting to absurd equivalencies and hyperbolically inflammatory language. And he does not need to use Ocasio-Cortez' cynically opportunistic or simply ignorant comment about border "concentration camps" to make the point that the facilities there and the "caretaking" policies are, to say the least, extremely inadequate.
The places where America keeps people entering our country at the border are not concentration camps. Manzanar and other places America put Japanese-Americans during World War II were concentration camps. The difference is quite simple, The Japanese-Americans had absolutely no choice in the matter. Those at the border currently made the choice to come here and, for the most part, are free to return to from where they came.
Given the fact that far too often the Nazi death factories such as Auschwitz are incorrectly referred to as concentration camps, it is especially egregious to refer to the border migrants facilities in that manner.
Words matter, especially at a time when the oxymoron, "alternative facts", is a concept considered not merely possible but one worthy of discussion. And, if we are not careful about words, people will start calling the "anti-abortion" movement "pro-life."
7
How many parents have lost their children while walking to US border? Thye bring the kids only to take advantage of the Laws !
7
Thank you Charles Blow. I have been thinking about the same question as well. What are we going to do about it?
1
Regarding the use of "concentration camps" to describe conditions on the border: we show that we truly respect the humanity of a group of people by refraining from words/terms that a significant number of that group find offensive. Michael Richards thought he was being funny, but he wasn't. Using "concentration camp" in the current context is no funnier. Those who are unaware of the difference between being impactful and being offensive will disagree with this post.
4
More than insensitive.
Blow is a smart man and, one hopes, truly understands the fundamental differences between the border detainment facilities for migrants, Manzanar, and Auschwitz. He can make his legitimate points about bad treatment of migrants at the border without resorting to absurd equivalencies and hyperbolically inflammatory language. And he does not need to use Ocasio-Cortez' cynically opportunistic or simply ignorant comment about border "concentration camps" to make the point that the facilities there and the "caretaking" policies are, to say the least, extremely inadequate.
The places where America keeps people entering our country at the border are not concentration camps. Manzanar and other places America put Japanese-Americans during World War II were concentration camps. The difference is quite simple, The Japanese-Americans had absolutely no choice in the matter. Those at the border currently made the choice to come here and, for the most part, are free to return to from where they came.
Given the fact that far too often the Nazi death factories such as Auschwitz are incorrectly referred to as concentration camps, it is especially egregious to refer to the border migrants facilities in that manner.
Words matter, especially at a time when the oxymoron, "alternative facts", is a concept considered not merely possible but one worthy of discussion. And, if we are not careful about words, people will start calling the "anti-abortion" movement "pro-life."
4
What does it matter what we call them? Whatever they are, they are evil and inhumane. No human should be subjected to these conditions.
6
@Catherine you are right. Are these guys masochists? Why come to this country that treats them so bad? I have a novel ideal. The Hondurans should ask for asylum in El Salvador’s, and the Salvadorians should ask for asylum in Honduras! That should do it.
1
No, we aren't going to "reflect" on this period of immigration as something particularly abhorrent, albeit surely subject to improvement. Rather, the campaign by Mr. Blow and others to make Trump into the anti-Christ will be remembered as the jejune and hyperbolic parlor game it is, just like "Russia."
Fact: The ONLY President who ran anything close to actual "concentration camps" was FDR. He rounded up actual American citizens because of their DNA and imprisoned them without charge or trial. Yet, FDR is the NYT's biggest hero, extolled for decades. Mr. Blow knows that and ignores it; when is FDR coming off the dime? St. FDR also appointed a KKK member to the Supreme Court.
And, this newspaper's record in passing off Herr Hitler (in full color pictures) as an avuncular Bavarian gentleman interested only in peace is well-documented and among the most shameful media episodes in American history.
Furthermore, we also all know that Obama administration officials published pictures of Trump's "caged children" only to remove them from their tweets and instagrams because they were actually 2014 pictures of Obama's caged children.
Mr. Trump leaves a lot to be desired. His main betes noires such as Mr. Blow, however, leave serious thought behind.
Mr. Blow gets to call the President a criminal in almost every column. The NYT rips Turmp to shreds daily. Yet, mentioning a columnist by name or questioning the NYT usually condemns one's comments to oblivion. Let's see this time.
8
@keevan d. morgan: "Whataboutism" is one of the most tiresome aspects of human behavior that have mushroomed under the Trump presidency.
4
Shouldn't the Democrats be progressing solutions to these problems? By that I mean concrete ideas that can gain popular political and electoral support to improve conditions at the border and address more complicated issues around asylum and immigration into the US. In all the reams of op-eds and Tweets I fail to hear any ideas, just an escalating rhetoric that serves no one. This isn't politics, this is narcissistic grand standing. Trying to play Trump at his own game is a losing move, in case you hadn't noticed he already beat the Democrats to the top spot: innovation, not impersonation is what's needed.
2
@Martin
Shouldn't Mitch McConnell resign first?
If you haven't heard any ideas it's not the fault of the Democrats, it's your own fault.
4
Charles’s use of scare quotes to frame “concentration camps” is appropriate and telling.
Whether this nomenclature was deployed prior to WWII by sundry governments and entities is not relevant. More to the point is the recognition that, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, “concentration camps” is indelibly associated with the Holocaust. This controversy has already visited the Japanese American experience of internment after a 1998 Ellis Island exhibit. Japanese Americans were incarcerated in internment camps, not systematically slaughtered in concentration camps.
Genocide is not uncommon throughout human history. But to invoke the idea of “concentration camps” to describe the situation of asylum seekers at the southern US border is an exaggeration that diminishes the Holocaust and masks a more comprehensive understanding of the roots of the border crisis.
The evangelical right betrays much concern over fetal heartbeats but exhibits very little compassion over the plight of frightened, isolated children at the border.
What would A.O.C. say about Romans feeding Christians to hungry lions in the Coliseum?
2
@Andrew Shin
A group of Holocaust survivors known as the Children of the Holocaust have condemned Trump's separation policies.
Apparently you don't give them any legitimacy, either.
4
@Andrew Shin: Genocide recurs practically every time tribes contesting for limited resources by growing their own populations start to run out of them.
@Andrew Shin. She would probably say they deserved it.
how this happened was by allowing the Republican foxes into the henhouse of our government. how did a majority of Americans let THAT happen?
2
@Pottree. It started with Obama, remember?
1
@Pottree: Reagan delivered on his promise to prove that government is inherently incompetent. Game over.
1
@Pottree
The fact is, a "majority" didn't. A minority of American racists, abetted by a slew of Russian propaganda and election fraud did.
I don't have time to scroll through all the comments. Maybe the term "concentration camps" does belong exclusively to the Holocaust and its few survivors now.
But I do hope someone pointed out that Justice Owen Roberts, in his dissent in *Korematsu v. U.S.*(1944), specifically wrote that "Japanese internment camps" as "concentration camps." The dissenting Justices were not unaware of what had happened in Europe at that time--I am not sure on whether they were aware of the camps in Japan and Asia.
I do understand "differences," but G-d help us to understand and not trash one another!
4
"Concentration camps" is an appropriate and accurate term. The term denotes an enclosure in which large numbers of civilians are forcibly contained, typically based on a religious or ethnic characteristic disfavored by a government, under conditions that are intended to degrade and punish their prisoners, or at least incidentally have that effect.
Most concentration camps are not "death camps," in the Auschwitz sense of industrialized murder factories, though some in the post Holocaust era (e.g., Cambodia during the "killing fields" period) may have merited the title.
Euphemisms for such facilities -- "detention camps" or "internment camps" - don't capture the full flavor. The camps in which Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during WW2 were fully "concentration camps," whatever bureaucratic name they may have been given. Visit Heart Mountain sometime if you don't believe it. The main difference is that these WW2 camps were a good deal kinder to their inhabitants than the current U.S. containment pens for Latino children.
Cruelty is the point; a feature, not a bug. I wonder where all the so-called "pro-life" folks are when it comes to objecting to this abomination to real, live young post-natal human beings.
5
@rungus
They aren't for "Latino children". Latino children who are US citizens are not being rounded up and placed in detention camps.
Some foreign nationals, some of whom are children, have attempted to enter the US, been stopped and are being detained until they can be deported.
That is a rather important distinction. Citizenship matters.
While I agree that the US should have minimum standards for treating illegal immigrants, the outrage on the left is rather clearly as much about the fact that people are being detained at all as it is about conditions.
Absent open borders, foreign nationals can't enter this country without permission. Those who get caught are going to be detained.
6
"Babies don't belong in cages" except for the one in the picture. Disgustingly, Trump and his Republican ilk/base are probably celebrating these reports & comments as being free advertising to ward off any further attempt at migration. They'd probably even react with surprise that anyone would think that treatment should be otherwise.
1
Miriam Webster
con·cen·tra·tion camp
/ˌkänsənˈtrāSHən ˈˌkamp/
a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The term is most strongly associated with the several hundred camps established by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe in 1933–45, among the most infamous being Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz.
Dictionary.com
concentration camp
noun
a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.
Encyclopedia Brittanica
Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war.
6
Thank you for calling these so-called detention camps for what they are - concentration camps. It is beyond disgusting to me that our federal government and Pravda, I mean, Faux News, keeps acting like this is no big deal. Are we back in the business of locking up "undesirables" again, like the West Coast Japanese internment camps of the 1940's?
1
Since when did the children have any choice about any of this and why are they made to suffer? From the perspective of these children, how is this different from a concentration camp?
3
Exactly. America has lost our soul.
1
Why are so many people in a tizzy about the term "concentration camp?" If you look up the definition, as this opinion piece opines; what is going on at the border are concentration camps. For some reason people are indignant that only Nazis can run concentration camps. You don't have to be a Nazi to run a concentration camp, they take many forms. Including Manzanar and Gila River. A long list of concentration camps can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps#Cherokee
Wake up people and understand there is a problem. Stop bickering over definitions.
4
Another question: Why isn't this story on the front cover of the NYT... every... single... day... until those children are reunited with their families and they are released from unlawful detention?
5
Let's cut through the fat.
Our nation is fragmenting in front of our eyes. Policies and practices are in force which would have shocked us a few years ago. We have an administration that flirts with the dark side of human nature--reflects the evil depths of racism and bigotry. We have become a contaminated society hardened by constant lies, manipulation and truths contorted to a point of mind boggling, illogical stupefaction.
When does it end--if ever?
7
@FJG
I believe the worse is yet to come, as in pre-election 2020. The doTard regime will elevate reprehensible policies and practices to stir up their base.
2
November 3, 2020.
Nightmarish fears are that the Trump administration is just a few steps away from extermination policies that will be farmed out secretly to south-of-the-border hit squads. With this administration, I fear we are only steps away from even more horrific atrocities. All the while, the Trump base will cheer and chant "USA, USA!"
4
“Why were we not in the streets every day demanding an end to this atrocity?” Charles Blow asks. There are many answers, some of them better or worse than others. But surely one practical reason is that protest rallies have been ineffective, even though they may make demonstrators feel good: They have been singularly ineffective in changing Trump Administration policies and actions.
The only way to get results, it seems, is not so much to get mad as to get even. Concentrate on throwing the bas—rds, their allies, and their enablers out of office.
3
Actually, nonviolent protests are very powerful.
1
How can my country treat children like this? The descriptions at the Clint camp are horrendous. There are babies that are dirty and suffering from lice. There are babies that are sick. There are no diapers. The children are subsisting on a little oats in the morning, noodles at lunch, and a frozen burrito for dinner; they complain of hunger. Worst of all these babies are separated from their parents for extended periods. What if this was your child or grandchild? Imagine their physical discomfort and emotional pain. They will suffer the scars of this treatment for the rest of their lives. Something must be done NOW. Write to Congress, protest, donate. We cannot be complicit in this inhumane treatment.
5
Concentration camps began, at least, during the Boer War by the British. During the Holocaust, there were extermination camps--such as Sobibor and Belzec--and work camps, where the prisoners were worked to death. So AOC's use of the term is absolutely correct, and if it causes Americans to focus on what is being done by our government to children, then so much the better. The inhumane conditions and the sense that the government considers these children less than fully human renders these camps or centers little better than the Nazis' work camps.
6
Schoolyard bullies were more prevalent in junior and high school, where they were sooner or later confronted in the parking lot, encircled and beat into submission; playing by the bully's rules. The only recourse to Trump's stunted social development is to turn your back and deny him your presence, for one's own sanity. I'll work on getting out the votes instead of a bear-slap to the side of his face.
6
This article didn't clarify well enough the difference between concentration camps and death camps. At the Mexico border, right now, there are concentration camps, and there were concentration camps in Nazi Germany, as well as the Soviet Union, and North Korea, currently. People are treated neglectfully, inhumanely, and sometimes they die horribly in concentration camps. Nazi Germany also had death camps (extermination camps), increasingly filled toward the end of the War, I believe. Any place where people are being held inhumanely is a crime against humanity. Period.
3
The people of South America are fleeing the torturers, and murders that were trained and funded by the United States at the School of the Americas, now called, "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation".
The cruel interment of these refugees only adds insult to injury. Why do Americans remain so ignorant of what their government does in their name? More needs to be written about this blight on humanity:
School of the Dictators
SEPT. 28, 1996, NY Times
"Americans can now read for themselves some of the noxious lessons the United States Army taught to thousands of Latin American military and police officers at the School of the Americas during the 1980's. A training manual recently released by the Pentagon recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned."
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/opinion/school-of-the-dictators.html
https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-School-of-the-Americas/
http://www.soaw.org/home/
3
@lf
And so that means that the US should dissolve itself and become a Latin American country? Everyone throughout Mexico, Central and South America should be able to move to the US if they want?
2
If one is correct by Godwin himself, one is no longer legitimate in distracting others from their brutalist behavior by claiming exaggeration.
Go away, you Godwin's Law alibi monsters, Godwin and all the rest of us know who and what you are.
1
One thing that you can do: send money to the immigrant advocacy groups and human rights groups who are interviewing these children in the detention facilities, or volunteer yourself if you have the skills: I have a friend, a fellow college professor, who is bilingual and volunteers as a translator for one of these groups based in LA; she has been to detention centers all over the US, from NY to Texas--and she pays her own expenses.
Members of her church have donated money to help pay her expenses. Start a GoFundMe or similar campaign in your own congregation or civic organization. You can give real help to those who are right there working within the legal system to help these children.
6
This all can be traced back to "Pizzagate" Republican dirty tricksters story of children being held captive in a DC pizza parlor. That phoney mess was latent somewhere within the Republican mind meld and now surfaces as separation of children from their parents on what is a semi permanent basis for some.
Why this idea might be there in the first place I am at a loss to say but I am pretty firmly convinced that the two are connected.
1
Insulting analogy.The suffering of the Central Americans can not be compared to what I and my family endured.There is blame to be shared by the Democrats for what is going on the border and they should step up to the plate.
33
@1 Woman
What a wise and open-hearted response. Yes, great suffering is incommensurable, and for those of us with children and a measure of empathy, we see that our nation is actively inflicting great suffering on these children and their parents.
20
@GDKT
I know you're scared and cold and hungry and you don't know where your mommy is, but hey, it could be worse.
8
I’m sorry for your pain, but you cannot know what has been going on with these children both in their native countries and on their journey. My relatives died during the Holocaust and my husband died on 9 /11. Nevertheless, I have learned to be very careful about engaging in suffering comparison. It makes little sense and only encourages us to stifle our empathy. Suffering is worldwide; there’s no reason for our country to contribute to it. We know we have a problem to solve. Desperate people are coming to our borders. Caging them is a heartless and apparently ineffective approach. I, for one, would like to see us do better in the name of the victims, soldiers and others who died so we could be free to practice a modicum of compassion.
383
I have contacted my female, Republican senator and urged her to join with the other four female Republican senators and storm McConnell's office with a demand that these children receive humane and clean care. Were these children living under the same conditions as home, Child Protective Services would investigate and remove them. Were pets living under the same conditions, the SPCA would remove them.
No, we must not tolerate this. It is a public health emergency waiting to happen. The children may never reach their full physical or emotional developmental potential from the abuse and neglect they are experiencing.
What is happening in those camps is a crime, both a civil one and a moral one. We cannot allow it to continue. Only the Congressional Republicans can stop it because the administration doesn't even follow legal decisions. Badger your Republican members of Congress until this stops.
7
Americans are already tolerating it, making them complicit. That's the raw truth.
4
@Jain
And why do the British have bigger anti-Trump rallies then we do? Perhaps someone should organize a march on Washington to protest Donald Trump's administration. I would go. Then again, I don't think that all the anti-Vietnam protest we had in this country decades ago shortened that war by one second.
1
Ripping brown infants and children from their families, for punitive purposes, is nothing less than torture. The harm will stay with these children for the rest of their lives. According to the Rome Statute (which describes the areas of jurisdiction for the International Criminal Court), that is a crime against humanity. We must and we will hold Trump and his accomplices accountable. Not doing so is simply unacceptable.
9
I hope that the leaders of ICE and the officers of the for profit corporations managing these camps are prosecuted as war criminals when a rational government takes office in this country.
7
Put Trump in one of these holding tanks and see how long he lasts.
5
I know it's an easy mistake to make, but Trump is not a child. he has already suffered his childhood traumas and now inflicts them on the rest of the world. how will the kids in border custody turn out?
2
i take great offense in the term concentration camps.
my parents were survivors of camps in ww2.
those camps , were fraught with the potential for extermination, and forced labor.
these border camps are nothing like that. please dont insult the memory of holocaust survivors by comparing detained illegals to concentration camp survivors.
74
These are children. What if they were Jewish instead of South American Catholics? Than could you see the comparison?
Concentration Camps: a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.
96
@Rhsmd1.
My parents as well as my grand parents were sent to an American Concentration camp in Wyoming for two years with no arrest, no jury trial, and no conviction.
But, I don't begrudge one second anyone calling Trump's Death Camps (how about that name instead of Concentration Camps). At this point, I am sure your family members suffered much more than the incarcerated Japanese American citizens or the poor kids held in Trump's death camps, but they are all concentration camps!
It does not denigrate the pain and suffering your family suffered one iota!
93
@Rhsmd1
Seven children have died. There are reports of people with broken bones being given water or an aspirin as treatment. There has been an outbreak of head lice among the children and when they lose of the two combs given to them, they were punished by having to sleep on the cold, bare concrete floor. Worse is likely to happen.
I am sorry for your family and your religion, but that is no excuse for allowing small children to have their growth stunted from lack of nutrition simply because the administration bullies haven't built gas chambers yet.
81
This article is just another piece of democrat propaganda.
first of all the cages are a leftover from your messiah Obama,
Second of all these are not children being separated from their parents when they arrive on our soil.. these are mostly "rented" children - their parents allowed them to be "rented". These same children are then sent back and re-rented. As long as the democrats continue with their hate towards our President instead of to the horrible people that are exploiting just about everyone this will continue.
Third of all these people are NOT in concentration camps.. these people came here WILLINGLY. The Jews who were in real concentration camps were not there by choice.
It's disgusting to have people play with the word to attempt to justify the pathetic and hurtful comparison.
The illegals are just that - ILLEGAL!
They are not seeking asylum - they are seeking freebies.
When oh when will people start telling the truth????
11
I would suggest you eschew Fox for the Wall Street Journal, a conservative publication that will accurately inform you. No, the previous administration did not build cages. No, the previous administration did not withhold soap, toothbrushes, blankets, medical care. No, the previous administration did not lose children. If you are a mother, grandmother, you may re-examine your post.
22
If you really think these children are "rented", that makes our refusal to do anything even worse! There is no difference between renting children and trafficking them. Where is your outrage about that?
6
@sylvia You want the truth? 40+ years ago we tried regime change in Latin America and we just caused misery and refugees! Oh...we did the same in the Middle East a few years back causing misery and refugees!
1
Start blocking the entrance gates to these camps. Harass the camp employees as they come and go.
Find their homes. Protest in the streets in front of their homes.
They enjoy making life miserable for defenseless children, make life miserable for them.
7
If a "concentration" camp is a a place where "undesirables" are imprisoned in large numbers without adequate housing or food, where they are denied amenities like soap & toothbrushes and kept in cages like animals, the United States now has concentration camps. Use whatever word you want, but in truth they are concentration camps. The minions haven't started any death camps. Yet.
10
The places where America keeps people entering our country at the border are not concentration camps. Manzanar and other places America put Japanese-Americans during World War II were concentration camps. The difference is quite simple, The Japanese-Americans had absolutely no choice in the matter. Those at the border currently made the choice to come here and, for the most part, are free to return to from where they came.
Given the fact that far too often the Nazi death factories such as Auschwitz are incorrectly referred to as concentration camps, it is especially egregious to refer to the border migrants facilities in that manner.
Words matter, especially at a time when the oxymoron, "alternative facts", is a concept considered not merely possible but one worthy of discussion. And, if we are not careful about words, pretty soon people will start calling "anti-abortion" "pro-life."
Charles Blow is a smart man and does, one would think, truly understand the fundamental differences between the border detainment facilities for migrants, Manzanar, and Auschwitz. He can make his very legitimate points about bad treatment of migrants at the border without resorting to absurd equivalencies and hyperbolically inflammatory language. And he does not need to use Ocasio-Cortez cynically opportunistic or know-nothing comment about border "concentration camps" to make the point that the facilities there and the "caretaking" policies are extremely inadequate.
8
@Steve Fankuchen - Would it make you feel better just to call them Trump's Death Camps instead of Concentration camps?
My folks spent two years in an American concentration camp without an arrest, a jury trial or a conviction!
In my mind, Trump's Death Camps are concentration camps - They may be a bit less horrid than the German Concentration camps, but on par with the American Concentration camps in WWII - Drafty old buildings, inadequate food, armed guards etc!!
1
A two year old has a choice?
3
@Martini
No but his or her parents did. They chose to either send their kids alone or bring them along knowing full well they could be arrested for trying to cross a border illegally.
Americans shouldn’t be major the decisions of foreigners.
1
Dear NYT:
Enough reflexive Trump bashing and Hitler analogies.
What is your plan to solve the immigration crisis?
6
@Jorge That is the problem with not remembering history. Concentration camps have been a cruelty used to dehumanize, denigrate and make human beings the "other" for centuries.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/
1
As long as there are no gas chambers kept busy murdering thousands, these are not concentration camps as known during World War II and I reject any attempt to redefine the word.
Having said that, they are sites of despicable treatment of human beings. It is horrid, and hypocritical, of the oh so pious evangelical right to keep supporting Trump as the author of such places. Nothing gives a lie to their concern for babies as that behavior.
We cannot absorb everybody who wants to come here, nor should we. The asylum and refugee laws do need to be revised.
In the meantime, rectify the horror that is happening on our southern border.
67
@tellsthetruth
A particular human demographic is concentrated for detention in one location for punitive treatment in substandard conditions under armed guards. How is this not a concentration camp?
38
@tellsthetruth American Heritage Dictionary: "concentration camp
1. A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
Nazi Germany created concentration camps as a way to remove Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses, gays, Jews, and communists from the general population starting in 1933. While many people died in the concentration camps as created, they were not used for the express purpose of killing people until 1939. For this reason, most scholars distinguish between concentration camps and extermination (or death) camps.
42
@Al That may very well be. But concentration camp is the term used by the general public and is understood as extermination. Therefore, until there is a change that is universally accepted, concentration camp should not be used for any abject, unwilling housing of people, usually at government behest, however horrid the situation is. And the situation on the border certainly is.
Why we tolerate cruelty to others is simply that to the extent that we ourselves are "comfortable and safe" we'll reluctantly overlook anything cruel happening to others until we ourselves are threatened. The "we" here is fluid, ever changing. Nevertheless it permits the Trump phenomenon of turning on ourselves out of frustration with the ruling elite who have always operated on the survivalist prototype. There is no "common" good, only "my" good.
3
These are not concentration camps. Concentration camps contain individuals rounded up against their will, imprisoned who cannot leave. The refugees came willingly to these camps and can leave at will, they just can’t enter the US without waiting to be processed. If the issue is that the conditions are poor in these refugee camps then that is a separate and quite serious issue, but calling them a concentration camp is a disgrace to the memory of millions of victims of Nazi and Communist persecution in both Europe and Asia and belies a fundamental lack of understanding between a refugee camp and a concentration camp.
161
@michaelf - What? The detainees came willingly to these camps, and can leave whenever they want? That's not how the detention facility I know about functions. The people there have fewer rights than your typical convicted prisoner - no exercise time, no visitors, locked down in quarantined units. Plus, the annex was never permitted by the city it's in and has not been certified as habitable. When the fire department was called, they responded in a location in Texas because the facility has never been registered in Colorado and that was the only address on file.
148
@michaelf
Disregarding for the moment your incorrect assumption that these people can 'leave at will' (they cannot), let's instead take a step back and discuss who we're talking about here. Children. Not adults, children. Even if ICE did allow people to leave, since they've now separated kids from their parents, are the parents likely to just walk off back into Mexico and leave their kids behind? Are the kids likely to do that? I suppose the older kids might be able to survive on their own for a while if the US government decided to just turn them loose with nothing into a foreign country where they know no one, but how about the toddlers?
It would take very little indeed to treat these people with the respect due any fellow human. Let them stay with their kids. Give them basic necessities like soap and toothpaste. And if there aren't facilities to house, care for, and feed them, then allow them to walk free in the so-called Land of the Free, with ankle bracelets if necessary. Just don't treat them like animals - because that is the crime we're all complicit in right now.
144
@michaelf - Concentration camp historians disagree with you. Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night - about the global history of concentration camps (named one of Smithsonian Magazine’s Ten Best History books for 2017) said concentration camps are used for '"mass detention of civilians without trial." Recently, she agreed these ICE camps are indeed concentration camps.
Consider what Yale holocaust historian Timothy Snyder says about these camps (he is reluctant to call them "concentration camps"): “ICE holds more people in detention centers now than Germany held in its camps when the Second World War began. In paying companies to run detention centers, we are creating the perverse incentives that were also present in German camps and ghettos. In detaining people without quick and speedy trials, we violate international law. In denying detainees due process, we question our own Constitution.”
Call these camps whatever you want but you can't deny they are inhumane.
432
Funny that there seems to be more outrage about AOC’s use of the term concentration camp than there is about the conditions inside them.
434
@Susan Thank you, Susan!
11
@Susan I keep hearing it and I think this is a false dichotomy that supporters of the "concentration camp" language have been using (perhaps unintentionally) to back those who are offended by that language into a corner: you either agree to call them "concentration camps" OR you don't care about the inhumane treatment of migrants. I simultaneously have reservations about the use of the term "concentration camps" AND I think there isn't enough outrage about some of the conditions we are increasingly hearing about, especially this week. Lastly, I am tired of hearing people quote the Merriam-Webster dictionary or the specific expert quoted in AOC's cited article as "proof" that the applicability of the term "concentration camp" is irrefutable. Yes, those are trustworthy sources that validate the argument. Other trustworthy sources invalidate it (Encyclopedia Brittanica, various scholars cited by other commenters here, etc). There is no objective right or wrong here, but good lord are we on the left ever being intolerant of ideological diversity in this case.
3
@Susan
Guilt is a funny thing, don’t you think?
7
Call these abominations whatever you want, they are horrendous and unacceptable. We wouldn't accept this kind of treatment for our children or our dogs! People at the southern border should be treated humanely and with respect. Increase the number of immigration judges and process the cases quickly. Trump has made a bad problem worse (as usual) by playing to the worst instincts of his supporters. He doesn't really care what happens to the migrants; this is all a political ploy for reelection.
As an aside, has anyone calculated what this is costing the taxpayer to keep these poor people here indefinitely? Admit them or send them back, but please stop this cruel, heartless treatment of people who have already endured hell on earth.
8
President Trump's "policy" on the US-Mexico border is a mess. Literally from day one, when he infamously came down the escalator, Trump has been speaking to a base or supporters who could charitably be called nationalists. Trump's shambolic handling of the border has at least contributed to the humanitarian crisis we now face. Previous presidents, all of whom were infinitely more qualified to handle immigration, struggled to find a solution. Trump has made things worse.
But calling these detention centers "concentration camps" is a mistake for a variety of reasons, even if one can find parallels in history. Whatever "concentration camps" might be, these refer, in most minds, to the Holocaust, and the US-Mexican border is not that. Such hyperbole only provides Trump and his supporters cover in alleging that Democrats and others are using the Border as a political bludgeon, nothing more.
Yes, we should not refer to the crisis on our southern border in mere technical terms, therefore denying the mess is a humanitarian disaster. But this is not a binary choice between using technical jargon and references to the most despicable times in modern history.
Democrats risk, if they have not already done so, countering the ridiculousness of Trump with their own brand of crazy. We need a more measured, thoughtful response to the crisis to our south, not more hyperbole and bombast. Have we not heard enough of that already?
40
@Paul Measured response? How about getting those children out of there and placing them in homes where they can be properly cared for until relatives are found.
What is going on now has no name and no excuse that can be spoken in polite company.
25
@Paul
Well said, but Im reminded of an old saying, "If you're selling crazy here then we dont want any". We have enough as it is!
The Border Calimity has enough blame for everyone going back decades. Calling the Detentions Centers Concentration Camps by the Far Left only serves to show how absolutely out of touch they are with Historical facts about WWII. I think we can even say its lack of education and awareness too.
You can choose to call people who want Border Security Nationalists if you want to but to me its just common sense to want our Country to have an organized Immigration process. There are plenty of fine people working at the Border. The Author of this article does them a great disservice, even worse a slap in the face to all who are doing there best while Nancy and Chuck go to yet another Photo-Op stirring up their base while America gets overrun. I find it all rather disgusting.
2
@Paul
What we need is a moral compass! This is not the time for "measured, thoughtful response". This is a time for massive protests.
You do realize that any child treated in the same way in their private homes would be removed by Child Protective Services, right?
15
Whatever you call these camps, they are inhumane and unnecessarily cruel. I wish I knew what to do about it other than contact my deaf representative and senators in SC. I speak out whenever I can, but mostly with like-minded others. I have no idea how to take real action that would change this, even though I am a retired counselor and social worker.
5
The simple truth is that we don't have any really good alternative to the clearly bad system at work.
We are told that we can't turn these 'refugees' away even though most will not qualify as true refugees. We can't keep children longer than 20 days. We can't seize the relatives that paid to have these children smuggled into the country and deport both them and the children at the same time. We can't build and equip shelters overnight so what are we supposed to do? Let anybody in the world who can get to our southern border walk into the US and disappear, which is about what we are doing now?
We could pass a law that no car should be built after 9/30/ 2019 that doesn't get 75 MTG and to make cancer illegal 11/1/19 but the facts are that cars cannot be made that gas efficient by October and cancer will continue to occur no matter what Congress says. We may as well try to repeal the law of gravity. What we are trying to do is impossible.
The solution is for Congress to pass laws restricting how refugee status is requested, to speed up the judicial process, and to deport w/o delay. Trump then needs to sign this law, and we need to move ASAP. Things are not going to get better.
3
Charles we have 100 US Senators and 435 Congressmen, this is their responsibility. They are missing in action. Time to clean house.
5
More hyperbole -- indescribable cruelty? No one is saying the situation is ideal, but it is not indescribable cruelty. I assume the children’s deaths were investigated; such a journey is stressful, particularly for them, and that is very sad. The cleanliness issues have been remedied. NOT indescribable cruelty. Keeping lights on at night; or the children in an area with metal framing, so they can be monitored; or confined to an area for sunlight -- NOT indescribable cruelty. NOT ideal, but how loud would the outcries be if, after these lights go out, or behind enclosed walls, or if the children were free to roam, something horrid happened? Apparently, by law, or rule, children must be separated from adults -- I can understand the safety concern behind that, if that is the reason. I certainly see room for improvement, maybe the lights could be dimmed at night, and they should have padding for sleeping along with basic toiletries, if indeed some (or many) do not. This however, is not 'indescribable cruelty', much less 'concentration camp' conditions harking back to those grotesque, barbaric days that we also speak of as 'never again', as Ocasio-Cortez stated when she made that precipitating video: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/264794. We can, and do have concerns for actual problems at the border, without minimizing the deaths of millions of victims and soldiers during WW II, and seemingly sensationalizing that horror for publicity or shock value.
3
This is part of his political stunts,outrageous behavior to incite conflict between conservatives and liberals,with him as the show dog. Look at his bluffs with Rocket Man and Iran. He spurls unfair trade deficits with other countries and so declares tariff wars. He can't see the damage being done because he is use to walking away from a bad deal or a bad bankruptcy or a bad marriage. End result he makes a buck and feels superior,never mind the debris.
2
Those who are the most insistent we are a Christian nation are the ones who are most insistent this isn't a crisis. And Jesus wept.
3
Why don't good people of conscience respond to these camps (that do fall within the historical definition of concentration camps, although they aren't Nazi extermination camps or Gulag work-them-and-starve-them-to-death camps)? Some of people do. Some people are. Why don't others? I think a large part of the answer is that two and half years of the Trump Administration has left many people feeling helpless, and they respond by distancing themselves as an act of emotional self-defense. It's a natural reaction, and because we can't judge the emotional robustness of other people, nor how insecure they may be in other ways, we should hesitate to judge those who don't protest openly. But the more that people feel that there's something they can do, the more people will act to try to do it. People who already are being active will do everyone else a favor the more they can find ways to make taking action seem inviting and not dangerous beyond what many people can tolerate. Which is easier for me to write than for anyone to accomplish. Some actions may have to be indirect. There are people now who can protest in public and file lawsuits and so on, but for many people the most useful thing they can do may turn out to be to help elect a new administration that will have different values. And yes, in the meantime, children will suffer. But we can't just snap our fingers and make it stop. I cringe to think how long it's going to take.
1
You cannot blame this on the president alone. The blame must be shared with all his cowardly and/or complicit republican enablers who have been only too happy to look the other way. This is so not America.
5
@Gary W. The only people to blame are the parents of those children. No American I know of is forcing them to send their children here. None.
1
Filml and photographs awoke America to the horrors of Vietnam. We need images broadcast from the internment centers. We do not read. we react to what we see.
5
This atrocity should not be happening in America. Since 2015 Trump has vilified these people as criminals, rapists and described them as "animals". Trump has ordered DHS to enact policies that are against the law to ascibe cruel and unusual punishment upon them. Their crime: presenting for asylum. Trump's lawyers argued in court that even children and babies don't deserve soap, toothbrushes, blankets or diapers. So far, at least 7 children have died at the border. How can this be justified? The pictures of these dirty, hungry kids rounded up like sheep and placed in a pen to suffer should be on the front pages of all national newspapers every day. Is this making America great again? Apparently, for those who embrace horror, depravity and cruelty it is. For shame!
2
Thank you for using the word Concentration Camps. It's not a DEATH CAMP, but a horrible holding place pf humans. WE, all people, can use these two words. Concentration Camps, should be used for ALL people to take pause at what is going on along the boarders of this country and others. The one group shouting the loudest is NOT the only group who have been in this situation.
2
Comments seem focused on definitions of concentration camp. Column was focused on how horrible the situation is, and the president who caused it. Is anyone offering any solution? I do not want to fund accommodations for illegal enterers of the country. Maybe I don't want that less than I don't want to separate children from parents. It seems to me there is no short term fix, and we must work on making the situations these refugees flee better for them.
In May of 1945 the German population said “we didn’t know”. We pronounced them guilty.
In June of 2019 the American population says “what Concentration Camps?”. God and History will pronounce us guilty.
I have a solution to this problem. Do no try and enter the United States illegally. No one forced these people to make the dangerous trek north to our border. They made a great show, egged on and supported by so-called progressives, of coming to the border in a caravan and basically challenged us to do something about it. They could choose to go back to where they came from, something an inmate could not do. I am used to the press demonizing everything that can be tied to Trump bur concentration camps is a whole new level of hyperbole. I am not a Trump supporter but I am also in favor of secure borders. If you do not want to face the hazards associated with trying to enter our country illegally, then stay where you are.
39
@George Many of the families did not "enter illegally" but were separated anyway.
31
@George Do you think a 2 year old made a conscious choice to enter the U.S., and should be punished for it? Or that 2 year olds should be punished for their parents' decisions?
49
@George Requesting asylum is not crossing illegally. The present crisis a result of congressional inaction, asylum court budget cuts and inhumane political incompetence. To posit that those who have walked 2000+?miles to ask for asylum because of encouragement by progressives is uniformed at best and cruel and unfeeling at worst. Simplistic answers don’t address complicated questions.
59
Thank you, Charles Blow! These are the concentration camps of our time, and the same human rights abuse is taking place. And as in other concentration camps in history, the cruelty extends beyond the walls of the camps: terror and abuse are contagious and the abusers become bolder and crueler and the abused become more oppressed.
THIS SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED! this is un-American.
143
Thank you so much for writing and I could not agree more. These are indeed concentration camps, and we are indeed doing nothing about it. The reasons you posit for this inactivity may well be on point. I have always thought it is because this country is too wealthy. I don't mean the top 400 rich folks, I mean the rest of us with our big screen TVs and smart phones. That is pretty much enough for far too many of us. I want to be in the streets protesting and I want many of your readers to join me.
3
Reading many of the recommended comments gives me an idea why we are doing nothing to end the miserable conditions immigrant children are living in on our Southern border. In part, this discussion has become a tepid intellectual discussion of whether or not the caging of children in awful conditions by our government satisfies the definition of "concentration camp"!
Where is the outrage and concern about the real issue? Children are being held prisoner and punished by our government.
Are we going to avoid dealing with the moral, ethical and humanitarian questions this action raises by intellectualizing them or are we going to deal head on with the real issues?
Think about this. The first memories of the two-year-old children being held in detention will be of living in a light-filled environment 24/7 with no blanket, clean clothes, toys or caregiver. Is that really what our country has become?
I do not care if it is a concentration camp or not. I care that children are being kept in conditions like this by our government and I want it to stop. Now.
4
The Trump base cannot identify these as people - they are other, therefore less than and not deserving of care.
This is the awful thing that Trump and Miller and Bannon have enabled.
7
The 4th of July is coming up. Why not bring protests to our nation's celebrations? How can any of us celebrate this country at a time when our government and law officers show less humanity and respect for global laws than the basest criminals? Protest the blind patriotism on display on the 4th, protest in the names of these children, in the name of our own kids, protest to make a better America.
9
The widespread lack of outrage over this atrocious treatment of detained refugees and migrants is part of the longstanding preference among some Americans for draconian punishments for crimes, and alleged crimes, committed by nonwhite people.
It's a racial moral high horse that has been around a long time - just as can be seen in the policing and over-policing strategies across our nation
But all this righteous anger does is groom the public to accept worse and worse treatment for one set of people, which as AOC aptly noted, can be legitimately characterized as concentration camps. The reverse-Godwin's Law from the MAGA side seems to be that treating these people humanely means we want "open borders" or that any conditions short of Auschwitz means they can pat themselves on the back.
The Stanford Prison experiment showed that human beings can become numb to and even enthusiastic about punishing those who have been branded with the prisoner label. Even in cases where there has been a violation, as with illegal immigration, we have to guard against the slippery slope of scapegoating some groups in an Orwellian attempt to call that justice.
4
Charles, what would you have us do? There's really not much we can do. Maybe a general strike would get some attention, but let's face it, it's never happening in this country. Voting is always touted as the answer, but consider this: plenty of people voted in a Democratic House in November. And what, exactly have they done to throw a wrench in the gears of the Trump administration? Not much, really. They sit on their hands, with the belief that not taking steps towards a justified impeachment will cost them an election in 2020. Guess what? Trump might win the election regardless. Shouldn't the Democrats try to stand up with some principles at such a critical juncture?
So what, exactly, should we do?
3
@PubliusMaximus Donate to organizations supporting immigrants’ needs and rights. See today’s editorial in this paper for list of such organizations. I donated to the ‘New Sanctuary Coalition’. There are options from which to choose. It’s easy!
2
Apparently the people in Hong Kong are braver than Americans. Why are we not all heading to the border, or at least taking to the streets to protest this?
1
@PubliusMaximus: work with us to deport every illegal alien.
We don't want these kids here. We want them to GO BACK TO THEIR HOMELANDS.
2
Despite court orders and tremendous public outrage, the separations, the detentions and the horrible conditions in the Trumpcamps continues. And the fact that there appears to be no legal means of stopping it is the most frightening aspect of this situation. If the Trump administration can do these illegal, immoral and un-American deeds with absolute impunity (so far, at least?), what is next? When the “lock her up” chants become a daily component of every American’s civil life, who will be the next target of extra-legal apprehension, imprisonment or worse? These are very very dangerous times for America, and ultimately the world. Rule of law and democracy are under vicious and unrelenting by this administration. America, please remember, “...and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
3
California Legislators recently voted to provide free health insurance to illegal aliens...while American citizens struggle to pay their monthly premiums, if they can afford them at all.
Guess what party dominates the California Legislative branch?
7
@Michaela
Insurance companies are canceling policies, raising premiums not covering necessary drugs for the average American even those with "good insurance." Yet they rake in billions of dollars. Guess which party supports the insurance companies the most?
5
@Martin B
So you’re in favor of American citizens subsidizing free health insurance for illegal aliens while American workers struggle to pay their family’s premiums.
Hmmm....good to know.
1
Probably not those, who are desperately trying to undo Obama Care? What ist your complaint here? That in the richest country of the world, there are still some good people, that are unable to ignore misery? Die you think ist viable to Switch your Position with one of the migrants?
For people to accept this cruel behavior to children has to mean those same people have such a poor opinion of themselves that abusing others is acceptable.
Put another way, abusers have usually been abused and they accept that abuse because they don't think they're worthy of anything better.
And there's one other exception: if they "other" people and do not see them as human, then it becomes OK to abuse. God help us all, if we've slid that far into the depths of this Hitleresque world.
If they are indeed "concentration camps," the people trying to invade the US are implying their consent to be detained in those "camps" and are similarly implying their consent to have their children similarly detained.
These people know perfectly well they're trying to enter this country illegally. What do they expect? To be greeted with open arms and open invitations to live in luxury? Actions have consequences and breaking US law is going to have unpleasant consequences.
These people were free to remain in their own countries. They were free to try to correct whatever circumstances caused them to abandon those countries. Instead, they chose to try to violate US law. They deserve no consideration or sympathy from us.
7
@Henry Miller, Libertarian But we are talking about helpless CHILDREN. Whether or not their families were wrong to bring them here, they are here now and deserving of care and compassion.
4
@Henry miller, these,are,by even the narrowest definition, concentration camps. Inhuman ones that do,not reflect the purported values of the US. These people are not invaders, like,our current leader suggests, but asylum seekers, with legal protections. To heck with the law or even basic human decency, they are brown and the talking heads,at faux news, don’t like them, should not be a good enough reason to lose the soul of our country, or did we do that by electing a deplorable president.
"These people" are breaking no law, despite what our so-called President says. It is legal under international law to apply for asylum.
Trump should be prosecuted for child abuse, along with the management DHS and CBP.
6
These comments strongly suggest that “concentration camps” predated the Nazi era. Rep. Ocaso-Cortez and others may not have been aware of these earlier iterations of this horrendous practice, but their use of the term is, nevertheless, correct. I found the term in the historical novel, “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, by the Jewish writer Frank Verfel, in reference to the deportation of Armenians during the years of the Genocide of Armenians by the Turks around the end of World War I. Just this morning, I found the reference in a historical article (thanks to Google) which also described packing Armenian people into “cattle cars” and “deporting” them to “concentration camps” to the East (including the Syrian desert) where most of them perished from starvation and the heat. I italicized the above terms because they describe exactly the fate of Europe’s Jews who were hunted down, rounded up and subjected to the same fate, differing only in higher numbers and newer methods of extermination (gas chambers, mass shootings). It is a sad fact that the Holocaust is unique because of its scale, organization, and methodologies, but concentration camps were in existence before the 1930s, reappeared after WW2 (e.g. Bosnia 1990s) and are with us today.
3
Out of sight, never in mind...ice is melting at a faster rate than anticipated. Border detention centers are really concentration camps...waiting for a reaction? Don’t hold your breath. We are a “how does this affect me, RIGHT NOW”, society. Unless falling ice blocks a lane of highway on the morning commute, or an immigrant camp is erected in my back yard...so what? Tis pity, tis. Tis pity tis, tis true!
3
For Trump, brown babies don't really matter. This is a humanitarian outrage and a true national emergency. Where are the churches? Where is Focus on Family? no toothbrushes? No pillows? No stuffed animals? For a country that professes to love the children, we are sanctioning child abuse at the border.
5
This is a country where 20 children were gunned down in their first grade classroom and nothing was done about guns. Do you really believe the United States loves their children?
1
These are just children. Now if they were fetuses being treated this way, there would be a march down Main Street!
Cut to the chase folks. There is only one reason why nothing is being done to help these people: The current administration has succeeded in making these people sub-human, a threat to your job and way of life. Their only crime is being brown.
5
too late. It's been tolerated all this time. Mitch McConnell likes it this way.
2
What strikes me is the lack of collective outrage. As individuals we react with horror when we realize that our government is committing this atrocity and yet, as many have stated, feel we have no course of action. Why are there no organizations sponsoring a giant march on Washington? Have we, as a nation, lost the ability to protest even the most egregious conduct on the part of our government? Where is the kind of collective consciousness which, 50 years ago, through repeated anti-war demonstrations, led to the end of that debacle? The only reason this kind of inhumanity continues in our name is because we allow it to. C'mon you people in organizations with a nationwide reach - organize!
6
Holding children hostage to advance an anti-immigrant policy is monstrous. On the ethical spectrum this is somewhere between war crimes and crimes against humanity. One would think moral and religious leaders would be appalled; but one would be wrong.
Even if we've become that flint-hearted, we could still confront this by simply following the money.
How much money was appropriated for these detention/concentration camps? What government entity got the funds? What private entity was funded for this purpose? What are they contracted to do? How well are they doing it? What is the internment/imprisonment costing the government, daily, per person?
Inquiring minds want to know. Congress ought to find out.
If recent report(s) that this "warehousing" of children is costing about $700 per child-day are true, someone is making an unholy profit on an unconscionable enterprise.
7
We haven't got to the point where we're building ovens but we are sure as hell headed in that direction.
This is not the America I grew up in. I am not sure what this place is, any more.
The people of the United States were once known as a generous people, happy to help others. How did we go from that to the construction of concentration camps?
And what comes next?
16
@Alternate Identity
This really seems to be hyperbole. It wasn't until 1964 that the United States formally decided that segregation and discrimination were wrong. And in most of the years since the majority has taken steps to ensure that both practices continued. Schools are more segregated now than they were at the time of Brown v. Board of Education.
So I'm not sure when you thought that America was such an idyllic place.
In this particular example large numbers of foreign nationals have entered the country without permission.
The choice is either to let them all enter OR attempt to stem the tide, as virtually every other functioning state would do.
Preventing them from entering is not morally equivalent to building concentration camps. The fact that AOC and her supporters immediately compare this to Nazis show that on a very real level they think the US and borders and nation states are equally as evil and illegitimate.
3
If you’re a parent, imagine your child as a two year old being separated from you indefinitely. Now imagine that same toddler being thrown in with countless other children, all dealing with their own trauma of being separated from their parent(s). A cold floor to sleep on, no warm blanket to clutch onto, no mother or father to kiss you goodnight. This is unspeakably cruel and inhuman. As an American I’m ashamed of our government. But what can I realistically do about it immediately as it is happening? Vote, yes, write letters, yes, protest, but I’m one person, and that doesn’t fix this abomination now. What can I do now?
3
I think of old pictures of GI's going through Europe liberating people in the camps, greeted as saviors, and wonder what has happened to our sense of decency and kindness. Can't the National Guard be deployed to HELP these children? What about FEMA? Why aren't the Red Cross and Amnesty International allowed in? Where is the UN? This is an international crisis. Why isn't anyone helping us work around the monsters in Washington?
6
This ongoing atrocity, among hundreds of others, is why I often repeat to myself a relevant version of Stephen Dedalus's statement in "Ulysses":
The Trump presidency is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
2
Get the cameras in there. Get them in there now uncensored. No two week wait for the facility to prepare. No negotiation with the private company running these camps. No. Congress. Members. Get on a plane, get in a van, walk up to one of these camps and demand to enter with cameras loaded. Do it now. Break the law if you have to but do this. If we don't get the cameras in there now if members of Congress can't get these pictures and sound this will go until cholera breaks out or some other infectious disease and hundreds of kids will die on our watch. Do it. Do it today. And those debates? If this is not the first topic on the agenda, shame on all these candidates.
2
Vote wisely next year and that will lead to Donald being separated from his freedom.
1
If these poor kids are being held in camps under such conditions, you better send in Red Cross.
For how long time are the kids supposed to be detained? And actually what was the intention of separating kids from their parents?
Perhaps the president will invite the kids to the Rose Garden.
1
@GE
"what was the intention of separating kids from their parents? "
There was no intention. In order to separate the kids one of the following 2 situations needed to occur:
One: The child came with the parents; the parents were detained because they were caught doing something ILLEGAL! and I dont know where you are from or where you live, but in good old USA, illegality means detention. Of course US had the option of incarcerating all of them, children included, but I believe that would be illegal too. Unless your ilk thinks is a good idea to send a 2 year old to jail. Bottom line: If the parents have not made the trip with their children they wouldnt have found themselves detained AND/OR separated from their children.
BLAME FALLS DIRECTLY ON PARENTS.
Two: The child was sent alone by the parents themselves, in which case, they were the ones who VOLUNTARELY separated themselves from their children in the first place.
BLAME FALLS DIRECTLY ON PARENTS.
And thats that. Everything else is whine, rethoric, politics, partisanship, TDS, etc.
2
@RAmi: based on your logic: children paying for the mistakes of their parents, then we should let the kids of people who die of overdoses to fend for thhemselves. Blame the parents, right?
By Ami words I gather the parent didn’t die of overdose, you analogy doesn’t hold. The parent voluntarily either made the journey with their kids or send them alone. It’s beyond my reasoning why parents would do that.
1
Those who criticized AOC's use of the term "concentration camps" need to be more concerned with the children the US is abusing in our name. They also need to look up the definition of concentration camps which fits the situation. Typical conservatives -- outrage at the wrong things.
7
@Caded
Yes we cons are the ones who throw fits because the college cafeteria "appropriated sushis" or someone dressed up at Pocahontas for Halloween. We are the ones who fired a comedian for telling his kids to not act gay or protesting a grocery store for denouncing an underage thief for stealing alcohol. We are the ones who run to safe spaces because someone wrote Trump with chalk on the pavement and go on protesting because we dislike the results of an election...
"Outrage at the wrong things". ROFL.
1
Thank you for appropriately using the term 'concentration camps' in quotes. To exclude all use of the term for fear of diminishing the horror of the Holocaust also has the unintended effect of trivializing in perpetuity, by comparison, the suffering visited upon peoples wherever subjected to inhumane internment. "Never Forget" should never translate as "Remember Only Jews." We remember the Holocaust, honor its victims, and accept our international collective responsibility best by invoking its signs wherever we clearly see them on the road to inhumanity toward our fellow human beings.
1
When all is said and done, the citizens of the USA will be required to reapply to be part of the human race.
1
It's tempting to blame it all on Trump -- and he certainly sets the tone. But the orders are given out by his underlings. And they are carried out by people at lower levels of authority, who evidently don't object. If this administration is ever brought to account by a Nuremberg-style court of justice, there will be thousands of people saying, "I was only following orders."
Resist, people. Resist now.
1
These refugees came willingly to the United States. To Freedom. I am a Jew who lost one relative that I know of to the death camps. I do not like comparing anything to the death camps. But the death camps started as camps like these. Think of these families like the Jews who came to the US and Cuba -- and think of what happened when those Jews were turned away to certain death. Can't we use this as a teaching moment regarding the horrific Holocaust and our horrific actions? Are we 'good Americans' by not acting?
3
The detention camps are the product of an inhumane policy, but they are not concentration camps, for several reasons, including the fact that the detainees can leave whenever they choose, if they are willing to return to their homes. Admittedly, that is a lousy choice, but from a strictly technical point of view, prisoners in concentration camps are not free to leave.
2
How can they leave? It’s called “detention “, get it? Detention.
1
Sometimes one is faced with which "bad choice" is the best for my family. if your family was fleeing a violent and repressive probability you'd probably take them anywhere it might be, at the very least, safe, for the children. Yes, if being held in cages is better than meeting a violent death or being sold into slavery, you would opt for that choice.
Luckily, we live in a place where we just have to observe this, not live it.
1
I am so angered by the situation at the border, I really don't know what to think. I grapple with it everyday! I think of all the daily abominations of the Trump administration, this is the most reprehensible. But I have to ask: What can the average American citizen do? I would do anything to alleviate the pain of these children, but I have no idea what i can do. Someone please tell me.
@Patrick J. Cosgrove
Thats an easy one. Prepare a book (printed a/o digital or both) with pictures of each child, age, name if known, and any other info available of the child.
Circulate the information to all countries involved (Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, etc). Invite the parents who recognize their kids to the border, deliver their kids and send them back right away.
For the kids with parents here and detained, simple reunite and deport them all together.
@Patrick: These concentration camps for kids are a Republican "initiative". Cruelty and sociopathy have become the norm in the Republican Party. Let's start by voting Democrat and work towards the advancement of the Democratic party in Texas where you live.
1
Have been preaching civil disobedience on Twitter for more than a year. We were able to end the Vietnam War and advance the civil rights movement by taking to the streets. Why are we not doing the same to protest the genocide and terrorist acts against these babies and children? It is our innate laziness and reliance on social media for connecting without taking action. Charles, is there anything you can do to help organize those of us who want to change this intolerable situation. Politics don't matter when we are killing children!
2
Social Media "protests" are useless. Unless Ameticans are ready to take it to the streets in big numbers and vote Republicans out, "copy and paste this if you agree" or changing the color of your Facebook avatar is as useful as "thoughts and prayers": makes you feel good about yourself believing "you are doing something about it" but useless.
The Left is doubling and tripling down on AOC's ignorant and ridiculous comment. And Republicans are relishing every moment of it.
Comparing what we have in the US to camps in Germany where millions were slaughtered, is outrageous and disgusting. Shame on Mr. Blow, and shame on the hundreds of readers who have posted glowing support.
5
People seeking asylum are being separated from their children, being imprisoned under very harsh circumstances, being slow tracked for asylum hearings, babies, toddlers, teens, are uncared for, they are dying. So, whether you are marched to a gas chamber, imprisoned in a desert, ignored by those charged with your safe keeping, and the result is trauma or death, what exactly is your point?
1
@JWL
The USA didnt kidnap them - they either came with their parents or were sent by their parents. The parents did it all voluntarely and it was their initiative.
In 2008, John McCain suspended his campaign in response to the financial crisis.
Why don't the democratic candidates suspend THEIR campaigns and debates and work in Congress until these kidnapped children are returned to their families?
Our hearts are breaking for these children and their parents, but what can we do? If we protest outside these camps, we are ignored. If we call our senators and representatives, they agree, but are as ineffective as we. It seems we’re caught in an eddy, swirling with outrage and emotion, but going nowhere. You will say, vote the administration out, but while waiting, more will die, more will suffer from ptsd. Again, short of a civil uprising, how do we help these people?
1
We should start by being ashamed by what our government is doing in our names. Then we should insist on these "camps" being made clean, healthy places. And finally we should insist that several thousand immigration judges be sent to the border to process the backlog and current asylum claims. This is all doable quickly (we have a lot of immigration lawyers who would qualify as immigration judges). It does not require billions of dollars. All it requires is humanity, caring, and the regard for our laws--something that we used to take for granted as Americans. What has happened to us? We tolerate daily shootings and are not ashamed or embarrassed. If we lived abroad, we would probably think twice before coming here because of the dangers involved. I am old and hate to think how our country has become degraded. It is going to take a lot of hard work to get us beck to something we can be proud of.
2
It's amazing how people, and journalists in particular, who didn't care about caged children when it was first published in 2014, suddenly discovered their "conscience" after Trump was elected.
5
If I hear the phrase 'this is not who we are' I'll scream. If it's not you, who is it? Hopefully, the kids can hang around until 2020 when you might, or might not, do the right thing.
2
Hire more immigration judges. Give everyone an asylum hearing at the border. Anyone who wants a lawyer can hire one. If not, too bad. The Constitution doesn’t guarantee lawyers for asylum seekers. Eighty percent of asylum claims are fraudulent. They can stay in Mexico or go back where they came from.
2
I want to help. . . what can the ordinary citizen do. . .other than vote? These camps are creating a whole generation of people who will have severe mental problems. This is unconscionable.
2
I'm surprised to see people argued over a name. Here's what Merriam Webster says:
Definition of concentration camp
: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard —used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners
First known use of the term: 1897
Seems apt to me.
3
I didn't vote for him.
Though this probably won't make it through the NYT moderators because it's too "controversial," I'll say it anyway:
This policy is a manifestation of the same sentiment at work when African families were separated during slavery, the same sentiment at work when Native families were separated in the 19th & 20th centuries' attempted genocide: they're not fully human. Some "conservatives" have come close to stating this directly, such as when they imply these migrants don't care about their children the way "we" do.
This parasitic "government" we have today is a daily assault of cruelty, greed, corruption. And we have an "opposition" party that is nothing but bark, no bite; i.e., complicit. These are the "leaders" we elect and then pay handsomely.
7
Why are posters quibbling about whether the term "concentration camps" is correct? They miss Mr. Blow's point: These detention centers are immoral, obscene.
4
@Loretta Marjorie Chardin
Right. All they need to do is reunite them with their parents and deport them all together.
I'm wondering if the administration sees any parallels at all between the Uighar reeducation camps of China and the immigrant camps in the U.S.. Europe, China, India, South America, Mexico, Canada, The South Pacific, The Middle East, Japan, and South East Asia probably all note at a minimum each is separating families and concentrating people within fenced areas. So much for our ballyhooed 'shiny city on a hill'.
1
They are concentration camps. And it's just the beginning of Trump and the GOP's plans. What's going on right now is criminal and unacceptable. It needs to be stopped, because it will get worse. It's happening, America. Wake up.
4
Thank you Charles Blow for saying what I have been thinking.It struck me the other day after reading about the conditions at the border,that I was just going about my business as if I was unaware of the suffering of helpless,innocent children.How was I any different from decent Poles living in Warsaw as Jews were sent to the Ghetto or deported to Aushwitz?
Lets stop arguing about whether these are detention or concentration camps,they are cruel and inhuman and unacceptable.why aren’t we in the streets? Where are our faith leaders and human rights advocates?
2
This whole border mess could easily be fixed by the illegals themselves. Stop coming into the country illegally.
3
Can you please remind me of how similar situations were handled by the Obama Administration? What are any Democratic politicians actually doing about this? A real cynic might believe that the tragic human situation is just another way to engage in the virtue signaling that has become one of the sacraments of the progressive faith.
1
The “banality of evil” a phrase first used by Hannah Arendt to describe the holocaust, means that, over time, true evil, though shocking at first, can become unrecognizable as it turns ordinary and banal.
A recent survey (4/12/18), reported in this paper and others, found that two-thirds of millennials never heard of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. Jews were forced from their homes, packet into cattle cars and sent to such camps, where they were separated into those healthy enough to work, and the remainder gassed, cremated or shot over mass graves. When the Nazis recognized they would lose the war in 1944, they started killing everyone so there would be no witnesses to what they were doing. In all six million Jews were killed.
I wonder if a higher percentage of millennials today associate the term “concentration camps” with Trumps detention of illegal immigrants on America’s southern border.
Words indeed matter, and evil is relative. Trump is not hitler, Republicans are not Nazis, and the US detention camps are not concentration camps.
Nor does the phrase “never again” mean never Trump.
Perhaps “Night” by Elie Wiesel should be required reading in school. Or Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hanna Arendt, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.”
4
I appeal to the anti-abortion and pro-life voters to urge the President to choose life and heakth if innocents. Trump listens to you!!
The banality of Evil underscores this administration.
2
What were these camps like under Obama?
Perhaps activists could set up a children's refugee detention camp in front of the White House and Congress to demonstrate the inhumaneness of them to the nation and world.
1
Internment camp, prison camp, detention camp, concentration camp, summer camp.
This argument is almost as stupid as the time Mitt Romney and the GOP tried to play "gotcha" with President Obama when they thought he didn't use the word "terror".
Words are important, but we need to keep our eye on the ball here and not overplay our hand.
The universally accepted meaning of "concentration camp" in the U.S. (actually a euphemism for "death camp") specifically relates to camps specifically designed to exterminate en masse every eastern european jew that the nazis could round up.
Trying to co-opt that awful term now and the grotesque imagery that it conjures is not only extremely counterproductive but inaccurate as well.
As inhumane and terrible as these "holding centers" are, the individuals are not being routinely executed and they were not "rounded up" against their will.
By equating it with a concentration camp, we undercut the argument we are putting forth by making us appear to be hysterical and irrational. As bad as these detention camps are, they are not "concentration camps" and everybody implicitly grasps that.
It's very possible to draw the proper amount of attention to this ongoing atrocity without resorting to the inflammatory use of "concentration camp". This term disingenuously serves the users public image, not what they purport to accomplish by employing it.
3
By keeping migrant children in these concentration camps, the Trump administration and its Republican enablers (that's YOU McConnell, Grassley, et al) are creating future terrorists just as surely as if they were in an Al Qaeda madrassa. Think about that for a minute.
If these children and teenagers were treated humanely and with compassion, they could be huge advocates for the United States. As it is, they are learning to hate this country...if they survive.
1
How about if the Democrats in Congress get off their rear ends, cooperate and put and end to this. If they don't come, they won't be detained.
2
There is only one answer to your question and that is at the polls. Decent Americans have to take America back from the evil, racist, sexist, homophobic, science denying and religiously obsessed half of the country. That can only be accomplished at the polls.
1
Concentration camps, science denial, fevered attacks on the free press, attempts to undermine and diminish the roles of co-equal branches of the government (to name a few of Trump's designs for a new republic) are the face of the new Republican Party.
Blow's eloquence forces those left capable of thought and action to ponder their role as citizens with the prospect of personal responsibility. Children are being tortured within our borders by our government. Children are dying for lack of medical care in our government-run facilities. Toddlers are being cared for by terrified adolescents ripped from their families by our government.
No, I do not have an issue as a descendant of a family murdered by the Nazis, with calling detention center a concentration camp. This is not the time for semantics. Numbness simply does not justify apathy or blindness.
4
This is just an expansion of the "prison industrial complex." We can now sell contracts to profit from detaining immigrants. I am not conflicted in calling these atrocities concentration camps.
2
Purely and simply stated, these are crimes against humanity. They need to be prosecuted as such.
I never agreed with the Obama administration's decision to "let bygones be bygones" and ignore the Bush administration's horrific abuses, ranging from deceiving us into a tragic war with lasting horrific consequences to abrogating any reasonable interpretation of the Geneva convention with their torturing of prisomers, renditions, and the outrage that is Guantanamo. Allowing those responsible for such heinous acts to escape unscathed was a gross slap to the face of justice and paved the way for Trump's atrocities.
"Godwin's Law" cannot be used to shield such actions from being accurately described as the cruelty they are. Comparison of Trump's actions to the behavior of Nazi Germany is far too apt to ignore. And now he is planning this "crackdown" that one cannot help but associate with the Kristallnacht.
This cannot be borne. It is a betrayal of civilization itself. To allow those responsible to escape punishment for these acts is to condone the worst form of tyranny.
Why would people care about these folks being right on our border and all. Where is the outrage of American bombs destroying school buses full of children in Yemen? Where is the outrage as global warming causes starrvation in Africa? We have to focus on other things: like making sure abortion is outlawed in America. Life is sacred on Main Street. In Honduras or Yemen or Sudan, life is......expendable because these people don't pick themselves up by the bootstraps like Americans do and make their lives better. They just need to be more like....Americans. Once we get rid of all these freeloaders and competitors for our jobs and stop worrying about the rest of the world, America will be free. Free to sit within our borders, THINK we will now make lots of money, and ignore the cries of the suffering and dying. America will then be the model for the world to follow. Happy days will be here again. And the Trump supporters will be then able to turn the red hats backwards. American's 'problems' will all be behind them. What will they get angry about then? Oh yeah, that's right, I forgot, they will still be looking to lock Hillary up. Gotta keep those priorities straight.
If a parent were subjecting their child to filthy living conditions, making them sleep on a cold floor, not feeding them, not bathing them, and forcing them to live in unspeakably filthy clothing, then the cops would be called on them, they would be hauled off to jail, their children would be removed, a trial would be held and they would eventually go to jail for life.
We know this because we just had a case like that here in California where the parents were convicted of cruel and abusive acts and are now serving life.
As they should be.
And, if a governmental institution acts the same, then those who are in charge need to go to jail, too.
Many of us have spent the last decade or two shouting about the Catholic Church and its secret policies of child-rape.
Do I believe that these children are being sexually abused?
Of course I do.
No one, abstract or actual, can treat children this way but then say, "Oh! But we're not RAPING them! Why, that would be illegal!"
The chaos displayed at the border in these concentration camps, is the personal madness of the occupants of the White House.
Trump and his Christian enablers are mentally ill.
They have been all along.
Everyone of them is complicit in this, for, I haven't a doubt that every night they pass around the photos and vids of the most dire, just as Rumsfeld did with Cheney on the photos of men on dog leashes in Iraq.
Republicanism has become a mental illness.
The abuse of these children is the new Christian policy.
3
Calling these "concentration camps" is simply not helpful. They are not designed to exterminate illegal immigrants. Contrary to Progressive beliefs, migrants do not have a right to simply show up in the US and disappear into the population.
5
@QED
You are confusing "concentration camps" with "death camps".
1
As usual a derisive and uninformed "badge" used to illustrate an absolutely absurd claim "Concentration Camp". This type of blatant pharisaism rhetoric has no historical understanding of what a concentration camp is. What is happening at the boarder is the result of a liberal ideology that doesn't recognize the rule of law and America as a sovereign nation with legally recognized boarders.
I find it inspiring that people still want to come to this country for a chance at a better life, despite the fact that Donald Trump and his legions of haters and bigots are doing everything they can to stop them.
Whites are going to be in the minority soon in this country. They had better find a way to accept that fact and to live in peace with it.
2
It is a cruel and telling false equivalence to state that the segregation of children from a parent who has illegally entered the country compares to the intended extermination of 6 million Jews.
2
On any given day, I am asked to deal with climate change, unlawful wars, homelessness in my own community, hunger, overcrowded classrooms, racial issues, forest clearcuts, poisoning of the air and water, more species going extinct, firearm numbers out of control, irrational idiots running the country, unnecessary animal cruelty, inability to get medical care, or get quality medical care, or be able to pay for medical care, domestic violence, and a host of other important issues.
I am doing the best I can. I volunteer, I vote democratic regardless of whether the candidate meets my high standards, I didn’t have children, I pick up litter, I take in stray cats, and I try not to be a jerk. I’m 70, and right now the world is a real mess.
Maybe next time, people will listen when those like me railed 40 years ago against overpopulation, 30 years ago about climate change, 15 years ago against the folly of invading Iraq, and 3 years ago that Trump would be an unmitigated disaster regardless of how flawed Clinton was.
3
Concentration camps have a long and cruel history dating back centuries. Cherry-picking history to paint one's own opaque bubble in outrage is egregious, disingenuous and incredibly harmful and dangerous.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/
1
Why we don`t go there all of us, fight the guards and take one child and take him/her home? If they jail me, if they kill me, better than stay home and feel only so guilty! Liliana M.
Highly overly dramatic Liliana.
2
The problem is not that Americans are numb. We do not see things clearly. Every time Hitler is portrayed, it is as a cultist monster. We are not cultist monsters, are we? People do not want to consider that normal christian folks do evil things. We insulate the priests, the ministers and the church from the critical reviews that they deserve, every time. Consequently, we allow inhuman and ungodly circumstances to fester.
Look at why an entire European country ignored concentration camps. They were in a long economic slump. The citizens felt marginalized by the ethnic Germans and immigrants. Hitler kept his promise to put Germans before everyone. Hitler brought in an era of economic gain and national pride. This is exactly how Trump and republicans redirected anger and fear. And our christian leaders do not challenge it, so we are less inclined to challenge it too. History tries to gloss over that Germans are good christian folks with large beautiful chapels. We do not hear a lot about churches being a haven then, do we?
How did we get here? We do not know that we are here, because we believe that good christian values prevent us from doing evil. We know that it is wrong, but we tell ourselves that not wanting to share our country does not make us bad people.
Yes Mr Blow the answer to the question you posed at the end of your essay is on all Americans. This administration appears to be immune to its cruelty being visited on children. Calling,emailing and otherwise imploring elected officials to act especially in the GOP, falls on deaf ears. There need to be an end to the depraved indifference shown to the most vulnerable being held in these detention camps. Yes they are coming here illegally but they are human beings deserving of better treatment than that being done by our government. One thing the media can do is it to continually expose what is happening at the borders rather than letting the government hide things from view. Evil exists when people of good conscience fail to act, we seem to have a lot of that around us these days.
1
I agree it is criminal to keep these children locked up away from their families. The trauma and the uncertainty will last a lifetime. How can any decent person do this?
Furthermore, we all know that private "detention" camps are run for profit, not for any humane reasons. The outrageous fees they charge go more to the executives than to anyone else, including the staff. Poorly paid staff will not do their jobs properly, and I doubt those executives care. To them the children, and in adult private prisons the adults, are products to be exploited.
We need to elect people who will change these processes in order to defend our Constitution from this scourge. We need to elect people who will reform our immigration and criminal laws to better reflect the realities of our time.
“More smiling, less worrying. More compassion, less judgment. More blessed, less stressed. More love, less hate.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
I hate this, and I hate this regime that has created this disaster.
But my actions are restrained by the knowledge that there's no one -- NO ONE -- in our government who's willing to change this situation. I give money to organizations who are turned away from distributing the aid I donate toward. What good is my voice, or my vote, if it is unheard? What use is there to act out if no one will listen to and report the unrest I and my compatriots foment?
This need serious amplification.
1
they are not concentration camps with the reference that bears to what happened to jews in WW2, where the camps served simply as holding pens for mass sadistic torture and the extermination of a race in its entirety. that is not the case with the refugee camps and we should be careful of confusing the differences. accidental deaths are not the same as mass extermination deaths. it serves no one to blur the lines. this is not that. this is horrible and should be dealt with immediately to alleviate conditions. that was horror of a different level entirely and required a world war for intervention. let's not oversimplify history - that is one of the mistakes of this administration, learning no lessons from past experiences and believing that alternative facts are always binary and arguable. we should keep far back from that line except where truly warranted. being denied asylum is NOT the same as being put to a mass death.
2
@Aubrey This isn't about Jews or Hitler. Set aside that notion and go back to the formal definition of what a concentration camp is. Most concentration camps in history had nothing to do with "mass death". You will learn by consulting the definition that these detention facilities and the manner in which they are being populated do comply with ALL the attributes of a concentration camp. No lines are being blurred by calling the shots as they are.
2
Definitions are generic. Human history puts experience into the dictionary and resonance into how we interpret and frame the situation. The experience of the concentration camps in our own history and relevant lifetime is far from generic and not what is happening at the border, however in need of address that situation really is. But arguing about what to call it serves politics and opinions, not the refugees who need a better system. The Germans didn’t offer their victims any system. Let’s hope we aren’t there yet, and refrain from speaking as though we are.
@Aubrey The time period does not create alternative definitions of a phenomenon. People need to understand the phenomenon without overlaying specific instances that do not accurately define the whole. So to be clear, this has nothing to do with Germans. These are concentration camps in every respect of the definition along with the factors that got the kids in there, and that is exactly where the situation is at. We agree that whatever we call it, it needs to be remedied.
1
Let’s also go to the end game here: a war crimes type tribunal for crime against humanity where the USA is the defendant. I don’t see that playing out well for Trump or the rest of us, yet it must happen!
@The HouseDog The place for this to happen would be the International Criminal Court, but the US is not a member, so the ICC could not prosecute unless cleared by the Security Council of the UN, on which the US has a veto, so any such action would need to await at least the next next non-Republican administration.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Blow has absolved the migrants and their origin countries from all responsibility in this situation. He lays all blame at the feet of the Trump administration. If you are simple minded enough to accept that premise then there are two courses of action:
1. Dispense with any enforcement of immigration law and let whoever desires so to travel unimpeded into our country. No migrant will be inconvenienced or fall ill in detention. That will happen somewhere else. Blow can later blame the Trump administration for not providing migrant welfare services further downstream.
2. Authorize enough funds to provide for the comfortable detention and welfare of migrants while their potential entry into the country is processed and adjudicated. Progressives don't want to do that as it seems to interfere with #1. They see advantage in the status quo.
4
This is what our nation voted for (kinda) in 2016. We all knew then the kind of man Trump was. We Americans have always whiplashed between left/right, Rep/Dem, at least every 8 years. This was a backlash election even more than most. The elegant competency and measured compassion of Mr. Obama has been replaced by Trump the marginally literate bully.
For too long our nation has practiced gun boat diplomacy. We have long been captured by corporate interests who use our military and economic might to cajole, threaten and bring war to peoples who have what they want. The exception being rogue nations with nuclear arms. (no wonder so many nations are grasping for them)
This cruelty is how presidents have operated since at least Eisenhower with few exceptions. It's what many Americans mistake for "strength".
True strength is compassion. Wanton cruelty is the primary tool of the bully, and bullies are weaklings, cowards. When we allow cowardice to lead we wont want to end up where it takes us. We see this now, but we knew it in 2016 too. (too many people have cited how entertained they are by Trump's antics)
This is what we've become...but we can change. Maybe this administration will catalyze that change? Next time there's a march I'm there. Next time there's a vote to be placed, I'm there. Please join me. Please. We don't have to allow the country we love to become twisted and wrong. We can practice compassion. We must.
.
@Ed Robinson,
.
Keep in mind what our nation voted for in pres election 2016 was a Hillary Clinton Admin by a margin of 2.8 million votes
.
1
My husband and I are approaching 80. We know what is happening; we know these are concentration camps, that those who run them & those who order them & defend them are responsible for their conditions & that those conditions are deliberately as close to the conditions of actual extermination camps as these people dare -- NOW dare; they will dare more as time passes -- to come.
We live in a small town, there are letters to the editor but no other protests. We are not "in the streets" (neither of us can walk more than a block, slowly) and if we were we would not be photographed. We implore our representatives (one Democrat, two Republicans) to speak out loudly. They have not.
I begin to understand why monks and nuns in Vietnam poured gasoline on themselves and set themselves alight. I believe that might make the news. I believe Trump's supporters would see it as entertainment. What shall we do, Mr. Blow? Do you have any practical suggestions?
3
Where is the ICC? Why hasn't anyone charged Trump et al. (including his complicit children) with crimes against humanity?
The more descriptions I read, the more I am convinced that we are watching Trump et al., commit some of the most egregious crimes against humanity the world has seen. No, there is no genocide yet, but the abject conditions - the abject horrors are enough.
Call, write, donate, speak out, and VOTE.
@Peter Hornbein The ICC is unavailable in this situation at this time. The US is not a member, hence the ICC cannot prosecute without clearance from the Security Council of the UN, on which the US has a veto. Maybe it can be done under the next administration, as long as it is not Republican.
1
A national day of protest of this cruelty, at a minimum, appears to be appropriate. How can Trump's base condone such inhumane conditions and not complain? Trump supporters: ask yourself what would I do if that was my child who was being held? Think about it seriously before you vote again.
1
This situation is beyond disgusting; children treated worse than dogs and cats in a humane shelter.
This trampling of American values is taking place while there is: an unindicted co-conspirator living in the White House; who nominated an Attorney General (AG) to protect him from going to jail; the AG was confirmed by the Senate controlled by a person, who also confirmed his wife as Transportation Secretary, a wife, whose family owns an international shipping company that has contributed millions of dollars to his campaigns; and a Special Counsel who is playing hide-and-seek with House Committee Chairs to avoid testifying before the American people about a lawless president; and on and on and on. The situation in DC is so bad that if written into a movie script it would be rejected by Hollywood as too outlandish and unbelievable.
Good people of good conscience who love their country and embrace the American values set out in our Constitution should take to the streets around the country in peaceful protest of the criminals and miscreants, running our government.
That said, I call on the leadership of MoveOn, NOW, the NAACP and other national groups to organize days of protest around the country to callout the mistreated of children in Trump's detention camps, and to demand the reinstatement of American values into the day-to-day management of gvt. agencies. At 71 I am ready to take to the streets to Make American Honorable Again!
2
This is how civilized, superior, "Christians" act, take a look. Don't think for one minute the cruel and evil treatment of these children and their families aren't an anomaly, this is who United States has always been.
These just aren't concentration camps built by Trump's; these are American concentration camps. Trump knowingly was elected President of the United States to carry out these egregious acts. We have three branches of government and with the exception of the judicial. Our executive branch and the legislative branches have been complicit... if not more concerned about maintaining their individual careers and power. This is why the incompetent and weak kneed Democratic Party led by Madam Speaker Pelosi have failed to do anything.
One has to ask oneself, why is this is happening? The majority of Americans don't bother to vote. Being a citizens in a supposedly democratic country requires all to be informed and knowledgable about the public policy. Yet, the majority of American's don't bother to vote. Last May in places such as Illinois, and Indiana, voter participation were in the thousands. I didn't say hundred of thousands of votes, a couple of thousands votes decided state legislators, judges, and mayors.
In a democracy citizens have a responsibility to know and understand public policies that's being put forth. Trump is the President of the United States, what he does is in our name and affects us all. We need to remember that...
Thanks for this column. Yours is a voice of sanity and compassion in dark times.
2
.
@Kate,
.
In fact we, the US and the world, are well into the Final Dark Age, starting in 1972-74: the US lost in Nam, and lost a president and so fell from its place as the keystone of the western international system which then began to crumble
.
1
More nonsense from Blow..
"Hey, let's use the term "concentration camps" to describe the situation at our southern borders. Nevermind that it doesn't correspond to the horrors of what a survivor experienced at an actual concentration camp (why should we care about THEM and how their relatives might feel??) "
But shhhhhh... don't mention that these thousands of children are in these detention centers because they were brought here by their parents (or sent here by their parents) who subject them to horrendous, life threatening and dangerous conditions in their quest to gain admission to our country - illegally.
Should the conditions at these detention center (and that's what they are, btw) be improved for all?? - 100%
But to label them "concentration camps" is just a throw-away term the Left feels it can use to sensationalize this situation - all in an attempt to gain voters in 2020.
9
What are YOU going to do about it Charles?
What is the NYTIMES going to do about it?
Sometimes outraged individuals are not enough.
Sometimes we need the 4th estate to do their duty?
Why does the NY Time not have a counter on the front page for every day children are being held in these camps?
Why is the total number of children being held not on the front page?
Why are Trumps and the administrations lies about these camps not on the front page every. single. day.
He gets away with these atrocities because you guys follow every bright shiny thing he throws your way.
1
Perhaps it is right to call them concentration camps. To bring back memories of the Holocaust is to tell us that what we are doing to these migrant children is no different than what the Nazis did to Jews. And we, good Americans, are allowing it to happen, in much the same way ordinary Germans allowed it to happen. We are complicit if we know about these horrid conditions and do little about it. And the Republican attitudes seem not only cruel and inhumane but, worse, indifferent to the suffering. What have we come to, indeed? Concentration camps!
1
My experience from a military school program having it's version of a "hell week" included what was called "24 hour sunshine". When the opportunity caim for the group to vote on dropping one of umpteen deprivations, 24 hour lights-on was the first to come off. Those who think this isn't a form of torture ought to give it a try tonight. Or better, maybe try that while sleeping on the garage floor with a plastic tarp as a cover. Trump & Co's goals with this are two-fold, 1) attempt to deter refugees by making the pain here worse than the paint there, and 2) blame the democrats into approving a wall by claiming they're forcing Trump to be cruel. Like a kidnapper inflicting pain on a hostage and telling the family it's their fault for not handing over the money. Worse, his hard core base, a good chunk of our fellow Americans, are all for it.
5
The false equivalence of U.S. detention centers to concentration camps of the Third Reich must end. Mr. Blow demonizes our President, describing a few failings at our southern border, when
illegals, seeking entry to our nation, may be ill treated. In detail worthy of Joseph Goebbels, he twists usual bureaucratic problems to make comparisons to the Holocaust. As a member of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, I recommend he and Representative Ocasio-Cortez spend time there seeing the reality of the concentration camps. He will not then so casually invoke so-called 'Godwin's Law' to mock our dealing with a real crisis at our southern border, all in plain sight and subject to judicial review, and link it with the effort of Germans to destroy Jews worldwide, in the most hideous bureaucratic machinery ever devised by mankind.
4
Sentient Americans just watched hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers absolutely jam their streets in angry protests for days and days and days to roll back a single law they hate. Yet Bolton and Pompeo are doing all in their power to get American into a second idiotic and utterly disastrous proxy war to "protect" Israel, not us, in the Middle East, this time in Iran, and Americans just munch their Cheetos and change the channel. If Americans don't even care whether their kids come home in body bags for Israel, why do you expect them to care if we're putting kids in concentration camps where some of them die and all of them suffer terribly? The American masses are simply lazy and decadent. End of discussion.
Let’s put Donald Trump in a cage. Sounds only fair.
5
As America have gone so low on boarder , children live tragedy Detain Camps live filthy. Just this weekend Face Nation VP Pence told America People lies. When it Trump Admin went court stop aide to children at boarder call himself Christian Pence, Wolf in sheep cloth's.
1
No need for the phony quotes. The are in fact CONCENTRATION CAMPS.
2
My grandmother cried when she talked of her brother, his wife, and their five kids, who they never heard from again after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. There is a good chance they were slaughtered in concentration camps, which Mr. Blow compares to how we are housing illegal immigrants in the US.
This is the most despicable column I have ever read. Ever.
5
Then do something to stop trump
1
Mr Blow pontificates,... exaggerates... and obsfucates with his terminology. It's to equivocate the Holocaust to the Southern border. And that is ridiculous.
4
These horrible reminders of concentration camps call for an ecumenical vast effort by America’s churches, synagogues and mosques. Get to the border to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and fight for justice.
1
New York Times, Why the quotes around "concentration camps" in the headline? That's exactly what they are.
4
From "No child left behind" to the asylum seeker child left to freeze, rot, and die.
From Dachau to the American border and from the streets the white supremacist officers are patrolling to mass incarceration.
Making lidd'le Ángel and Alma Grieve Abandoned.
The breath stopping info had me weep uncontrollably. Truth telling like this is a potent agent. As we truly wish, it will be done. Change will be brought about by the power of our heart's will. And video like the one exposing Sarah Fabian shows why impeachment hearings could prove transformative.
I for one cannot imagine that come November 2020 Americans are not going to do a little important something to stop and reverse this stunning disgrace.
Of course the stain is here to stay. The wounds and the traumas to thousands of little children souls will take dedicated, gracious, and patient efforts to heal.
Why is it again that America has supported dirty regime change in so many places, why is it hell-bent on keeping the poor poor but making the rich infinitely richer, and why has it got the hots for gun violence and institutional injustice and violence towards black and brown people?
Primitive religious bigotry blessing the decadent greed privilege of a select chosen few hollow 'holy moly's' seeing themselves elevated to the right side of the throne of their extraordinarily spiteful and tribal and cynically vindictive God, a paradise from where He ousts the undeserving?
It's always the primordial beliefs, stupid.
2
Why don't all of us of good conscience infiltrate these concentration camps and try to improve the conditions as said 'employees'? What is going through their heads to be so cold hearted to these children? Do they get brainwashed before they take the job? We. Have. To. Stop. This! It will never be resolved by thinking "someone" will take care of the problem. WE need to never let up with our protesting of this egregious sin. It is on OUR consciences. OURS! Call DHS, the White House, congress, the senate, SCOTUS!!!!! Call again and again. It is the people who make the changes happen. Not one more crying baby! NOT ONE!!!!
1
The shame of these concentration camps is on the Republican Party and not just Donald Trump.
3
Why, is there any discussion whether this worthless family occupying the White House should be impeached? The whole family of trump and his entire cabinet and every republican senator should be locked up in these concentration camps and let’s hear about how they are summer camps!
2
Every U.S. citizens -- you, me, our morally deficient leaders -- are complicit in the deaths of 7 children, the sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect and torture of thousands of more children. We need to call all of this what it is. We have to stop talking about "what is a concentration camp" and instead talk about the dead, dying, sick and suffering children.
Do 6 million people need to be murdered for us to say "oh, o.k., yes, you can use that term now"? The only hope in the devastating reports coming out of these U.S. camps, whatever you want to call them, is that at least the lice infestations should be slowing down the sexual abusers.
When we look back and wonder about the German population during the rounding up of Jews into ghettos, then their starvation and murder, as Charles Blow does here, we don't have to wonder any longer. Look in the mirror. What are you going to do about it?
2
Your hyperbole demeans those who actually were in concentration camps. Raising a shrill voice of exaggeration does not carry the day or provide a solution to the immigration crisis.
2
Then provide the solution
Your terminology of concentration camp is an insult to every person who died or who actually went to a concentration camp. I am totally offended by this disgusting comparison in words. Concentration camps worked people to death, did not feed them and certainly had no healthcare, and by the way murdered people. The NY Times should be embarrassed to use this word, or even allow this in print.
4
Nope you are wrong. These are concentration camps in the very definition. Now what will you do about it?
If the New York Time Editorial Board & the rest of the media would stop complaining about how the system is in a shambles because of the unprecedented overcrowding. Instead press the Democrat congress to get off their butts & fix the loop holes in our asylum laws that allow all these illegal aliens to claim asylum. None of this would be happening!!!
Mr Blow, you are shocked & disgusted with the way Homeland security is detaining these people? Then stop adding to the problem & start trying to fix it. Have you written 1 article to push Dems to pass any kind of immigration reform laws? Then You are part of the problem!
3
The democrats in the house have been working for months to get more judges to the border. Quicker people are processed, less time in Trump’s detention camps. Republicans have been focusing more on money for more agents and wall funding. There was a bipartisan bill passed by the senate and its being reviewed in the house now. Not sure why you think Democrats are responsible for this mess. Trump’s tweets are delusions. Stick to the real news.
Hey NYTimes, perhaps if you should fluffing Trump the Traitor, his coterie of war criminals and neo-Nazis, and a Republican Party that is actively subverting democracy in America
This so called America has become a hateful, cruel, nasty xenophobic sexist racist LGBTQ phobic country in a way never seen before all because a gelatinous orange hateful so called man is a so called president. And because of unfettered income inequality and unchecked capitalism. He panders to the very worst in his supporters, and there are more of them than I EVER could have imagined. Until he is impeached, 25thd (which should have happened the FIRST time he sided with Russia over the US) or voted out, this nasty inhumane cruel treatment will continue while the ignorant and hateful cheer. Shame on all of you for turning America into this. How can you revel in the torture of children. HOW??????
1
Donald Trump, the King of Kids in Cages.
1
I've said a hundred times that 'concentration camp' is a perfectly correct term to use in this case or even in the case of the Japanese American forced encampments in the 1940s. In both cases the goal is to concentrate these populations of people in one place away from the rest of society, for the shear fact of their ethnicity and where they came from.
It is actually the case that the camps where the Nazis put Jews that are misnamed. Yes, those camps were also built to concentrate Jews and to force them to do slave labor, but their ultimate purpose was also to put Jews to death, therefore 'death camp' is a more accurate name.
3
@Mike: Who cares about accuracy, when the connotation is the same?
Trump daily commits human rights violations, crimes against humanity, kidnapping, cild abuse, torture, violates the Constitution’s protection of due process and against cruel and unusual punishment. You can’t treat murderers or rapists in prison like they are treating these defenseless children, several who have died in US custody. Don’t allow this dic-tator wannabe use children as bargaining chips to get $4.6 billion (the exact amount he wanted to build a wall), when he clearly has expropriated illegally billions from what congress has appropriated for other purposes at his disposal. Just the amount taxpayers spend for him to visit his hotels and golf clubs would more than pay for adequate care. Children should not be separated from their parents, guardians or relatives and should not be exposed to such inhumane conditions. Yes, these are concentration camps, even more brutal than the ones that interred Japanese-Americans in World War II. Prosecute those responsible for enacting the policies and those who carry them out and impeach Trump now.
3
If every American, Democrat, republican, and indifferent, were on the same page regarding this issue we might be able to do something. But we have some problems. Half of America either, A. Does not care, B. Does not believe the "biased liberal media" story that this is even happening or, C. Supports abuse of illegals. These are the people who currently have the power to do something but they are not interested, they do not think there is a problem.
The only way the rest of us can change anything is by a strong showing at the ballot box so we can remove the trash from Washington and muffle the voice of ignorance and bigotry. Marching around, waving signs, and singing songs is little better than tilting at windmills under current circumstances. The President does not care, McConnell and the entire GOP contingent in The House and The Senate do not care, and the people who put them in office do not care. They must be swept out.
What chutzpah. The American left has utterly set the stage for this crisis. From your sanctuary cities to free and subsidized housing to free and subsidized health care to calls for the elimination or neutering of ICE, drivers licenses, voting rights.. Good God man, Democrats have done everything short of posting neon signs to invite and encourage illegal immigration to the United States. And now as our borders sit overwhelmed and our processing and housing facilities stretch to the breaking point you have the unmitigated gall to blame this mess on President Trump?
Have a look in the mirror Charles.
7
@MinnRick
The faction formerly known as the Democratic Party has gone off the rails over this issue...which is precisely why they will not get my support come 2020.
Please let us know if/when the party will ever regain their sanity vis a vis illegal aliens ....now numbering over 20 million, not including their millions of anchor babies. Until then...
4
Ordinary citizens cannot get inside these concentration camps, so the question is: what are our Congressional representatives doing about it?
No need for quotation marks in the headline. These camps are places where children are concentrated in despicable and inhumane conditions.
1
While I concur on pretty much every point here, I decry the use of the words "concentration camp" because it's basically click bait. It's over dramatization as fuel for a fire. We all know the difference between internment and concentration camps. Sorry - all but one: Charles Blow.
6
The term concentration camp is inappropriate for the simple reason that they were way stations to a death program—whether by gas, by fire, by shooting or by slave labor designed to exhaust one to death. It was a term invented by the Nazis for a particular purpose and that purpose was the disappearance of the Jews and other undesired people.
AOC’s usage and now Mr. Blow’s excuse and quoting a “law” of Mr. Godwin does not change the fact that however despicable the Trump’s administration treatment of aliens crossing to the US it is not a program of extermination. The proper and American term to use and frankly more appropriate given our history is internment camp. Its what we called the camps that held American citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII. That is the clearest and nearest American analogue and that is what we should be reflecting on it is so much closer to home and is part of our history.
3
@RK
Concentration camps existed long before Nazi Germany, where they would have been more accurately referred to as death camps or extermination camps.
From History on the Net: * The U.S. often used to keep Native Americans in concentration camps
* The British kept prisoners of war, as well as the wives and children of South African Boers in their concentration camps, where many people died from illness due to the lack of proper facilities.
* The Imperial Schutztruppe used concentration camps in Namibia (then German South-West Africa) in their genocide program of the Namaqua and Herero peoples. Luderitz had the biggest, harshest camp, the Shark Island Concentration Camp.
@mark
Hi Mark, Yes here and there the term has been used. But over time the word and the term has evolved to mean a death camp.
And that is certainly not the case at our border and worse we are deflecting from what is actually going on at our border.
AOC has shown before her media savviness unfortunately so has Trump lets not confuse media savvy with knowledge. It was a mistake on her part.
Trump plan is to ship the children to Gitmo. There’s empty bunks and no blankets necessary. The children can learn to kibbutz with a range of cultural cell mates.
Next flight out, the children’s express.
Another option is the Supermax daycare center in Colorado.
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me - and I will take their children away from them, throw them into cages and treat them little better than unwanted dogs."
That's what the inscription pn Lady Liberty should say today in Trump's America.
If you truly believe your words and I'm assuming that you do, as they are now public record - then why not spend your time encouraging Democrats to come to the table and get immigration under control. If there is no border control, then it's obvious that every Tom, Dick and LulaJane w/line up and cross at will - our borders will be open to the entire world. If you are well read and I'm to believe that you are, then you know the terrible conditions in all of Africa, the Philippines, North Korea , South America and elsewhere, but in no way can we contain them all. We must have changes to our immigration policy and you, for one, should be sending out the word to your Dem colleagues to get off the pot!
3
Yes...With so many aspirational Democrats in the race...You’d think ONE OF THEM would grab this bull by the horns and state an UNEQUIVOCAL IMMIGRATION POLICY! What do they envision as opposed to Trump’s chaos? Anyone?
3
Trump is disgraceful, despicable and deranged.
For someone who claims that ''he alone can fix it'', he has no program to do so. And as with everything he touches, he has only made mattes worse.
Even his lapdog Pence, while bemoaning the situation, has not made the slightest push to correct it. Blaming congress, of course, is their excuse.
So much for Christian charity and love.
2
Calling Prisons concentration camps does not make it so. Each illegal immigrant IS a criminal. In general, when we put adults in jail, we do not put the children in jail as well.
Okay, Charles, so detention centers are "concentration camps." I guess by your definition then, all prisons are concentration camps. After all, both house people who have broken the law. How about if we just have no laws enforced in this country anymore?
1
.
@Southern Man,
.
Fyi, some prisoners are there bc they cant make bail
.
The Holocaust Museum gives a comprehensive explanation as to why Nazi concentration camps were inseparable from extermination camps.
"Systematic Murder. The concentration camps had always been places where the SS could kill prisoners. After the beginning of the war, the camps increasingly became sites for the systematic murder of individuals or groups of persons.
European Jews who were murdered upon arrival in the gas chambers at the killing centers, were never officially registered as prisoners, but were killed usually within 24 hours of arrival. Recognizing the increasing numbers of these small-scale killing operations and because they needed an efficient way to kill prisoners who had become too weak to work, the SS authorities equipped concentration camps with gas chambers.
After the Kristallnacht pogroms in November 1938, SS and police officials conducted mass arrests of adult male Jews and imprisoned them in camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
The prisoner population of concentration camps on German soil inspired initial prisoner selections. SS doctors and so-called euthanasia functionaries conducted these selections. German officials sent ill and exhausted prisoners to their deaths at various euthanasia killing centers under the auspices of Operation 14f13, the extension of the so-called euthanasia program to the Concentration Camp System. Nazi doctors performed medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps (not extermination camps)."
4
An international aid agency should demand to inspect the concentration camps where we are imprisoning children. The US should be charged with crimes against humanity by an international court.
1
Donald Trump, trying to appeal to the worst aspects of his base, brings shame on all of us. Concentration camps for children so that poor people will not come here.
Germans during the Nazi era turned their heads away from the death camps. The guards did the murdering, but the population enabled them.
It's inevitable that our system is unprepared to provide what is considered an acceptable level of comfort and care to everyone when attempting to deal with thousands of incoming illegal entrants per day.
To throw around a term like 'concentration camps' is not only irresponsilble, it demonstrates that the user of this comparison has no knowledge or concept of what the European concentration camps really were. I'm sorry to see Charles Blow has chosen to promote this harmful and hurtful attempt at a comparison.
As usual, the loudest critics of the handling of the current immigration disaster have no alternative recommendation on how to deal with it.
3
These children are being kidnapped by the Trump administration.
Kidnapped and tortured.
We are all captives in Trump's theater. The more people piling up at the border the more serious the issue appears. The Trump administration doesn't want to solve a problem that drives so many people to the polls.
We need to talk policy every day on how to improve safety and opportunity in sending countries and how to quickly adjudicate those who are here - The democrats need to speak loudly and daily on how they will address to highlight how the Trump administration has made us all less safe and has failed at the most basic administrative tasks.
1
The cruel barbaric abuse of our homeless and their children and pets on our SF streets must stop. These poor people deserve housing, food, and healthcare too.
Nancy’s “concentration camp” is a not a joke!
2
If Mr Blow would just admit publicly that he has the worst case of TDS on record, we could perhaps move on to help these children. No where did I read that Blow pushed for stopping these people to begin with to even enter the USA. It’s all about Trump hatred from beginning to end. So why try to hide it?
5
@Patrick Turner TDS = decent values. Try it.
People think they get a pass for using the term "concentration camp" because the situation at the border fits the technical definition. Here's what doesn't fit:
1. There is not a calculated, long-term plan to exterminate an entire group of people.
2. Migrants are not being forced to wear a badge that identifies them as undesirables and then rounded up from their homes against their will and deported on cattle cars.
3. They are not living in barracks stacked upon dozens of dying, decaying, skeletal bodies.
4. They are not literally being worked to death.
5. They are not enduring sadistic medical experiments and the cruelest forms of torture ever devised by man.
6. They are not being gassed and burned.
And no, this isn't "how it starts," because again, they are not being targeted as a group for extermination from the planet. It would be unthinkable to compare the unique horror of slavery to any other situation. Don't do it with the Holocaust.
9
It's clear as day and everyone sees that Democrats are inviting this disaster and refusing to do a darn thing about it
Remove the incentives and it largely goes away. As it sits the incentive is to grab a kid and head for the border.
Stop whistling past the graveyard Charles, it makes you look foolish and blatantly dishonest
6
Maybe each Democratic candidate for
President should send out an email soliciting a donation SPECIFICALLY to buy soap, toothbrushes, etc. to take to the border ‘concentration camps’. Or maybe one could start a ‘go fund me’ page for the same thing!
We should lock HIM up.
1
I think what Blow is trying to do is give Trump the blame for Obama's chain link cages. No?
2
The first thing we need “to do about it” is to call these centers by their proper name. As deplorable as conditions may be, they are not Concentration Camps. Charles Blow asks “why good people of good conscience don’t respond to things like slavery or the Holocaust or human rights abuse.”
Perhaps the reason is that people like Mr. Blow seize, opportunities like the immigration situation and compare it to the Holocaust thus diluting its impact. I have heard every US president going back to Regan compared to Adolph Hitler. It is sickening. You may not like President Trump or former President Obama (under whose administration this all began) but neither is Hitler.
No one at these immigration centers is being gassed to death. No one is being worked to death. No one is being taken from their home and brought there.
That is not to say that conditions at these centers are not deplorable. However, it is possible to have deplorable conditions without them being at the level of a Nazi Death Camp.
By making the comparison, Blow and AOC come off as the boy & girl who cried wolf. They not only cheapen the Holocaust but they cause people not to take the situation on the immigration centers seriously.
4
You actually expose your own terminologicsl error here. At one point you say “Death Camps”: that’s not what the things on our border are. But not all concentration camps, and those were and are hardly an exclusively Nazi phenomenon, are death camps. Most are not. The term fits. And what is more, we should be more concerned about the people than about the term. The dead are past help. We must try to help the living. One would think this last point would be glaringly obvious.
1
We need a national strike day for all mothers and all women for the children being held in the Trump concentration camps. THIS CAN NOT STAND!
1
con·cen·tra·tion camp
[ˌkänsənˈtrāSHən ˈˌkamp]
NOUN
a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution. The term is most strongly associated with the several hundred camps established by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe in 1933–45, among the most infamous being Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz.
IT'S NOT SUMMER CAMP, FOX NEWS.
3
@ChesBay--Now, it's associated with the United States and its treatment of Japanese Americans, Hispanic asylum seekers, and the mass incarceration of citizens of color. The UN Human Rights Committee says so.
A facility that us used to collect in one place people of a certain category, or categories, is by definition a concentration camp.
1
then tell your brothers on the Congressional Black Caucus to stop being blowhards about impeachment and other stuff (kudos to you for being the symbol of blowhards) and pass a budget for border security and to expand bedding , not limiting it. I will not discuss concentration camps since the argument is prima fascie stupid and insulting. I will not discuss family separation since we are literally being overwhelmed by children for rent from Central America to help the cartels smuggle in people and drugs. Charlie, get with the program and give power back to Congress to work and not just obstruct and strut like peacocks.
2
@dr jeff wow, "your brothers." i take it donny jr. is your "brother?" all of the same mind and ilk?
Please place a link to today’s editorial listing organizations supporting migrant rights at the TOP of the comments or below this piece.
2
Surely this is a strange thing;
A Concentration camp that multitudes are traveling thousands of miles over desert, swamp, hills and rivers to get into.
I'm pretty sure the barbed wire at Auschwitz was not there to keep people from getting in.
4
The stupidity of open borders is greater than any cruelty visited on invaders.
4
The only people who didn't know about the Concentration Camps, as Elie Wiesel said, were the Jews in the cattle cars going to them. All the governments in the world knew about them and did nothing to warn them, right up to days before the liberation of the last Concentration Camp. Everybody knew, except the victims. Everybody in America knows, except the victims. What kind of monsters are we to allow this President to do these things? He not only does it to the children, he is doing something to us: making us his accomplice, or, is he ours and aren't we are more evil than we can admit? Eventually, our children will read about this in history class and ask us what we did to stop it. What are we doing to our children?
3
I do wonder why the Democrat and Mrs. Pelosi have not increased funding to the DHS in order to allow the government to enforce its laws and more humanely deal with the migrant influx. It is very curious. They seem to be unable to put their money where their mouth is.
3
To be silent about what these families and children are going through is to condone the herding of people and children into confinement like cattle.
The children are victims, separated by force from their parents to live in concentration camps without beds, soap, toothpaste, real blanket, decent food, reasonable adult supervision, etc. The only difference between what we are doing at the border and Hitler's concentration camps is the ultimate "Final Solution."
The power of Hitler's reign grew into the horror it became as good and decent people all over the world turned a blind eye and deaf ear until it was too late.
As a jew, a woman, a mother, a human, I am horrified at the lack of humanity that does not stop such criminal behavior at the onset.
Trump, Senator McConnell, the GOP as well as all Democrats are complicit in what is happening by not speaking and acting out against such unabashed egregious fascist behavior.
2
we are going to vote this evil administration out of office
Godwin's Law poses a paradox; If you wait for the Nazis to be goose-stepping down 5th Avenue, and to have already set up concentration camps before calling them out as Nazis, well, it will be way too late.
Trump, the Neo-GOP and 'the base' are fascists, plain and simple.
2
What would be an effective way to radicalize a child into believing that America is the Great Satan? trump supporters will be surprised to find that some of the children currently concentrated in camps are getting angry. Some 10 year olds are getting hit daily, told that they are scum, and they worry about their mother. Their rage builds up when they look around them. Little ones crying out for Mama in a daze of fear, indifferent or cruel prison guards, it hurts!
So when terrorists come around whispering to them, "we have a way for you to channel your pain and youthful sense of injustice! See? America treats you like a criminal. They'll never let you see your sister or mother again! Look at all the entitled Americans, unbelievably wealthy in comparison, and taunting you like you don't deserve to breathe their air!"
Internment camps for dark skinned children. And zero, ZERO pushback from pro-life hypocrites. Morality only applies to punishing women now. Christians should be the first ones at the camp gates, caring for the 'least of these', and demanding moral leadership from 'their favorite president'. It's beyond hypocritical. It is evil.
2
@deb The question is, what are we, like-minded citizens and human beings commenting on this site, going to do about it?
How do you get a corrupt & criminal administration (+ affiliated party) out of office? Millions of people in the streets and staying there. Shutting things down for awhile, a general strike so to speak. Works most of the time.
1
To the Catholics in the Republican Party Senate and House. You do realize that the Pope has condemned these policies, right?
So, why are you deferring to this psychopath.
I can see why people like Pence do. I've never seen a more disgusting bunch of venal hypocrites than the televangelists.
3
TRUMPCamps! Trump LOVES Branding. Put his name on this disaster!
1
I don’t believe calling them Trumps concentration camp is fair in truth they are ours they exist in our country. Like it or not he is our president.
I’m not a fan of his. I’m against most of what he represents and professes to believe. But We have allowed this to happen in Our country. We must work to take back what we gave away by our lack of responsible citizenry n
2
The parents who bring their kids to the US only to be put into "Concentration Camps" are absolute criminals. They should be tried in the Hague. I assure you that none of my relatives, many, many of whom were killed in very real Concentration Camps would have brought their children to the city of Aushwitz in 1943. I think we have arrived at a point of anti-Trump Democratic hysteria that all but guarantees Mr. Trump's reelection. That's a great thing since no other President has ever done more to protect Israel, including Truman, which guarantees that real Concentration Camps will never darken the world again. Shame on you, Mr. Blow!
3
Dear God. How does one become...whatever makes this comment? Illiteracy and apathy combined, in the richest nation in history, purporting to represent a new birth of freedom.
Chris Hayes has it right, "Detention Camps" should be the term. The goal is to help these kids and end appalling conditions. I'm a grammar Nazi–erm, I mean stickler, so yes, the other term is correct, but educating the public on proper usage is a far lower priority are than these kids.
The Nazis systematically tortured and killed Jews (and others) in Concentration Camps. To suggest what is happening at the border rises up to that level of a sign of significant ignorance. Using the term Concentration Camps to describe separating children from their parents, 30% of whom turn out not to be their parents but child smugglers, and being put in uncomfortable positions...wreaks of political propaganda. People who use this term to describe what happens at our borders either know nothing about history or are purposefully showing their partisan stripes by severely over-embellishing the discomfort immigrants are going through while in detention. Yes, they are experiencing discomfort but it is discomfort they have placed themselves in by swamping our border resources with their insane numbers.
2
A country can only mistreat large numbers of humans in this way if the are regarded as "sub-human" by a significant number of the country's residents. This was true of Jews in Nazi Germany decades ago, the Rohingya in Myanmar today and of illegal migrants in today's USA, let alone the "prisoners" in Guantanamo Bay.
Justice for all fails when justice for the few is not regarded as important. And when justice for all fails, justice for most is at risk.
2
Trump loves referring to the asylum seekers - including children, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers - the people he dehumanizes - as "illegal aliens"...
... but read the following links and tell me who the real criminal is:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/01/us/politics/nicholas-testimony.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/mueller-report-pdf-takeaways.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html
Every Republican member of the House and Senate should answer this.
AND TO EVERY REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE, YOU ARE ANSWERABLE. YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE.
4
They don’t need to hide. Their gerrymandered districts are garrisoned by militant hayseeds. But I love your comment and hope you’re right all the same.
Absolutely agree that the concentration camps that were in existence for the last 10 years (including all 8 years of the Obama administration) are the acts of despots and must be eliminated.
This is child abuse at it's worst. He who is responsible should be put in prison where he belongs and not only for causing this despicable act. No possible excuse is defensible. It's heartbreaking.
2
Mr. Blow, I shouldn't use the N word. You shouldn't use "concentration camp" to describe what happening regarding undocumented immigrants. I suggest you do some research and find out why there is such anger about the use of the term. I'd suggest that you speak to my father-in-law, who was at Dachau as a liberator, but unfortunately, he's gone.
1
Let's recall that WWII began with the Spanish Civil War, in which fascists murdered civilians willy-nilly. Sadism is the acting out of repressed hatred--having others act it out provides a buffer for the common-folk sadists. Reading Hitler's Willing Executioners is enlightening (see, I followed the Rule)--
2
Brought to you by the same folks who declared that torture isn't torture if they call it "enhanced interrogation", and, anyway, it was a good thing we were doing it. That they were free to break every US law if they did it outside of the US' borders.
So a concentration camp for children is "summer camp", and, anyway, the Democrats made us do it.
4
Two words: Stephan Miller
A monster
8
Should we not go to the source of how we got into this immigration issue.....lets ask the following questions...
1- Have we not given millions if not billions over decades to these countries to improve their way of life ?
2- Where is the accountability of these
monies ?
3- Where is the vision of the elected officials ? has this not been going on for decades ?
4- Why is it that a newly elected gets to speak out on issues with very little if any knowledge of the underlying issues....?
As for you article Blow..... another weak and meaningless menagerie of words....
1
Thank you Charles Blow to remind us about this unspeakable tragedy. I am outraged and feel shameful that I am not doing anything. Is there some planned demonstrations in Boston where I live? This is pure hatred (of immigrants in the current xenophobic climate of this administration), lie (Obama bears responsibility according to Trump???) and cruelty (sleep deprivation, no hygiene, squalid physical and psychological conditions). With this, the US is definitely loosing any right to defend democracy and human rights anywhere in the world. This is unfortunately approaching Nazi Germany behavior (concentration camps and an indifferent general population)
1
It is not serious to compare what occurred during the Holocaust and the systematic extermination of 6 million Jews, to detention centers holding immigrants who have willingly crossed our border without permission. Those who are making this comparison are craven in their political animus.
The asylum laws have created a loophole, and the democrats simply refuse to fix the loophole, because they have decided that illegal aliens from south of the border should become their new voting bloc, of more people dependent on government programs.
2
Thank you for this piece, Charles. I only wish you had repeated other details: medications being taken away & denied, shirts smeared with snot & mucous; a baby's neck so dirty it was black; a prematurely born infant filthy & without care......please. We have to keep repeating these details as many are just becoming aware of the abuse now.
5
These camps qualify as "crimes against humanity." Immigrant children have and are dying there. We've moved from the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era of torture to what are sickeningly reminiscent for this member of a Holocaust family to death camps under Donald Trump. To treat innocent children in such an inhumane manner is even more morally reprehensible. In addition to Jamal Khashoggi, Otto Warmbier, Donald Trump now has the blood of these children on his hands. If this doesn't qualify as a high crime and an article of impeachment what does? Where's the moral outrage? Where's Nancy?
3
First a point about Godwin's law that Mike Godwin did not fully clarify. AOC used the term correctly in describing these concentration camps. The folks inappropriately invoking death camps and the holocaust in response to a word are guilty of breaking Godwin's law to deflect and distract from the fact that the racist, white supremacist, neo nazi standard bearing administration is both kidnapping children and running concentration camps.
These unspeakably inhumane, illegal and immoral acts of cruelty and lawlessness are the policy objectives of the grand old pedophile party.
Then again, Puerto Rico lost upwards of 3000 souls due to the cruel incompetence and well....move along, nothing to see or do....
2
If these were white European children, would they be subjected to such inhumane conditions?
The only solution is the one Democrats have been praying for: Open Borders.
1
An advanced nation like ours is not so advanced, quite barbaric actually, if we perpetuate abuse of immigrant children in place of a safe, humane, fair system. The news is out there. We are guilty. The facts do not lie. We have not learned from our shameful past. And this is not just Trump and his cronies. It is us, we, our country. It takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to look the other way when faced with systemic, institutionalized abuse. This cannot be another blip in the news cycle, on to the next scandal. Children have died, and are being abused by our system, by our government, by our institutions.
4
Immigration requires tough and honest dialogue between parties that aren't even talking today. We need humility and dialogue from all sides.
For example, let's hear an apology from Democrats about the long term failures of our immigration system, administered under a 1965 law enacted under a Democratic administration. We need to always hear expressions of willingness to negotiate with Republicans to change the 50 year old rules that are obviously failing.
Outrage sounds like crocodile tears to hearts hardened by cable news propaganda. Republicans need to be awakened to justice again. Hard complaints and accusations will only build their defenses.
American criminals found guilty in our court system are treated better than the immigrants seeking a better life.
America was founded by those seeking a better life.
Trump's WH is incapable of resolving this issue because they don't want resolution- just hate and adding cruelty to those that want to escape their country's disorders.
Won' be long before Americans will be seeking asylum from Trump!
1
@Margie W
Do you really know anything about US prisons?
In the first month your blood pressure would shoot up one hundred points and you would probably keel over of a heart attack or a stroke. That is, if your fellow inmates did not roll you up first.
Besides, many inmates languishing in prisons are guilty of relatively minor crimes. Remember the "three-strikes law?" Congress has recently taken steps to address this situation.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed.
trump LIES and said Obama separated families too. No. Obama adminstration did house unaccompanied minors but did not remove children from their relatives.
2
With all the hooha about AOC using this term, I'm wondering where the outrage is when the POTUS accuses the Democratic Party of "wanting to destroy you" to his supporters? That's incitement. Again, when he implied if Hillary Clinton was elected that "maybe the Second Amendment people have a solution? I don't know." Once this was allowed by the republicans as just "campaign rhetoric" we have slid into the sewer. The man should have been ejected from the election, but everyone just goes on. And now here we find ourselves, having yet another hissy fit while the republicans show how cowed they have the rest of the country while committing atrocities in all of our names. It's disgusting. Call write email your elected reps, today, and demand action on all fronts against this assault on our country's morals and values. Otherwise it means we never had any.
1
@JP
For me it’s bad enough that his devoted supporters, white supremacists feel emboldened after their beloved leader claimed those who were marching with torches chanting ..“Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville “...are very fine people”.
Too bad that is on tape for all to reference.
He never denounced white supremacy publicly.
How could he that’s HIS main base.
Shouldn't Congress be passing legislation requiring that conditions in these detention centers be improved - IMMEDIATELY?
Seems to me that what we have is equivalent to a gov't caused natural disaster. If people were evacuated to emergency shelters because of flooding or fire they might be without sanity supplies and have to endure minimal living conditions for a day or two - but going on a month? The Trump administration caused this disaster and is deliberately prolonging it. Congress must force it to alleviate conditions immediately and then investigate who is responsible for causing this disaster so they can be indicted.
2
Almost daily I call Senator McConnell’s offices. Every day the mailbox is “full.” I suspect this is by design. And if I spoke to the self-professed “Grim Reaper,” he wouldn’t care—and I know it. I keep trying anyway. The doors are closed against concerned citizens. He and Elaine Chao have special plutocrat games to play. We aren’t invited or welcome.
The problem here is the uniqueness of American English, a dialect that in which pejorative terms used to describe foreigners, are instantaneously modified when applied to Americans. Concentration camps are not unique to the Germans. The term was used by the British in the second Anglo Boer War. Italians, Croatians, Russians, Serbs and Cambodians all ran concentration camps at one point or another. But in referring to institutions run by Americans, the dialect calls for modification of the term to detention camps – I had detention in Junior High and it wasn’t so bad – or even temporary respite centers. And, whereas other people “torture” their enemies, Americans use “enhanced interrogation techniques”. When applied to Americans, “war crimes” become “over zealousness”; “aggression” becomes “diplomacy”; and “war” becomes “defense”. You see, it’s just a matter of our unique linguistic traditions.
2
"Last year, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham compared child detention centers to “summer camps.” These are not summer camps. They are closer to what Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called them: concentration camps."
They are concentration camps. Period.
Anyone outraged over calling these immoral camps what they are, should direct their outrage at those who set them up, and those running them.
2
Just so you know how the other side thinks, -- the fascist side, I must call it, even if it includes members of my own family --
I had a long conversation with my Trumpist sister yesterday and here's what she thinks based on her Fox News information:
Those children don't belong to anyone. They were 'bought' from their parent by drug dealers and MS 13 gang members or picked up off the streets, so the gang members could cross the border. The children are, in effect, either pawns and a distraction or else, for the slightly older boys, incipient gang members themselves.
They have come here to murder, rape and spread disease. And they get free health care and welfare, while struggling US families get nothing. All for free.
Not only are they treated too well, but the excellent treatment they get is free, paid for by hard working struggling US families.
The liberal laws that require them to be treated so well are the fault of the Dems who passed the laws under Obama and now our beloved president Trump has to deal with the mess they created by setting up this incentive for them to come here.
That's how they think. How are you going to penetrate that wall of ignorance?
My sister is a devout catholic, by the way. The only thing that gave her pause was when I mentioned that most of the kids are catholic as well.
"well that's just too bad for them" she said. "but it's not my problem".
3
I’m reminded of a line in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. The professor, played by Max von Sydow, says it: “If Jesus Christ came back and saw what was being done in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”
It must be painful to see this in your own family. I have an aunt and uncle who espouse similar views. They are dead to me.
1
For a counter-example, we might look to the Kindertransport rescue of Jewish children on the brink of WWII. Great Britain, knowing full well that it would itself soon be under attack, nevertheless eased some immigration restrictions for some Jewish refugees, following the Kristallnicht pogrom in Nov. 1938. Refugee aid organizations in Britain and Jewish aid organizations in Germany, and soon other Nazi-occupied countries, managed to et 9 - 10 thousand children brought into England between 1938 and 1940, and housed with families there. What was to have been only until "the end of the crisis" ultimately resulted in most of the children remaining in Britain or emigrating to the US, Canada and other countries. They never saw their parents again because they were murdered in the Holocaust.
The courage and generosity of the British people and their government, scrambling to prepare to defend themselves on the eve of war and yet opening their arms and hearts to these refugee children, ought to inspire us to rise to the occasion, today. We are so much better off than pre-war Britain. Most of the children in our concentration camps have potential sponsors in the US who could care for them while their asylum cases are pending. For those who do not, surely we, with our vastly stronger, richer circumstances could give them care and comfort in foster homes. They are children! Where is our compassion?
2
I am deeply offended by this author’s incendiary use of the words ‘concentration camps’ to describe detention centers at the border.
No one forced these migrants and their children to trek thousands of miles with the intention of trespassing into our country illegally. Concentration camps? Where are the skeletal inmates and oven stacks?
4
You’re referring to death camps. Concentration camps are something different. READ.
Remember. They want to open the internment camps used for Japanese Americans in WW2. Seems like the only ones under the delusion things have not gone terribly wrong are all the purists saying it is not the Holocaust.
Of course it is not. But that terrible event started like this. Folks tolerated casual cruelty, and rationalized treating human beings as less than human. And then.
If that does not describe what is going on, I don't know what does.
3
This allow by Trumps voters because he had made Criminals out of the Migrants that he says are stealing from our welfare system, bringing in drugs or they are from gangs. They are People like you and me wanting a safer, better life for them and their families. So sad we are treating worst then we treat pets in this nation.
This makes me cry.
Charles, please help out your readers here. What specifically can we do to help? Send money? Of course, where? What non-profits are on the ground there at the border. Where will our contribution do the most good and go farthest?
2
They are concentration camps.
The concept of concentration camps did not begin or end with Nazi Germany, and a camp need not be a death camp to be a concentration camp. Many concentration camps in Germany and Russia were not death camps, but they were horrible places concentrating targeted groups in confined spaces for agonizing mistreatment. The originators of concentration camps, and the name, were probably the Spanish in the mid 1800s and then more prominently the British in South Africa during the Boer Wars of 1899-1902.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
This is exactly what Trump and cohorts, are doing on the Southern border with children the US Government kidnapped and is abusing.
All human rights crimes. If a Democratic government were to replace these thugs in 2021, it will be possible to extradite all the perpetrators to the International Criminal Court for trial and imprisonment, Nuremberg style. As the US is not a member, a UN Security Council clearance would be needed to implement this action, which of course the current regime would veto, but perhaps a future administration would have the morality and guts to allow.
3
Sociopaths lack the ability to have an awareness, connection or sense of a moral conscience. Separating children from their parents and family and locking them in cages without toothbrushes, blankets and inadequate food is unconscionable.
Trump's behavior is deplorable. Americans of all political parties must stand up, speak out and stop these disgusting, deplorable behaviors. There is no excuse for anyone allowing this type of immoral government policy. Any human who allows these actions to continue is culpable. We all must ACT NOW.
2
People who can not differentiate the term "concentration camp" from "death camp" probably have a hard time differentiating the term "ignorant" from "stupid". We need more voices like AOC. At least she fights.
2
AOC is an idiot.
2
A child suffers trauma in being separated from family. Adverse Childhood Experiences is a survey for Americans to answer 10 questions. Poverty accounts for most of the positive responses and being separated from a family member is just one category (imprisonment, or violent death). Your ACEs score helps physicians and social workers to gauge a child's trauma because a score of more than 5 can lead to addictions and homelessness or worse.
Mr. Blow points to the trauma. We have to decide the solution for the richest country in the world, for now.
1
"A concentration camp is a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution."
Full. Stop.
2
Last summer a friend and I organized a "Ring of Compassion" in Sheep's Meadow, in Central Park. Over a hundred and fifty people stood silently as the press and onlookers stood watching the solidarity with those suffering cruelty at our border.
The country was briefly roiled and we thought that was the end of family separation. Now, I'm flummoxed. WHAT do we do now? WHO is organizing it? HOW do we proceed?
PLEASE ADVISE!!!!!!!
Jane
I'm surprised that the term "concentration camp" seems to be almost exclusively associated in the US with the Nazi version of such things. The original concentration camps were established by the British during the Boer war in 1901 or so, and a quick online search reveals that about 48,000 civilians died in them (e.g., http://theconversation.com/concentration-camps-in-the-south-african-war-here-are-the-real-facts-112006).
If it looks and quacks like a concentration camp, call it a concentration camp.
1
Trump likes to see his name on things. Why not call this what it is? The TRUMP DEATH CAMPS. How about signs nearby these places directing traffic to "Trump Death Camps".
For a man who supposedly calls himself a winner in the hospitality business, this may be a small blow to his vanity.
I wonder if even that could shame him. He’d be furious, though: it might hurt his “brand.”
Clearly Trump's caged people policy is abhorrent, but we have Guantanamo gulag as well.
Mr. Blow,
You have so much empathy for the poor & disenfranchised but leave our history alone, it is ours to mourn & in respect to our dead not to be compared to the misery of others. We grieve for the immigrant children & the horror they are going through.However, have some sensitivity for the horrors the Jewish people have had throughout the ages. Understand what Israel means to us, & do not be so crass as to blame Israel for trying to survive, against our hostile neighbors,
By the way, the Gettho was the term used to isolate Jews from the rest of society, it’s connotation is far worst than a slum.
2
Oh, please...
North Korea actually HAS concentration camps as does China. This week, the UK-based China Tribunal documented two decades of China's harvesting organs from the imprisoned 10,000 Falun Gong followers and Uighurs. The political prisoners are blood-tested and some are given orange wristbands, and when a fee-paying foreigner needs an organ, one of those with an orange wristband is taken away, injected with potassium and killed, and their organs harvested.
So, gosh, Mr. Blow, the U.S. isn't treating trespassers and interlopers as well as we treat actual invited guests, but we treat them better than Communist China treats its own terrified subjects.
1
Either you didn’t read about the conditions the kids endure or you set a VERY low bar for the moral obligations of this self-proclaimed “last, best hope” of something or other we are so fond of celebrating.
@NorthernVirginia
A lot of bad apples out there. Do you think that comparing ourselves to the worst, justifies our actions? What about setting an example and compare ourselves to the best?
Are you aware these trespassers you are referring to, are children?
@MM
The children and their parents/guardians should be returned to their country of origin with a suggestion that their home country prosecute for abuse and neglect the individuals who dragged those poor children into their ill-considered scheme to trespass into our country, steal our public services, and lie about their identity.
Focus man! Its happening right now. That any decent American is embarrassed by this administration in general but particularly the internment of children is beyond question. Unfortunately, Blow's indignation of a truly disgusting practice of yanking kids from parents is diluted by his penchant toward arguing about the reparations, a concept that is difficult to grasp. America needs to set its soul right no doubt, but lets start on ending the practice of interning kids now.
republicans under trump have demonized and dehumanized non-whites. they have repeatedly called the press the enemy of their people. and they have divided us to the point that we can't even agree on facts. this is the perfect climate for another genocide. republicans led by trump and eichmann er miller will continue to murder immigrants at the border then muslims and eventually liberals. anyone that believes this will end peacefully needs to look up from their phones and back to germany in the 30s.
I am ready to march in protest. Just tell me where (within 50 miles) and when and I will be there...Weren't we all taught to stand strong for the least among us?
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
1
The most accurate name for these facilities is “Hispanic Detention Camps.” In World War II, we had “Japanese Detention Camps” but other ethic groups were also imprisoned. The preponderance were Japanese and thus the name.
The Trump Camps imprison preponderantly Hispanics. Perhaps a variant name would do — “Trump Hispanic Detention Camps” or “Republican Hispanic Detention Camps”. Let’s give credit where credit is due.
I don’t agree with what’s going on along the border, but if those are concentration camps, what went on in Germany wasn’t that bad, was it?
2
Totally agree with Mr. Blow. There WILL be a demonstration in against the inhumane conditions facing the migrant children in Delhi, NY on June 28 at 12:00 PM.
1
In the midst of life we Americans feel angry and helpless today. We see human beings -- asylum-seekers on our southern border -- men, women and children being separated from their families and housed in "temporary shelters", read Lagers. Concentration camps such as were provided in Nazi-controlled Europe in the 1930s until the end of World War II in 1945. "Internment Camps", read Lagers, where our Japanese American citizens were kept in interior western states during World War II.
Who knew that our government under president Trump is shipping immigrant children to "temporary shelters" (read "summer camps") in American cities far from our border with Mexico? Separating families of desperate asylum-seekers from Central America, and terrifying them? Such egregious abuse of human rights.
In the midst of life today, we are living through domestic and political crises in America. We are concerned with our own day to day lives, and though angry and helpless, we weep for our country, and wonder what will happen to democracy tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?
Just more of the intellectually bankrupt click bait Mr. Blow so often churns out. Beside the fact that these facilities have existed for years under Republican and Democratic Presidents, the immates, unlike those in concentration camps, presented themselves. They are being held for illegally entering the U.S. Or awaiting results of an asylum claim. In either cases they presented themselves.
3
Of course there is an easy way to avoid having to live in these detention families, which are not concentration camps, which is to either enter legally or stay out.
1
Mr. Blow,
Can WE the people march on the UN and take it to the general assembly?
1
The debate here and elsewhere of the definition of 'concentration camp' adds pain upon pain. It does not rob Jews or Cambodians or Somalis of their deaths and sorrows to call what this administration does to fleeing migrants, adults and children, imprisoning them in 'concentration camps' a misnomer. We give Trump and his thugs pass after pass. There is no moral pass for this administration or for the American People that enable it. Be with the victims of these inhuman crimes.
Charles Blow, no one calls it out with the compassion and moral clarity that you do! Thank you. Now, what can we, ordinary citizens, who are sick about this (and live in Vermont!) Do about it??
1
Yes! What is going on with us? We should be in the streets to protest and protect these children! We need a parents crusade. What if all parents stopped working for one day and took to the streets? Make an impact on the economy.
Or slept on the floor in all Trumps property lobbies.
Seriously- who has ideas on what can be organized to make this stop?
1
Instead of blaming Trump, why not write your congress persons, demand they pass emergency funding, or an emergency bill to ease conditions at the border. Then if they do, a public campaign to make Repubs very uncomfortable if they don't take it up in the senate and Trump doesn't sign it.
We live in a very imperfect democracy. We live at a time when a large number of very wealthy people want to return us to the "original" version of the US Constitution, when only those whom were white, male and wealthy had a vote. We have one political party that exists because of the generosity of the "originalists" and the use of sophisticated propaganda convinces a segment of our society to support their agenda.
We all must vote in 2020. The future of our country - and in some ways the future of our planet - is at stake.
3
Also lets keep this in perspective. We have 350 million population, if we have 1 million new immigrants each year thats a very very small increase in our population. Also, assume 70% or more go to work and do things necessary but that we won't do and they spend wages, pay taxes, pay SS etc. we are winners. Thats what happens. After a few years studies show immigration increases our GDP. Many many immigrant children attend college, join the military, start businesses etc. Look at the history and immigration is always a winner for us as a nation.
3
Ask Germany how taking in 1million Muslims has gone for them....
1
GDP necessarily increases with more people. It says nothing about quality of life. Every land, region ,ecosystem has a carrying capacity. You cannot endlessly add people. You end up destroying the environment and eventually no one can have a decent life. Your views on the world are based on fantasy.
1
Large income inequalities, political strife in central America that we are responsible for as a country but refuse to acknowledge, and dire poverty that we have contributed to are driving desperate people to our borders. And our response is to cage children, separate families, and torture human beings. There are moral absolutes. So let's dispense with the comparative analysis of sufferings across different eras. A poor country like Bangladesh works with the UN and its neighbors to be there for the Rohinga refugees. We on the other hand cage children. These camps on the Texas border are inhuman and they betray our refusal to accept our moral responsibilities as human beings.
We citizens have to write, march, become aware and increase awareness about what's happening in our names. We have to channel our moral outrage and support candidates and officials who will immediately shut down these inhuman atrocities directed against the most vulnerable of humankind.
Directing abuse at those whose only crime is to be born brown and poor is the most disgraceful thing we can be guilty of as a society. I ask all of us to close our eyes and ask whether we, of our own volition, could ever do this to any other human being. Because, whether we like it or not, we as a citizenry are committing the worst atrocities against the most vulnerable human beings. Are we still proud to be American? If the answer is yes, then we are proud Americans, who are also inhuman.
3
The only thing that will make a difference is massive public protest. Massive. Like what happened in Hong Kong. We need to put ourselves out in a very public way and show our elected representatives that we're watching, we're aware, we vehemently disagree with what they're doing in our name. It's time to revolt.
2
"Trump's" camps are hardly his own.
The start in my lifetime of the United States moving toward becoming one big prison camp for the disenfranchised was November 4, 1980. The election of Ronald Reagan.
Mostly each and every successive Republican administration has moved the entire country closer to a lock down state than the previous.
The "installation" of W Bush as president in 2000. The successive 911 permanent lock down on all United States residents. Get a clue, folks. There may be different ways of solving these problems. The modern GOP has zero interest in them.
4
Until America confronts its' racism it will continue to trend toward fascism. We need a comprehensive immigration system with working quotas based on employment needs and pathways to citizenship. As long as we continue in the corrupt way of under the table illegal employment (which the Trump gulf courses were part of) and simultaneously deport people, we will send a mixed message to the world. And this is where we are with this administration - mixed messages - divide and conquer. This cruelty of separating families is indicative of our broken immigration system, our injustices surrounding labor, and our fear of becoming a white minority with a pathway way to citizenship for those who come here to work. James Baldwin knew - we will deal with our racism our it will ruin us as a nation.
2
I agree that the conditions are intolerable at these camps. Some of the blame, if not most of it, however needs to be placed on the families themselves; what kind of person takes their baby along when committing a crime?
The existence and conditions at these camps are well known. Being put into one of them is a foreseeable consequence of crossing the border illegally. Therefore, one has to accept the possibility of ending up in them if one proceeds.
8
What you call these facilities is irrelevant. What matters is that the current conditions are inhumane, dangerously unhealthy, and appear to be deteriorating. I think some of this is just neglect borne out of not caring what happens to these kids, but I think some of it may be deliberate. Fox News favorites like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have long been fearmongering about immigrants being filthy and diseased---what better way to turn the fearmongering into reality than packing these kids into overcrowded facilities where they can't wash, can't sleep, and seem to have little to no access to even basic medical care? As the saying now goes, the cruelty is the point, but in this case it also serves another objective: convincing the public that these kids are a threat to the nation's health.
7
This is about the language, but it is about the horror of the children’s detention, here and now!
So please help those of us who want to fight back against our government. What are we to do? Letters sent, donations to legal and direct care organizations made, and no change.
I feel Myself sinking into despair, hiding from myself, and I do not know how to take direct action. This is my call for help. What do I do now to stop the horror?
5
Your use of the word "Concentration Camp" is utterly dismissive of the Jews that suffered in those camps. To compare anything to this word is irresponsible of the NYT to even publish. This is sickening.
16
No. Read the commentaries by scholars and the definition of concentration camp is Webster's dictionary. Nomenclature really doesn't matter when children are being abused. If you've never lost family in the camps, an opinion is unwarranted anyway.
The NYTimes has effectively played into the hands of socialist demogogue AOC by using the term "concentration camps". They most certainly are not! The term is a distinct plan of genocide. From the anti-Semitic cartoon months ago in the Times, and now the appropriation of this term, this paper has revealed itself as such.
2
We live in Arizona, now the land of rumors and secrets, My wife's family grew up here in Southern Arizona, and I have been here for 44 years. My brother-in-law recently drove up into the Patagonia Mountains near the border in Santa Cruz County, and encountered guards restricting access to one of these camps, this one rumored to be for men and older boys. The guards were armed; there was no question about entry. Few people even know the camp is there, much less what is happening inside every day.
Without further official (i.e., truthful) reporting, it is feasible that they are concentrating poor people in these camps without process or planning beyond capture and contain.
6
The administration has willfully used the torture of children as deterrence for asylum seekers. Torture, it’s a bit harsh of a word you may say. But what else describes the cruelty and pain when a toddler is taken away from her parents? I always wondered who those people were that were guarding the concentration camps. Probably not so different from Laura Ingraham.
7
I did not know that the term concentration camp was identified with the Nazi death camps, when a friend on Facebook objected to the use of this word by AOC, I rolled my eyes and thought she was being too sensitive. I feel calling those places concentration camps is kind of letting them off too easy, better term to me is the one I used in the first sentence- Death Camps.
But Mr. Blow and Chris Hayes have nicely and articulately put this all into perspective. I'm willing to call it whatever you want me to, but let's not gloss over what is happening.
I, like so many, just don't know what to do about this and all the horrors of this administration beyond informing my representatives of my feelings and donating money where possible.
Ideas appreciated.
5
People wonder why there isn't more outrage about the treatment of immigrants. The main reason is because a huge chunk of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and can barely keep their collective heads above water. There isn't time to concern oneself with politics or whats happening in Washington D.C. when you struggle daily just to maintain. Add to that the fact that the Republicans don't care that it's happening and in many cases are happy that these immigrants are being treated as they are and you have a recipe for malaise. Every day there is another moral or ethical outrage with this president and his sycophants and with each new deplorable action the average American just shakes their head and sees nobody doing much of anything to change it.
5
@Magan And those of us who are well of and not worrying about keeping our heads above water are disgusted and demoralized and just don't know what to do to fight this horrid situation.
Can you please provide an account of how many camps exist, how many people are in these camps, how many are children under the age of 12, and where they are located? We need someone to frame this problem in a way people can understand it. Then, how much money is needed for each of these agencies to improve conditions there - at least in terms of personnel and basic necessities and supplies. Then put a ball park figure on what is needed now and will be needed in the future to provide these resources. If you started a Go Fund Me for alleviating this insanity in these camps, millions would contribute tomorrow. Our political leaders seem unable to address a humanitarian crisis within our borders. Maybe we need to look to the people. But we need a visual. We need to know the problem. And we need someone to manage the cash and the effort. This is like a giant flood disaster. But we are treating it like we are the German citizens who wondered what that smoke and ash is coming from that "camp". Frame the problem. Engage the citizens. This is a disgrace.
4
@Geo Olson. Great idea. But I think enough people know what is going on and would contribute to vetted Fund Me page. I don't think an exact amount of funds need be specificied, the need seems enormous. So just a bonafide organization is needed to get it started ASAP
@Geo Olson Better still, once we know the magnitude of the problem, we can apply the low figure of $750 per day for overhead to house each asylum seeker in a camp. Multiply by the number of days by the total number of detainees. Compare that to the costs of funding immigration courts, judges, care givers, ankle monitors, data systems to track immigrants until their cases are humanely adjudicated. I haven't done the math but something tells me we the tax paying people will make out like bandits on costs savings and get our humanity back.
Why aren't the "pro-life" brigades taking to the streets to protest these atrocities? Oh wait...these children were born and so no longer matter. We should all the protesting in the streets, either physically or metaphorically. My senators, unfortunately, seem to be blind, deaf and dumb on this issue (and many others as well), but I'll keep protesting anyway for children who have no voice.
5
The conditions in Andersonville prison, in Georgia, near the end of the Civil War, could fairly be described as similar to what most people recognize as in a “concentration camp.” Likewise, many people consider the British prison camps employed during the Boer War to be the first “concentration camps.”
The words describe the horrible conditions in use by the Trump administration, and should be considered for their true meaning.
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@Bevan Davies
Its funny Democrats could fix this by doing the exact same thing that was needed to fix Andersonville.
What is that you ask, fund the DHS so they actually have money to deal with the influx. Andersonville should be a stark reminder, because if funding is not secured from Congress that is exactly where we are headed. Andersonville only got so bad, because the CSA had no money and food left at the end of the war so they could not feed any prisoners.
2
@Tancrede Any solution to the terrible conditions in these detention camps would have to be a bipartisan effort. It should be noted here that the commander of Andersonville prison was tried for war crimes after the conflict and executed.
28
@Tancrede
Bwaahahahaha! Hilarious!
I just knew those concentration camps were Nancy Pelosi's fault!
Both Kirstjen Nielsen and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly have stated that separating families and putting them in detention was being used as a deterrent to the asylum seekers.
The horrific conditions are not due to lack of funding, it is the intended policy.
33
This is not just Donald Trump, it's the entire Republican party. Every single Republican in office who doesn't speak out, supports this by their silence.
I am sickened and infuriated by the caustic inhumanity being inflicted upon children. However, let's stop focusing only on the ringleaders- Trump and McConnell- and let's also focus on everyone else who stands behind them and works behind the scenes to make sure their atrocious policies are carried out. The Republicans in the House and Senate are equally responsible, as are the beliefs and policies of individuals like the odious Stephen Miller, for example. Let's start shining the light on them, too, and call them to account for this sickening situation.
Aggressive media attention must also be brought to bear on these camps themselves. Use technology. Get creative. It's harder for average Americans to distract themselves with the minutiae of daily life if footage of this horror is easy to see on television and online.
6
I think there is wide agreement that Trump is a cruel person, acting in cruel ways, putting the lives of little children at risk. Many have written about feelings of rage and impotence including the question of what to do to stop this administration’s cruelty. There is really only one thing that could help and that won’t happen. Mitch McConnell could stand before the president and tell him to stop this, now. But this is not going to happen. This man’s corruption is mind blowing and I have never seen this level of disregard for the people in my lifetime. I really do not know what to do.
6
I think one viable option is to leave the country and attempt to emigrate to a country that respects basic human rights. Only a fool would assume that they way this government deliberately treats the relatively powerless is not the precursor of an effort to treat any American who disagrees with the prevailing regime as an outcast- strip them of their rights and basic freedoms- and ultimately imprison them.
If the Constitution and its exercise of powers no longer protects the rule of law- allowing a President who has committed treason and multiple high crimes to legally remain in office- then I would argue it may be considered illegitimate and dangerous- a threat to the rights of all.
While there is a hope that elections will right these wrongs- it is by no means clear that the opposition will willingly cede power- particularly given how long they have clung to it illegally.
1
@Lowell Greenberg
Good riddance, join the golobohomo (globalized, homogenized) European society.
Well, obviously these children and their families seeking refuge in the USA are guilty of the only 'crime' punishable by the current administration: They have no money.
4
FIRST, calling these concentration camps is an insult to those who survived concentration camps.. Second..
Have congress pass comprehensive immigration reform. None of this is new people.. Obama had the same things going on. As long as our asylum protocols are not changed, we will be faced with a crisis at the border. If either party had any intention of overhauling our system it would have been done. Both sides see it as a wedge issue and ammunition (as this article demonstrates) to hammer their opponents. Does this shameful piece of partisan politics address the real problems ? Of course not.. Its easy to point fingers without offering solutions.. Real solutions.. Having an open border is not a real solution.. This angst should be directed at the legislature who needs to bring real compromise and finality to a decades old problem. That means youre not going to get everything you want.. We have to stop the influx of children into our country..
6
Yes, the term "concentration camp" may well be appropriate for the conditions under which "immigrants" are being detained at our southern border. But what did these so-called "asylum seekers," fully two-thirds of whose requests for asylum will eventually be denied, expect?
They consciously swarm our borders and overwhelm our capabilities/capacity, and then have the temerity--along with their "allies" like Charles Blowhard--to complain about the conditions under which they are detained?
What did they expect? A chain of Ritz Carltons and Howard Johnsons all along the border to house and feed these swarms of "migrants," not to mention fully-staffed hospitals all along the way to treat--for free, of course-- their many and varied ailments? Some of which are making our OWN Border Patrol agents ill, as well?
Sorry, migrants, but you all chose your strategy to weasel your way into the U.S.--viz., overwhelming our border and its associated capabilities--and now you're getting all that we can offer you. Tough luck.
As for Mr. Blowhard's assertion that no one can view this "humanitarian crisis" without his/her heart breaking, well, sorry to disappoint him. My heart is not breaking in the slightest.
These "migrants" are getting the best conditions that their strategy has earned them, and that's all they deserve.
5
Shame on you. Detention centers are not concentration camps and it does a disservice to all of us to state so. These centers are overwhelmed; there is a crisis at the border.
Dems have pushed for catch and release if one has a child with them; Dems are inviting kidnapping and worse by telling everyone that if you have a kid with you, you will be released into the US. Those coming are not asylum seekers; they put children at risk for economic opportunity.
“At least seven children are known to have died in immigration custody since last year, after almost a decade in which no child reportedly died while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” Well, were caravans with thousands of people coming from south of Mexico during that time? We cannot house this influx; we should not be expected to. If they are escaping for their lives, the conditions are more than suitable; they are safe. However, we cannot be responsible for saving everyone from countries that don't vaccinate or have basic healthcare.
If Blow, the progressives, and the NYTimes had their way, we'd have 2 billion more people in the US and everyone would be screaming about the impact on climate, resources, pollution, food access, healthcare, and 'affordable housing.' Again, we do have a crisis at the border, but it wasn't created by Trump, as they NYTimes tells us. It was created by DC and those sanctuary cities that have decided open borders is a new policy that should be embraced.
14
@Ma. Sorry, but no one anywhere should accept cruelty and abuse and negligence of children. The Trump administration’s treatment of children in detention centers that all agree are filthy and inhumane is criminal activity that should be examined by The UN. Transfer money from the “emergency” Wall Fund to provide humane care and housing of immigrants.
1
We do not have time to think about the men still being held at Guantánamo Bay without charge or trial because we still think about the people died at the hands of their comrades. We do not feel much sympathy about the people who come to our border without our asking, but we try our best to accommodate them. These people are willing to suffer any cruelties to reach the "concentration camps" because they know that even the so called "concentration camp" is better than the condition they live. I don't think many people will take seriously pundits like Charles whose sympathy is with terrorist comrades and illegals who invade our borders. We know we want to treat them as fairly as possible whether under Obama or Trump, but may not be always flawless. That doesn't mean we are running concentration camps and gas chambers.
4
We have a collision of two major impacts to our national concerns. One is our committment to humanitarian treatement for all people. The second is our need determine what level of immigration is consistent with our national well being, growth and culture.
.
We have set a standard - partly embodied in statutory law - that allows anyone who claims asylum to enter the U.S. and remain until their petition is adjudicated. In practice howerver, that means the individual and his/her family will remain in this country for 3 to 8 years. During that time the indivdual may have children who will be U.S. citizens by birthright.
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Humane sentiment call for the entire familty to be allowed to stay indefintely. Any non-citizen children in the family become eligible for "Dreamer" status. The entire family enters a path to citizenship and is entittled to enormous financial aid at the expense of other citizens.
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The majority of the 50 million people in Central America and most will eventually make the attempt to enter the U.S. - they have the financial incetive - and will become permanent residents and eventually citizens.
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The result is the U.S. will - with emigration from Mexico and South America - become have a pluirality Latino population. Current birth and emigration rates assure this. These new citizens will bring their poliical agendas and cultural life with them - as have previous generations of immigrants. The evolution of the Unites States will proceed accordingly.
4
I saw Konzentrationslager Dachau on a postcard from my grandfather after he was rounded up Kristallnacht, and wondered about the origin, meaning and definition of the word. Andrea Pitzer, a historian of concentration camps, was quoted making the assertion: that the United States has created a “concentration camp system.” Pitzer argued that “mass detention of civilians without a trial” was what made the camps concentration camps. I think her definition should include " and/or they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying" In that case, the U.S.’s detention facilities for migrants are concentration camps. The difference is the Nazis deliberately built their camps to brutalize, dehumanize and kill their occupants. There is no direct evidence, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence, that the Trump administration was deliberate, but it is accomplishing the same thing.
3
Charles Blow is right again. What ARE we going to do about it? I (personally) am going to do nothing about it except write a comment to the NYT. I am an older wheelchair bound man with a debilitating disease who can't do much other than write a comment to the newspaper. I wonder who actually puts these people in cages? Trump doesn't actually do it. He asks or tells other people to do it and they actually do it. There is something wrong with this picture. There isn't much more to say about it.
1
Raised Jewish, I always wondered the same, and wondered what I would do if faced w a similar situation. I always assumed people must be in abject fear, afraid of being thrown in concentration camps themselves or killed or ruined, to not stand up to this kind of cruelty. Now I see instead how little it takes for those who will be cruel to be able do so much damage in so little time. And we the opposition who have marched and voted and cried out are simply overwhelmed, undone, impotent in the face of it all, trying to fight the cruelty on so many fronts. The enduring question is: What then must we do...?
3
I am tired of the conditions of the immigrant children being held at the border as being indescribable cruelty. The conditions are not indescribable. Rather the conditions allowed to exist are very describable and an embarrassment to our country which we thought stopped acting this way in the 19th century.
3
Contact with caring adults is essential for the development of a child's brain. Their brain development is 80% compete by age 2 and 90% by age 5. Developmental events that are missed cannot be fixed. Young children held in detention without their parents are being condemned to a lifetime of brain damage.
This is beyond child abuse. I read about medical experiments performed on the Jews during the Holocaust with horror. I'm far more horrified that my country is also guilty.
3
Trump told Chuck Todd of NBC News when asked to account for the atrocities at the southern border that, "Obama built the cages; Obama separated families." It matters not at this stage whether or not that is true. It is wrong. It is cruel. And if Obama did it, it was wrong and cruel then, too. So what do we do about it now? We only sit back, wagging our fingers, shaking our heads in disgust and anger while Trump exacts his political resentment and revenge as justification for crimes against children. Shame on each and all of us that this horror continues for yet another day.
3
This national sin should be on page one every day until it is fixed. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
5
Perhaps if we started calling these people refugees (which is what they are) instead of "immigrants" it would better establish the moral imperative under which we should treat them.
4
@DS
they are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
1
Mr. Blow, you are right. Trump is running concentration camps.
The way to stop this madness?
1.Get thousands coming in buses to these camps to protest and NOT leave until they are disbanded and the children are returned or fostered.
2. Politicians running for President need as well to show up and walk around and see for themselves. Talk is no good unless the population whose votes they seek see on TV etc what is happening in real time.
Where is Oprah, Rachel, Joe and Mika and on and on. They talk a lot but I have as yet to see any of them going to see for themselves the conditions and reporting on site (not TV reporters) of what it is like to see a 14 year old taking care of an infant.
I live in Europe part time and see the return to Nazism here and at home and Trump saying that these are the wrong kind of people to allow into the USA. "We need more people from Norway and Sweden" and I quote.
There is NOTHING more important than the lives of these children who for no reason other than being black or brown and alone are being treated with such a lack of kindness. It is disgusting and we as Americans MUST be ashamed. Wonder why when they grow up (if they grow up) they will be less than wonderful and caring adults plus anti American.
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE AND COMING FROM A COUNTRY THAT WAS PRO IMMIGRANT AND LISTENING TO TRUMP
SPOUT HIS RACISM WE MUST GET RID OF HIM NOW BEFORE ANY OTHER CHILD DIES.
5
Decent citizens can no longer look the other way. Cruelty to children is not to be tolerated if we are a true democracy. Write your Congressional members, join a visible protest, speak up, donate to those trying to help immigrant families - for god's sake, DO SOMETHING. And most importantly, vote the sadistic, tyrannical president and his evil henchmen out of office.
3
I had always assumed there was a trigger to nullify any comment that referred to or made any other comparison to Hitler or the Nazis, but didn’t know it had a specific name, Godwin’s law.
I’ve referred to Steve Miller the master-mind behind the demonic practices of the trump administration, as the reincarnation of goebbels. Unprintable.
It’s not that it is an easy comparison; it’s the only comparison. Separating parents from their child and placing the child in the conditions described in this article has no other comparison.
1
This is why we MUST have real border security.These parents are endangering the lives of the children because the Progressives have made it way for them to walk across the border.
6
Why can't the people responsible for these atrocities be held to account, and charged with human rights violations, and tried in court????? This would be trump, miller, nielsen, and anyone else who is/was responsible for what is going on as regards the abuse, torture, neglect, deprivation, and incarceration of these innocent children.
It is beyond appalling, beyond horrific, beyond cruel, beyond criminal, and it should certainly not be accepted as "the new normal," but should be prosecuted! Not only have the children been taken from their parents, and the parents are hysterical and petrified; the kids are also petrified, and living in disgusting and sadistic conditions. And what about the psychological damage this is going to cause? And NO ONE is going to be held responsible? Seriously????? The whole thing is surreal and evil.
2
Agreed. "For all that is required for Evil to flourish is for Good People to do NOTHING."
1
Mr. Blow,
Equating the temporary quarters built to confine and shelter an influx of undocumented aliens with forced labor camps specifically designed to facilitate genocide seems like a stretch, even for Rep. Cortez, but it only proves her ignorance.
You know better.
Detention centers are to concentration camps as minimum wage is to slavery. There is no comparison.
The inhumanity of Republicans’ indifference to migrant hardships is rivaled only by the disingenuousness of the Democrats’ outrage. Nobody said a word about the cages when President Obama was holding the keys. And with good reason - our immigration policies are heart-wrenching, but unexceptional.
No country can be expected to take in every person who is dissatisfied with their own homeland, nor can they turn a blind eye to the threats inherent to undefended borders.
Democrats incentivized mass migration with promises of a path to citizenship, and now they bemoan the inability to provide luxurious accommodations to the people whose dangerous journeys they encouraged.
The immigrants are just pawns. The right mobilizes their base by demonizing them and the left uses their plight to marshal indignation.
You are minimizing the Holocaust to maximize the political advantage of the immigration issue.
We should probably be grateful that Trump is president, because if Hillary had won nobody would be talking about this at all.
7
@Gary
This is one of the most fair observations posted here.
The faux outrage by the Dems infuriates me to no end. They are quick to lay blame to stoke more divisiveness for political gain but take no action to address this.
Shameless.
1
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ordered that prisoners of war be tortured, and their minions did so.
The Trump ordered that very young children be tortured, and his minions are doing so.
That is simply how Republican presidents operate.
2
@Jim
Where are you hearing their are actual reports of “torture”?
1
It is happening because those in power do not perceive of these children as living, breathing human beings, because they are poor people of color. Those in power perceive of them only as pawns in their false and disgusting political game of making immigrants scapegoats for all that ails those in Trump's base who are not rich.
2
Since these children are not white and are not citizens, apparently the cruelty and the miserable conditions are just fine to many people in this country.
Of course, it would be very different if this was happening to their own children.
The hypocrisy and double standards is astounding to say the least.
Decency and kindness is only for the whites.
Imagine that.
Mr. Blow, you are an excellent writer! What a brilliant way of -- in a brief opinion article -- totally chilling the reader's blood, piercing the heart and waking us up. The terrifying truth is that the amoral narcissist in the WH is directly causing, or willfully allowing, untold suffering. We must act -- in whatever way we can.
I've been an activist over many decades, and I can attest to the fact that on-going efforts at activism do become wearing when things don't seem to change. However, people of conscience should never be able to look themselves in the face without doing SOMETHING about the ghastly and inhumane conditions in the US' newly growing "detention centers". We thought things had improved, in the area of human rights and civil rights... and then in the last seven years -- yes, even under President Obama -- it became clear that we could not rest and retire our activism.
One of the critical things we must do in the next year includes voting this heinous administration out in 2020.
1
Charles Blow wrote: "Why were we not in the streets every day demanding an end to this atrocity? How did we just go on with our lives, disgusted but not distracted?"
We are not outraged, because the Trump administration has been very successful in numbing us to, and distracting us from, outrageous events by producing a steady stream of them.
5
Mr. Blow would have more credibility if he hadn't exaggerated the evils of virtually every other decision by President Trump. What's the story about the boy and the wolf?
2
I agree with Charles on every point except this: "He [Trump] promised to crack down on immigrants and yet under him immigrants seeking asylum have surged. And he is meeting the surge with indescribable cruelty."
The cruelty is not indescribable at all. Witnesses have described in horrendous detail every vile depredation visited upon children and infants and their grieving parents. This horror is a deterrence ploy, nothing more. As such, it is by definition unjust, by most standards of decency immoral.
Not indescribable, though. We must describe it. Meticulously. With 20/20 vision. Then we must own that this is government policy. We must own that millions of our fellow citizens truly believe that these measures are not draconian enough. ("Shoot 'em," said a MAGA man at a recent Trump rally.)
The Holocaust is seen as the great evil it was for that one reason: we describe it. In museums, at the former camp sites, in documentaries and history books. We do not look away. Nor can we look away from this evil that is ongoing. The bodies of the babies who succumbed while in custody lie in fresh graves. The tears of the children crying out for their mothers are salty and wet.
None of these things are indescribable. They are in fact easy to describe. Like all atrocities, however, they are hard, so very hard, to hear.
Maybe we should all take a drive down to our local under the bridge tarp tented homeless and think about them first.
6
To start with your first paragraphs : perhaps many of us (I.e. me) DID NOT KNOW prisoners were still at Guantanamo. We need to be reminded of this along with all the horrors going on at the border. Reminded often. We as a nation have lost our humanity and unless we the people go to the polls to change things we deserve the opprobrium we get from other parts of the world. We have become a self- centered people partly or perhaps wholly because of so-called”leadership”. We should be ashamed to be Americans.
1
@Lee
Obama promised to close Gitmo. That never happened.
The Times and most of its readers have a selectively convenient memory but only when it fits their narrative.
1
It's one thing to blame Trump, and he deserves all the blame heaped upon him, but he couldn't carry out his directives without the help of good Germans, er, I mean good Americans. The fact is, he has many "good" Americans now working for him at ICE and the Border Patrol. Many of these carry out their jobs with relish and cruelty. Add the private contractors serving up detention and you have the elements of a perfect storm. The tone and design of all of this starts at the top, and continues on down the line. A plague on the houses of the fools who said "It doesn't matter who's President, they're all the same."
1
Immigrant families must be reunited and let free pending their immigration hearings. It is the only humane and affordable option.
1
How did this happen? Selfishness & greed, that's how.
Blow needs to answer his own question before calling anyone a monster. What are we supposed to do about it? Writing my representatives a letter will most likely have the opposite effect. If someone like me is upset over torturing children, immigrant cruelty must be good for Republicans. Marching in the streets won't make any difference either. We are part of the political demographic Trump seeks to upset. His supporters take satisfaction in our discomfort. You're pouring gasoline on the fire.
The only way to end the policy is to punish the people who cheer immigrant detention. As with all things Trump related though, how do you shame the shameless? We have a credibly accused rapist in the White House and self-proclaimed moralists don't even bat an eyelid. I'm not sure how you convince them to care about concentration camps they helped build. As Godwin notes, the cruelty is by design. These people want to torture immigrants. No doubt some would applaud harsher conditions if they were allowed.
I'm not sure what you do with that kind of inhumanity. There it is among us though. Right smack in the center of every Trump rally. Maybe we need child size coffins onstage each time Trump speaks about immigration. I don't know. However, I'd appreciate a more useful suggestion than marching in the streets everyday. If you weren't convinced Trump was a monster before the concentration camps, I'm not sure how a march is going to change anyone's mind.
3
Gut wrenchingly true. We should all be outside of those camps demanding justice and humanitarian treatment for those kids. I am ashamed that I am not. The policy is Trump. The power is Republican. But the guilt is mine. And yours. And that of every American.
My idea of a concentration camp comes from WW2. Planned sytematic extermination of political enemies.
This is not that. This is, however, negligent cruelty and lies to cover up.
Of course it must be stopped, but we still haven't closed the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, so I'm not hopeful.
The heroic dead at Normandy would be appalled.
4
@David Henry
Agree. I am appalled at the number of people writing here today who do not seem to know what a "concentration camp" is.
1
@Frank J Haydn You seem vehement about a correct definition but say nothing about my other more significant point. Why?
Where are American religious leaders on this? I'd presume that all of them are rushing to the border to protest and act on this humanitarian nightmare, right? Where are they?
2
The REAL criminal is in the White House. Lest we forget, the Republican party endorsements he received were well aware of the following:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/01/us/politics/schnackenberg-testimony.html
http://www.casp.net/makaeff-v-trump-univerity-llc/
They knew before Trump's inept inaugural address that Trump was a criminal.
In 220, no one with a sense of decency and respect for the Rule of Law should let off that easily either Trump OR the people who endorsed him.
QUESTION: What Organizations financed the trips from Central America?
Build the wall.
Apprehend, Detain, and Deport ALL illegal border crossers.
Arrest Sanctuary State, Sanctuary County, and Sanctuary City elected officials.
Support ICE.
4
I've heard people go off the rails by the use of the phrase concentration camps As if some how this hasn't happened since the second world war. Oh how quickly we forget such atrocities as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. So please spare me your false sense of history that keeps you feeling safe and distant in that psychological world of disavowal that allows you to think it can't happen here. How many children have to die before you give up your rose tinted glasses for some that see far more clearly. In my estimation it is long past time for all people of good conscience to be out on the streets in the millions to say, "Not in our name! Not in our name. The killing of children is done not in our name!" And that killing isn't confined to the actual death and desecration of a young body that did nothing else but seek succour. There is such a thing as Soul Murder. Look it Up!!! So much for, "Come unto me all those who are heavy burdened and I will refresh you." but I guess that's too archaic, too arcane, too Christly. If I were a modern Keats I'd be writing, "Oh weep for America for She is Dead." Instead I just weep for the ruined lives in cages without hope or health or help.
The US is showing is showing its true nature when it separates families and locks children in squalid camps, no matter what name people choose to use for them. Most Americans looked the other way as the indigenous population was decimated many times over and a whole race of people were held in bondage and treated like animals. We locked US citizens of Japanese descent up in camps not all that long ago, with barely a concern.
Discrimination by skin color and nation of origin is as American as apple pie and it is increasing under the racist regime in the White House today. But these monsters have tapped into a deep vein of hatred that has always been there and which I fear will always remain.
US citizens would not tolerate treating people with white skin like that and if that is not the definition of a racist nation I don't know what is.
Our country cannot respond until we destroy the propaganda that makes a large segment of the population believe those who incarcerated are less than. Trump originally posited the wall was need to stop "Mexican rapists." This label of hate then changed to the "caravans" because more Mexicans were actually leaving the US than coming in. Then he tried to sell hatred towards MS13 because of the increase in Central American immigration. Instead of arresting MS13 members, he went after low lying fruit and found that communities resented their neighbor of decades being deported despite his or her contribution to society. Then he started saying that members of ISIS were in the "caravans," when in fact most are women and children.
We only look at the lie told each day, but fail to push back on how all the lies are dots connected to one thing, making America hateful, and in reality, the antithesis of: "When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’”
Excellent writing Mr. Blow. This puts the total callousness and cruelness of Trump and the Republicans in full view - and it is an ugly picture.
We are better than this, much better.
Charles, the pictures of kids in cages had a copyright date of 2014.
But, you can’t help flogging a good narrative even if it is fake. And you know it is fake.
Given that kids are now used as chips, to buy that free release into the interior to never be seen again, it is probably a good idea to see how the people in possession of the chips got them.
If you care about kids.
4
You ask, “I have often wondered why good people of good conscience don’t respond to things like slavery or the Holocaust or human rights abuse.”
Maybe WE simply became numb to the horrific way WE treat others, realizing that (especially under the republican held Mitch mcchinless senate, and while WE have a bigot-in-chief with anti immigrant steven miller who’s own family would have been wiped out, and crooked Kushner in his cabinet) WE the people are powerless to effect change.
It’s in that powerlessness that WE become exhausted, worn down, depleted and look for ways to help ourselves and those closest to us with whom WE can effect a positive change.
WE have little to no bandwidth for taking in more disturbing information.
WE become dehumanized to the suffering of others.
2
Limited resources my eye. What's limited is the Republican party's sense of decency and shame.
And by the way, just who is the criminal. You Republicans knew that one in the House and Senate before you endorsed Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/01/us/politics/nicholas-testimony.html
With reading evidence files and knowing his past shenanigans (for instance, that he filed for bankruptcy when he owed on that Trump Casino not only employees but several fines and penalties for breaking laws)...
...Even then you knew he had committed what amounts to several felonies.
The Republican party endorsed for president a man who is A CROOK.
2
I’m not sure you can point the finger just at our overwhelmed systems.
The people coming in really are using kids to game the system.
Sure our process is messed up and kids shouldn’t be separated.
But as bad as our process is, the people trying to get in and dragging kids along as part of the strategy, is just as bad.
Bad situation all around.
2
Once again it boils down to ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
The inhabitants of the world are now paying the price of the US 2016 election rigged by Putin.
Vote FOR democracy in 2020
1
I've heard people go off the rails by the use of the phrase concentration camps As if some how this hasn't happened since the second world war. Oh how quickly we forget such atrocities as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. So please spare me your false sense of history that keeps you feeling safe and distant in that psychological world of disavowal that allows you to think it can't happen here. How many children have to die before you give up your rose tinted glasses for some that see far more clearly. In my estimation it is long past time for all people of good conscience to be out on the streets in the millions to say, "Not in our name! Not in our name. The killing of children is done not in our name!" And that killing isn't confined to the actual death and desecration of a young body that did nothing else but seek succour. There is such a thing as Soul Murder. Look it Up!!! So much for, "Come unto me all those who are heavy burdened and I will refresh you." but I guess that's too archaic, too arcane, too Christly. If I were a modern Keats I'd be writing, "Oh weep for America for She is Dead." Instead I just weep for the ruined lives in cages without hope or health or help.
1
I've heard people go off the rails by the use of the phrase concentration camps As if some how this hasn't happened since the second world war. Oh how quickly we forget such atrocities as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. So please spare me your false sense of history that keeps you feeling safe and distant in that psychological world of disavowal that allows you to think it can't happen here. How many children have to die before you give up your rose tinted glasses for some that see far more clearly. In my estimation it is long past time for all people of good conscience to be out on the streets in the millions to say, "Not in our name! Not in our name. The killing of children is done not in our name!" And that killing isn't confined to the actual death and desecration of a young body that did nothing else but seek succour. There is such a thing as Soul Murder. Look it Up!!! So much for, "Come unto me all those who are heavy burdened and I will refresh you." but I guess that's too archaic, too arcane, too Christly. If I were a modern Keats I'd be writing, "Oh weep for America for She is Dead." Instead I just weep for the ruined lives in cages without hope or health or help.
1
I've heard people go off the rails by the use of the phrase concentration camps As if some how this hasn't happened since the second world war. Oh how quickly we forget such atrocities as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. So please spare me your false sense of history that keeps you feeling safe and distant in that psychological world of disavowal that allows you to think it can't happen here. How many children have to die before you give up your rose tinted glasses for some that see far more clearly. In my estimation it is long past time for all people of good conscience to be out on the streets in the millions to say, "Not in our name! Not in our name. The killing of children is done not in our name!" And that killing isn't confined to the actual death and desecration of a young body that did nothing else but seek succour. There is such a thing as Soul Murder. Look it Up!!! So much for, "Come unto me all those who are heavy burdened and I will refresh you." but I guess that's too archaic, too arcane, too Christly. If I were a modern Keats I'd be writing, "Oh weep for America for She is Dead." Instead I just weep for the ruined lives in cages without hope or health or help.
I'm confused. Blow writes about a detention facility for unaccompanied minors, yet his theme is separated children. What is it? It can't be both.
HHS will be out of money by July 1st. Another government shutdown by a Congress that is stuck in a political game of chicken. They claim it's an election year. It's not.
The President gave Pelosi an out, let's see if she can corral her kittens, because the ones at the border are a humanitarian crises. And people such as Blow shamelessly use the situation to trash the President.
4
I agree that concentration camp is an apt description having been raised in a Jewish family right after WWII.
Now GOP are trying to get a Holocaust group to make Rep Ocasio-Cortez be embarrassed and she absolutely should not. The final thing that concentration camps turned into were death camps and with Trump, he is just at the beginning of his efforts. I only hope we can get him out of office, but I am not sure that a lot of the American people understand this threat he has created.
2
Take care of the kids, reunite them with their families. arrest/incarcerate Republican-suppoting "employers" who illegally hire undocumented immigrants in the first place, have a limited amnesty. create a "guest worker" program for future, temporary workers and pay them minimum wage overtime, etc..
1
Self inflicted wounds.
2
My parents came to the US after World War II as refugees. My father was in a number of concentration camps. His first wife and 7 children were murdered in a death camp. I, for one, have no problem with the use of "concentration camp" to describe the horrendous, inhumane, and cruel conditions in which undocumented children (and adults) are being held under the policies of the current Administration. Keep in mind - Most Nazi concentration camps were not "death camps." Rather, they were established to keep human beings in horrendous, inhumane, and cruel conditions. Tell me where is the difference in the current acts of this Administration?
1
I couldn’t agree more with the view that not only are the migrant children being housed and cared for for in deplorable, horrible conditions but that there is a toxic numbness that begins to seep into many of us that is unbefitting our American ideals. Part of this arises onslaught of moral turpitude from Trump and his White House cronies.
We should protest and put political pressure to ensure the provision of safe, humanitarian conditions for migrant detainees and no child should be separated from his/parents with compelling reasons.
Having said all this, I want to also emphasize and reiterate what’s already been said: it is massively insensitive and displays an ignorance of history to call the conditions under which the migrants are kept “concentration camps”. How can anyone (including AOC) imply an equivalence of conditions in the detention camps to the Nazi concentration camps where millions were tortured, gassed and burned in ovens. It’s displays a lack of understanding of history or a lack of sensitivity to connect US detention camps with Nazi death camps.
2
"Concentration camps" were places where Jews and others were sent for the express purpose of destruction.
It is, not to put too fine a point on it, insane to ascribe the same intentions to the Trump administration.
3
This begs the question, why don't Americans march? Is it a geographical thing or a cultural thing? Look at Prague yesterday, Hong Kong last week or Romania or France last year to see the impact a large demonstration can have. The biggest anti-Trump protests to date have been in London. The 2016 women's march and the March for our Lives were impactful and gained significant media coverage, so why no march against Trump's detention camps or against Trump's assault on American democracy in general?
1
I am proud to be an American. I am also intolerant of governments that remind me of an age when condemning someone for practicing their religion resulted in concentration camps and mass deaths. Has our American cultured hardened our sensitivity to human conditions to such a degree that tolerance and issue avoidance becomes the theme of the day? Where are our elected officials? Where is the public outrage? Where is our sense of decency and humanity to innocent children? Is this what America has become?
225
@Robert Schachter Yes, the American people voted in a cruel, dishonest^10, racist, disloyal man as POTUS and the GOP doesn't lift a finger to stop him.
14
@Robert Schachter
Yes
10
@Robert Schachter'
And you are "proud' to be an American?
7
I agree with you, and can only offer this explanation: we're all exhausted and not sure which battle to pick or what we should be protesting for or against. Impeachment? Russian intervention in our upcoming election? The environment? Corruption? Pre-existing conditions? Sexual harassment? The Constitution being ignored? The list goes on and on to such length that one feels numb and confused - and, I might add, as planned. Yes, children in captivity should awaken us, and today I will make it my goal to do SOMETHING related to your editorial.
2
My heart goes out to these kids, but aren't the real culprits here the parents? What kind of parent takes their kids along while they are committing a crime? Illegal immigration is, by its very definition, a crime. Would we feel the same way if a parent brought their children along while they robbed a bank or raped someone, and then claimed they should not be separated from their children? Furthermore, where are these kids staying while en route to the US? Hotels? Inns? I suspect that the conditions which their own parents subject these kids to, is far worse than anything they experience here. If these parents were truly looking for sanctuary, they would ask for it in Mexico and not come all the way up to the US. Otherwise, they are just using their kids as hostages to jump in front of the hundred of thousands of people who try to come here legally. The parents should be ashamed, and both parties should be ashamed for not doing more to eliminate this crisis.
9
Currently I'm finishing an insightful, 2004 book by Robert O. Paxton called "The Anatomy of Fascism" (while 'co-reading' The Mueller Report). It's convinced me we are not stumbling toward a fascist state under Trump.
However, as usual Mr Blow cuts to the chase and identifies two historically disturbing scenarios: 1) we are housing a huge number of men, women, and children of one race, that many have stigmatized, in detention locations that can rightly be called concentration camps (no quote marks needed). And, 2) despite media coverage and words of chagrin, the American public has accepted this as fact, and is moving on.
So we may not have a fascist state, but the authoritarian leadership of Trump and McConnell et al. is not only undermining democracy, but is corroding the ethical core of America. Charging racism and white nationalism is too generous, terms that have numbed us -- the driving force is a draconian, amoral wish to purge the country of all but white Christians.
1
How is it that two million people in Hong Kong can go to the streets to protest authoritarian actions, but here we moan and do nothing? Who is going to organize the marches? We need to make our protests known with huge numbers and relentless marching. Otherwise we will be forever guilty.
1
We need massive national strikes. We need the Democratic leaders to get visible, to unify, and to call for even a one day national strike.
We could have rolling national strikes to call attention to numerous issues of the Trump adminstration's lawlessness, cruelty, and incompetence. The only thing Republicans that motivates Republicans is money - look how they mobilized to stop Trump's so called tariffs on Mexico. So make it cost money.
Democrats need to get it: appeals to reason, empathy, and ethics don't work. This is not a time for business as usual.
3
So, is it best to keep the families together in centers until their cases can be heard? 90% don't qualify for asylum; not liking your country is not grounds, nor is domestic abuse or the presence of gangs. If they are kept together, it still doesn't mean they will live in luxury, but I always thought refugees were seeking safety, not luxury. And many of these kids are sick because they are walking thousands of miles with no care - all because the Dems refuse stop illegal immigration. That is the real cruelty - inviting illegal immigration and empowering the cartels with half-baked ideas for what is humane.
7
Mr. Blow, you are correct in calling the areas of detainment concentration or incarceration camps. It just seems that there is so much toxicity coming out of this administration, that many of us feel overwhelmed by it all, and the fact that the GOP stands idly by and does nothing makes it even more so. We can't even get impeachment under way for this inept president. By all means, many of us would welcome some form of push back and action to this atrocity.
1
While Trump has grossly exacerbated the apparent 'so what' attitude of what appears to be the American public at this moment he did not begin this phase. He was, however, a part of it. He once said that for Michael Milkin to have made two hundred million dollars in one year was "obscene".
The early 1980's brought about a tremendous boom in the accumulation of wealth and with it greed [Reaganomics]. The early 1990's brought us political greed in the form of Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" which was all about political victories in a take no prisoners fashion. The Clinton impeachment, the invasion of Iraq and it's lighting of a fuse that will burn far into the future, the election of Obama [a black man for God sakes], the ever-growing influence of Fox's spun 'News' and the election of perhaps the worlds greatest con-man D. J. Trump.
Roll it all together into a mix that includes a majority of Americans who do not see their life getting better any time soon and you get what we have. A splintered, fearful population eager to punish whoever is blamed and willing to purchase snake oil as a cure.
1
There is a pervasive culture among American border officials of cruelty and callousness.
Too many officers dislike and distrust border crossers, even those who are not undocumented. I know this from my own unpleasant encounters entering the U.S. from Mexico. Once a Customs official called me Pancho. When I reacted angrily, he balled up his fists and approached me menacingly. Only the intervention of a Latino officer headed off what was certain to become a physical altercation.
When American officials work in an environment that regards immigrants contemptuously and with deep disgust, it is quite natural for them to treat children as undeserving of gentle or even humane treatment.
Immigrants are as a rule submissive and docile. They typically will not complain even at the most repugnant behavior.
Thus, mistreatment of aliens is almost always an offense that can be committed with no fear of consequences.
Border cops have become desensitized. They are not uncomfortable subjecting small children to inhumane treatment. If they did feel uncomfortable, such behavior would immediately stop.
What do we do about this outrageous situation?
Demand that legislators press for a cultural change among border enforcement agencies.
Nothing less will do.
1
The United States government must protect the children in its care. Better yet, it should not separate children from parents.
1
Charles, thank you for remembering that behind and beyond all the bright shiny objects - Trump's very own made-and-"solved" Iran crisis, the Democratic nomination process being treated as a horse race, and so on - lies the very real abuse of human beings at the whim of the mis-leader who occupies the White House. Trump's false piety, his almost countless lies, his third-grade syntax and vocabulary, his inability to understand the ramifications of his actions, his inhumane disregard for anyone not like him in myriad ways - all and more are the reasons our nation must continue our efforts to remove him and his enablers from any and all positions of power and influence as soon as possible. It is shameful to our country that articles like yours are a grim necessity. Again, thank you for your posts today and always.
1
So Trump changes the rules re asylum seekers and doesn't have the ability to see the law of unintended consequences, i.e. you end up with more people either sent back or held with their children held separately. This is another example of his administration's incompetence. The result is a large concentration of children held in "camps" surrounded by guards, or concentration camps. They are held in sub human conditions, and essentially tortured and mentally abused. America, these are children. It doesn't matter why they are here, but as their de facto guardians, we are responsible for their welfare. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. This country is better than that, or WAS before the current level of greatness . This is not how America is made greater.
2
No matter how bad the conditions are for these illegal immigrants- it must still be better than what they claimed to be facing in their home countries. These people claim that they would be killed by their government. They live, now, under conditions most Americans would find substandard- but those conditions are, by the accounts of the illegal immigrants, better than the imminent deaths the claim they faced from their governments. Substandard accomodations are better than being murdered. To object is to admit the underlying claim of persecution is a lie.
4
What is happening in these camps, whatever anyone chooses to call it, is a clear “violation against humanity.
Please read the statutes...other nations should be condemning us for these violations of the Geneva conventions!
2
Marches may make us feel good about ourselves, but short of an actual general strike where we shut some considerable part of the economy down, I don't see how they change anything. Trump hates immigrants, and he knows that his base hates immigrants, and that's pretty much all he has left. Other than removing him from power and teaching the GOP a political lesson they'll never forget, I'm not sure what does make a difference. This barbarity actually happened when all the people who knew Trump was a racist hatemonger but failed to cast the only vote that could have kept him out of office abdicated their duty to our country.
Sir,
I believe your reporting of conditions and applaud your writing - on this and other topics.
However, you say, "Donald Trump is running concentration camps at the border. The question remains: what are we going to do about it?"
Will writing be what you do about it? Are there other steps you are willing to actually take and what are they? Calling others to act but not including yourself seems - Trumpian.
2
Taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. Keeping detainees “safe and sanitary”. Now, using these children as hostages in a political battle to get a comprehensive immigration bill from Democrats.
As with so many other regulations, these rules are being deliberately flouted- defying the very underlying reasons, the very ....intelligible directives.... Congress intended when passing the broad statutes. And again, Republicans stand silent while their president, now using children, interprets ‘sanitary’ to mean no soap necessary- just as environmental protection now means dirty air, water, more toxins. And Democrats- refusing to pay blackmail in the name of caving on Wall funding, other conservative immigration demands- no doubt secretly relish the publicity of political opponents treating children badly.
What kind of leaders have we produced? What kind of people are these?
This president is destroying the norms of laws, morals, civility, decency we have spent decades, centuries, attempting to further. Republicans, Democrats- you must come together. To impeach this man.
2
Bad things may happen because of a few Trumpian (rotten) apples, but it's expansion in cruelty and despair is due to 'good' people looking the other way, complicit in their loud silence of complacency.
1
Maybe there is simply this giant, silent, cold thing drifting through the culture like an iceberg that barely pierces the surface.
nice
1
Thank you Mr. Blow. Yes, we should all be on the streets. Yes, the news media should be talking and writing about this non-stop. Every single day that we allow the torture of migrants at the border is a blot on each of our consciences. Every day that passes makes us complicit. When reading history I wondered how atrocities could be perpetuated in plain sight without a population rebelling; now I know.
2
What are we going to do about it? Americans will do almost nothing except for the tiny, tiny group that writes letters to the Times. These are someone else's children. They are detained at a huge distance away, not in our neighborhoods, to be sure. Some of us blame their parents, not Trump.
Amazingly, the stock market keeps rising. Donald Trump is ominously huffing and puffing around the world, earning him continuous headlines in the press and approval for his efforts from nearly half of Americans. None of the 24 Democrat President wannabes risks taking leadership against this crime against children. And Charles Blow asks what are we going to do about it?
1
Of course, the real outrage is not the inhumane, cruel treatment of these unfortunate children -- it's the offense so-called "opinion leaders" (a Saturday night MSNBC host, a Jewish clergyman willing to spend for a full-page newspaper ad, everyone on Fox News, Rep. Steve King of Iowa) are taking to how these camps are described.
Is the fate of these children really as important as not offending those snowflakes who can't bear to see the kids' treatment compared to something else?
Guess not.
Ironically, the Obama’s concentration camps are now Trump’s concentration camps but it was Trump’s economy that drew these masses of economic refugees northward. However, we claim it was the Obama’s economy that caused it.
The Democrats lost the opportunity to govern through compromises and become a legitimate power to lead. DACA, abortion, gun rights, health care, and equal rights could have all been solved years ago with compromises.
Ironically, Biden is running on the promise of reaching across the aisle to compromise and now is leading the field to do the heavy lifting on these issues.
Can the Democrats have it both ways on immigration, the economy, and leadership? My fear is that people are too smart and can see through this political double talk.
5
Footage of these camps and the personal stories of those who suffered family separation needs to be put into an ad - a public service announcement, or a campaign ad - with a simple question: Are you really ok with this? And a simple statement: There are better ways to deal with an immigration crisis.
In this time of Trump, we've become so used to shocking things that it is just one after another and it all disappears with each news cycle. But this needs to be different: this is babies in concentration camps! Real people, children, who will bear the scars of this for their whole lives. America as a nation will also bear those scars: we let THIS happen on OUR watch. How will we live with ourselves when these babies are old enough to demand an explanation of how we just carried on when we KNEW what was happening?
6
@Carrie
Pictures were circulated, and the media responded predictably with outrage. The problem was they were pictures of facilities when Obama was in office.
Obama even said we couldn't handle families at our border. No scarring then, right?
4
The reason "we" are not doing anything about this is that half the country believes 1) Children only have rights before they are born, 2) Trump is a god and can do no wrong, 3) The Senate, Executive and Judicial branch are run by controlled by these people (1 and 2) and no amount of protests, letters, or insistence by the people who do care makes any difference whatsoever.
6
You are correct. We do feel helpless and these are without question crimes against humanity. This needs to end now. I am calling my representative today. This should be the only thing on the agenda right now for every representative. Everything that this president has done has resulted in a crisis and now he wants to start a war, and likely, from the way theses criminals are talking, a nuclear war. America is now the biggest threat to the world. What can we as individuals do?
10
Where are the hunger strikes among the Democratic candidates, against this horrendous "policy" and practice? Where is the outrage, the sense of urgency? Every day, every night these children are without family, is scarring.
Trump and McConnell MUST be defeated at every turn.But I don’t see anything but trite and mild protest from the Democratic candidates, which won’t change anything. Their job: Make it known to the American people that YES, this is happening, and that Democrats are the true pro-family party that’s going to do ANYTHING and everything to stop it.
Not seeing it yet, and will look for it Wednesday night.
7
@Kate Shrewsbury
Same place it was when these conditions existed under Obama.
3
@AACNY
Tone-deaf and standard reply whenever it comes to criticizing Trump or his administration.
You know what, the democratic leadership doesn't deliver. The minority leader in the Senate and the majority leader in the House seem not to grasp how they fell short in delivering to the American people what they should do and that is FIGHT.
Both have no dash, no agressivity nor determination, and in a war like situation this means; DEFEAT, today and in 2020.
Alexandra, girl, go for it. Take the banner and storm forward.
2
How many of these irresponsibly run centers are operating public-private partnerships? How much profit is flowing to the private businesses that are short-changing the safety and health of so many kids? Our government has legal obligation to the children it takes into custody. The executive brand has the power to demand the highest standards of safety and care for these kids. If it fails to meet those responsibilities, it's because profit for someone trumps decency at every point.
12
These camps are crimes against humanity and those responsible must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If our legal system can't, or won't, do it such prosecutions should be referred to the international criminal court at the Hague.
25
@Christy
The illegal immigrants are willfully crossing our border, and breaking our laws. Billions of people around the globe would come to America if given the opportunity. But you suggest we should do nothing to stop them. Typical liberal nonsense.
I'm sure someone else has mentioned this in another comment, but it strikes me how, finally, some folks are waking up to realize that the horrific treatment of immigrants is purely intentional.
I live in a small city of 30,000 in northwest Georgia, about 20 miles from the Alabama state line. I can't tell you how many times I hear pat little bromides like, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," or, "If they'd just [insert instructions here], the cops wouldn't have [insert excessive use of punishment here]." And I won't even go into what they think punishment should be for folks who have the gall to actually break the law. Trump and his folks knows exactly how these people think and what they will tolerate, and guess what - they are spot on. It could get a lot worse in these camps, up to and including multiple deaths, and their collective response would be, "Well, they were asking for it by coming here illegally."
I remember that sick feeling in my stomach the day after the 2016 election. I felt unclean. I felt like I had found out something about my fellow citizens that made me profoundly uncomfortable. Seeming each day since, that feeling has intensified, but at least there is no longer the shock effect.
The people who support this cruel policy are unbalanced. No matter what someone did, you don't treat your fellow humans, in particular children (!), in this barbaric manner. Period.
46
This horrible situation should be addressed by the United Nations, for it is a human rights violation if nothing else. Trump, whose idea this is, should, in addition, be brought up on charges at The Hague.
33
If a parent held his or her child in the conditions in which ICE agents are confining immigrant children, he or she would be subject to investigation and, depending on the evidence, possible criminal conviction, for child neglect and/or abuse. Why should not ICE agents be subject to the same standards and sanctions. There is probable cause to believe multiple crimes are being committed. Lock them up and, if the evidence supports criminal convictions, punish each and every one of them to the maximum extent permitted by law. Government lawyers who make specious arguments that would not fly if these children were convicted criminals, and not innocent children, should be subject to disbarment, suspension or other sanctions.
24
It's probably fair to say that most Americans are shocked, if not numbed by the many acts of Donald Trump and this administration, whether it's separating children from their families at the border, erecting concentration camps for immigrants seeking asylum, or putting us with 10 minutes of an all out war with Iran.
And no doubt, a great many people would like to see something done about these inhuman detentions -- but the question remains how can that be done with a president who evidently has no moral consciousness, an Attorney General and U.S. Justice Department unable to act independently and a Republican Senate ready to follow his every mandate without reason or question?
And on top of that, how does one stem the amount of immigrants seeking asylum in a country that has no real intention of ever granting them that in the first place?
The answer isn't opening our borders any more than it's building a wall, erecting concentration camps or putting children in cages.
But in the name of humanity, something must be done.
112
@N. Smith:
You give a very good response to the inhumane response our so-called President and his administration is providing these asylum seekers.
We need to offer something more than words, "in the name of humanity". It calls for deeds. And now.
9
@N. Smith
funds are appropriated by the Democrat controlled House who have no appetite to offend any of their Hispanic base even though it is hurting the country. Without beds or money and with liberal judges not allowing deportation, we have set up legalized human trafficking. Please consider all the facts. Do you really believe that the DOJ has no moral consciousness or are you just invoking silly inflammatory rhetoric for people who disagree with you
1
@N. Smith In fact the number of immigrants coming into the country is less than it has been in several years. Trump is making it a bigger issue than it is. By refusing to hire an appropriate number of judges and border patrol agents, he has created the mess we're seeing now. The Dems have been asking for funding for these things only to be told that the D... wall is more important and that if he doesn't get his wall money than they can't have theirs either.
Rule by bullying and making demands like a 2 year old is no way to run a country.
Is it time for a second million woman march?
7
50 years ago we put a man on the moon but we can't resolve this issue without adding cruelty and inhumane treatment of those that want to escape and find a better life.
so have congress pass comprehensive immigration reform. None of this is new people.. Obama had the same things going on. As long as our asylum protocols are not changed, we will be faced with a crisis at the border. If either party had any intention of overhauling our system it would have been done. Both sides see it as a wedge issue and ammunition (as this article demonstrates) to hammer their opponents. Does this shameful piece of partisan politics address the real problems ? Of course not.. Its easy to point fingers without offering solutions.. Real solutions.. Having an open border is not a real solution.. This angst should be directed at the legislature who needs to bring real compromise and finality to a decades old problem. That means youre not going to get everything you want.. We have to stop the influx of children into our country..
7
It is new. Yes, immigration and border enforcement are ongoing. But uniform detention is Trump policy and the direct cause of thus misery.
It does not require immigration reform for the Trump administration to adopt humane policies. No act of Congress is needed to house these children decently and find them appropriate living situations. All that’s needed is an administration determined to do the right thing, instead of trying to exact enough cruelty to discourage immigration. Or, if not that, to satisfy the political desire for cruelty.
2
Charles Blow asks why do the people who have knowledge of what is happening not react, as citizens... And it is a fair question. It is, to me, not the relevant one, though. What interests me, concerns me actually, is "why do people participate in this?"
How do the "law enforcement professionals" in the various Federal Agencies that are carrying out these policies in day-to-day practice amp themselves up to go to work?
Since the end of WWII at least, when the full force of what had happened in Europe and Asia at the hands of the Axis powers hit us square in the face, armed forces and law enforcement agencies have held that their members may lawfully refuse to carry out orders they find immoral or inhuman.
Any soldier or police officer is free to go to his / her commanding officer and respectfully decline an order. Laws have been enacted to allow this. Therefore, all personnel -many undoubtedly parents, too- involved in removing infants and toddlers from the care and shelter of their families must be convinced that this is, in good conscience, somehow the right thing to do...
In view of what we have learned about man's capacity for atrocity, this is staggering. Truly.
4
@Rudy Flameng
I just wrote a comment and sent it in before reading Rudy's comment. I said the same thing that he did...in fewer words maybe, but the same thing.
“I am a child, too”
For some reason this simple statement hit me with a tremendous visceral force. Maybe it was a harken to Matthew.
Whatever, I felt this child’s innocence, faith, hope being squashed by an unnecessary- unconscionable cruelty.
6
Where's Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Congress in all this mess? They can write, fund and pass legislation to help alleviate the deplorable conditions on our southern border. The resist Trump strategy is coming full circle on them and it isn't becoming.
11
@Kurt Pickard they can’t do anything with out the Senate too. So why not ask Mitch and the Senate Republicans to do their duty? After all the House HAS passed plenty of legislation that has gone to the Senate to die!
1
@Kurt Pickard Our Democratic Congress has passed helpful legislation, but Mitch McConnell won't bring it to the Senate, and Trump won't sign it anyway. Trump had 2 years of Republican majority, and did nothing. Poor leadership!
1
Our reaction to these people’s needs does not bode well for the future. Migration is not going to get better. Climate change will see to that. What will our reactions be in 10 or 20 years? How will we treat the migrants from Miami later this century? We have a history of populating this continent with migrants. Throughout the rural US we have communities losing population. Countries that do not have a history of welcoming migrants are having trouble maintaining population and have stagnating economies. We need to think less parochially, less selfishly, and begin to show courage, strength, and compassion, or this century will be bloodier than the previous.
4
@Rue. How was the previous century bloody? Do you mean WWII?
Mr Blow,
While I share you passion regarding the inhumanity of Trumps immigration policy and his inhumanity in general I feel it is equally important to be true to history and record the fact that President Obama, once known as the “Deporter in Chief”, first used Fort Sill in 2014 to hold migrant children. Located in Oklahoma, once used as a detention camp for Native American Apaches as well Japanese Americans, it is a stain on the USA and a black mark on any President be it Republican or Democrat.
8
Agreed, why aren’t the news cycles, print and online media pounding us with this cruelty by the Trump administration? The candidates should all be talking about this non stop.
Everyday, I ask myself if this is the Twilight Zone.
298
@Joan stolpen
Talking about what? The 6 million Jewish people who were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps? So they can clarify that there is absolutely no comparison to the detention centers for illegal immigrants who have willingly crossed the border into our country.
1
@Good I don't think kids 'willingly crossed the border into our country". Your rigid certainty must protect you from the heartache one feels when considering this issue. I don't see how comparing these detention centers to concentration camps hurts you in any way, nor does it demean the memory of those who suffered in similar camps in WWII.
17
@Joan stolpen
Thank you!
Please contact your 2 Senators and House Rep to demand they take immediate action to extricate these innocent children.
And ESPECIALLY contact Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi who just sit on their butts doing nothing.
www.mcconnell.senate.gov/.../index.cfm/contactform
www.speaker.gov/contact-us
Force Mitch and Nancy to personally inspect these deplorable detention centers or make them sleep in a thermal blanket on a cold concrete floor in a cage for a few nights.
10
These are Crimes Against Humanity. Who are the people working in these camps? Why not show them in the news? I don’t want to hear: "I was only following orders." If the workers at these camps refuse to participate, the camps would close. Some day, they will claim they have PTSD. I don’t want to hear it. No excuses. You participate as a worker at the camp, as a legislator who turns a blind eye, as a voter who supports this, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.
4
@E
"I don’t want to hear it. No excuses. You participate as a worker at the camp, as a legislator who turns a blind eye, as a voter who supports this, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE"
Oh thank you...I didn't realize you are the one who makes the decisions for all of humanity.
By your same logic, if a policeman mistreats a citizen in the line of duty, then all policemen should be responsible for that action.
Complete nonsense.
The workers at our borders have have an incredibly difficult job. They are overwhelmed by the incredible daily influx of immigrants who decide to skirt our immigration laws and enter our country illegally. Are some of them working outside the bounds of how they should be treating these children - yes. But to lump them all together and say if they "refused to participate" is ridiculous. What would happen then? These children would be in worse conditions.
You are cavelier in slamming these workers - but I don't hear a peep out of you railing how these children have been but in dangerous conditions by their parents ...no, no, let's not mention THAT!!
4
Where are the Democrats on this issue? If we can see endless ads on late night tv about abused and neglected dogs, why isn't the party running ads showing the travesty at the border? Why isn't the leadership calling press conferences showing photos and videos of this abuse? Why is the Democratic-led congress not holding hearings during which witnesses testify before tv cameras? Democrats: Do something!
1
@marklee. Why aren’t they passing funding? What good are more hearings?
2
@Jackson just a lot of political theatrics.
If the people can demonstrate in Prague, we can. When there is an organized march, I will grab my day pack and walk. To Wahington, D.C.
2
@stidiver. Amusing. Guess it’s easier for you to walk than send money.
It astounds me how much more ink and ire has been spilled over Ocasio-Cortez calling these 'concentration camps' than the fact that a number of children have died there in the last year.
Didn't know that Godwin himself said the 'concentration camp' analogy was apt, thanks for sharing Charles.
5
Every story choses its own narrative. The policies regarding family detention and or child separation are set by the courts having been asked to support or reject a given case. To imagine that there are or will not be problems with handling of such numbers of people on a daily basis is naive.
At the root is a premise that whatever the government does, especially this administration, is inherently wrong and cruel for that is its true nature. It offers nothing and is not objective about any of this sad reality.
As to concentration camps, the ignorance inherent in the use of the term is overwhelming. From the 1930's camps were for punishment and deprivation of food and shelter was key. Labor was forced and health care non existent. Here, to the contrary, the government is doing its best as are the contracted private sector and charity or faith groups to manage these impossible numbers....But no, it has to be spun nor solved, it has to be invective and not objective understanding...
The more who die , the better the argument they want to make. How cynical and what false moralizing.
10
@Joel Levine While I agree that every story has its own narrative, I think you may have also chosen your own narrative. The use of concentration camps preceded the 1930s, although I would agree that is how we now most associate the term. However, the narrative that you and the current administration have chosen, is that the only recourse to handling the mass influx of these children and their families is to put them in facilities to deter more from coming. Clearly this is not working since the numbers are increasing every month. The other choices include releasing the children to already existing family members in this country as quickly as possible. The daily cost to detain a person in these facilities ranges from $775 upward and that probably does not include medical care that becomes more necessary as more people get sick. In the past, asylum seekers were released, often times with a monitoring bracelet, until their case could be heard. This alleviated the massive costs associated with building, organizing and maintaining these detention facilities. So I disagree with your narrative that the current administration and the other support groups are doing the best they can do. I also have added a broader historical perspective on the use of concentration camps so you can see that also may need a different narrative than the one you have chosen to focus on. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/
one reason that many of us are not "in the streets" over this, although conditions may be unsafe, is that we are out and about trying to get our own homeless fed, showered and housed...the border detainees are, essentially, law breakers and any failures in of the system of dealing with them are remediable by the congress who can fix the worst of detention, the harm that comes to children (already put in harm's way by their parents or exploiters), in minutes.
that we have citizens of the republic, many of them veterans, in such distress seems to have eluded the grasp of the "humanitarians," many of whom live pr pass daily within sight of the tent rows in los angeles, where mr blow can join the effort any day of the week by buying some box lunches or pizzas and perhaps some personal hygiene stuff, where he can actually walk up to persons actually in distress, give them a meal and maybe take something away from a brief conversation that might be of use in a future column
8
@ecco
What law are they breaking? Asylum seekers are not committing any crime. And if you're trying to make some correlation between them and the homeless, nice try, but no cigar. We are now living in Dickensian times where cruelty and greed rules the day.
6
@MB,
You and so many other commentators pushing the asylum line don’t understand what it is or requires. These people are exploiting loopholes the Democrats refuse to close with the result we are going to end up with four more years of the Trump mob. All these migrants and their children they can’t possibly support will end up inundating schools, jobs, housing, medical care our own citizens can’t afford. Now, when that happens where do you think they are going to take out their resentments? Here is a clue: not by voting for Kamala Harris. Bye, bye environmental protection, America.
5
@MB
your logic, "no cigar" because "we are living and dickensian times" a fallacious as it is (a false equivalent, for starters)
rather supports than denies a correlation (not discoverable in my original note) between the homeless and "them"...in a dickensian age poverty and injustice rule...leave dickens for a moment and try some brecht: "first feed the face and then talk right and wrong"...all of us have a chance to go into the street and actually help someone in need of a meal, start there.
as your imperial grant of "asylum seeker" to all who are challenging the border (most of whom, on camera cite the allure of emplo
What does "Never Again" mean when we continuously let this happen around the world and now in our own backyard? It becomes meaningless, a platitude with no moral authority behind it.
5
@Abby
Genocide is happening on our southern border?
1
To all who try in any way, shape, or form to justify what is happening to these children and their families at the border, please think again.
More than one year ago according to the publication The Irish Times, the President made a "deal" with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar "for a solution for undocumented Irish people living in the US," saying that he and Varadkar have become "fast friends."
The Irish Times quotes Trump as saying, “I know that the Irish people who have made their lives here, including those who are undocumented and living in the shadows, love this country dearly,” he said. “They want to continue to contribute to the life of this great country, and continue to play their part. Their dream will never die.”
If THIS does not show the policy at the border to be racially motivated and not a matter of simply being an undocumented immigrant, nothing will.
The American people who support this policy at the border cannot be reasoned with. Their moral disengagement with regard to this atrocity is indicative of a much deeper issue of their lack of moral ethics and their love of cruelty. They now have a patron saint to worship.
Perhaps the truth of this will cause other Americans who do not subscribe to this sort of cruelty to think long and deeply about what kind of country they want to live in and what this country is becoming.
5
@Maggilu2
You offer no solution to stem the tide of illegal immigrants from the south and all over the world who desire to come to America. We cannot take them all. We are a sovereign nation, and have the right to control who crosses our borders.
1
@Good
No one is disputing the fact that we are a sovereign nation etc. or asking that we accept all undocumented immigrants who come here.
However, dehumanizing treatment of one set of immigrants while making clandestine "deals" to accept a very, very, large number of other undocumented immigrants based on skin color is not supposed to be what this country is about.
There IS such a thing as Due Process under US and International Law for those applying for asylum. There should be referrals made to the corresponding appropriate channels, and recommendations made for others who may be undocumented under the usual confines of immigration laws.
As for stemming the tide, the refugee caravan from Honduras is the result of the 2009 military coup, begun under George W. Bush),which ousted the democratically elected Manuel Zelaya, whom the US viewed a socialist troublemaker for instituting such dangerous policies as a national minimum wage, free light bulbs for poor families, and privileging subsistence farmers over multinational agribusinesses. The US then "legitimized" the coup by sending a group of GOP congressmen to monitor another election, "won" by a corrupt strongman with ties to organized crime.
It might do well for the US not to meddle in the internal politics of these countries if we want to "stem the tide", and not have people running for their lives.
@Maggilu2
Irish illegal immigrants are running scared b/c the number of deported Irish is up under Trump.
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/number-of-irish-deported-from-us-has-doubled
The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are from either Latin American countries or Asia.
Your indignation is on point. Also to be considered is the fact that Trump is unaffected by marches and public outcries. He does not care. If the courts tell him to stop something, he waffles and stalls and keep on doing it.
The situation on the border grows worse not better and America watches. The "40%" hold the upper hand. Trump sees to it.
1
Why people don't protest is because there is wide spread belief that the claims of hardship at these centers is exaggerated, and that this situation, unlike concentration camps, is a problem migrants have brought upon themselves. Migration is a choice, being Jewish was not. Also, the huge number of migrants arriving at a time when the US is dead set against giving them asylum or allowing people entry to become illegal citizens, is the cause of this situation. The solution? Give more funds to the system and the centers, oversee them to insure all of the migrants basic needs are met, work with the countries migrants are fleeing from to ease hardships there, and for both sides of the issue to calm down a bit. These aren't summer camps or concentration camps. They are detention centres and needed to be funded and managed properly. There should be, if costs and legistics allow and if real harm warrants them, family detention centers. As well, migrants need to accept the conditions of migrating to the US. If they are unacceptable, they shouldn't migrate.
10
Robert H. Jackson stated in his opening statement to the Nuremberg tribunals:
„We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.“
And so they administered justice instead of revenche favoured by Churchill and Stalin.
Of course everybody resists to call the unbearable by name, but doing so makes oneself a bystander witnessing atrocities committed by the state.
I hope that there will be a reckoning in Justice Jackson‘s sense after - if - this sadistical administration has been brought to an end with regard to perpetrators and bystanders! Without a thorough judicial process justice or the trust in justice will not be reestablished.
1
"The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things;
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings"
What does it matter what we call these concentration camps? YES! Technically, they are concentration camps. The more substantive issue is that we are KILLING children, separating toddlers from their parents (too many of whom will NEVER see each other again), and treating them worse than animals in a pound. Can anyone grasp the cruelty of having your child ripped away from you and never seeing that child again. POSPOTUS, you need to be over and done.
5
@Jill Balsam
"Technically, they are concentration camps."
I can suggest a couple of good history books that will clear up your evident confusion.
1
@Frank J Haydn You only need to look in the dictionary. And you miss the point, of course.
Concentration Camps were invented in America during the US Civil War. Harry Truman spoke of his grandfather's experience. According to Mark Weber writing in the Journal of Historical Review, Vol 2 No 2, 1981, the North held 215,000 Southern prisoners, 26,000 died in camps while the South held 194,000 Northerners, 30,000 died in camps. Many were captured soldiers, but also civilians forceably removed from their homes, criminals, spies, and others. Andersonville was the most notorious and the name alone would instil horrible memories and anger for a generation, photographs of some emaciated survivors exist. During the Second Boer War in what is now South Africa (1899-1902) 26,000 women and children and over 20,000 Africans died in camps. Make no mistake, we now have concentration camps of our own horrific making on our peaceful southern border. Perhaps it's time we Americans marched south to see for ourselves.
3
This past Saturday my two teenage sons and I visited the concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany. The guide told us how it started: It was not a death camp, rather a detention center for people the state - and society - considered to be „unerwünscht“ - undesirable. The difference between a concentration camp and a prison? No trial and inhumane living conditions.
Until past Saturday I was hesitant to call the facilities in which the migrant children are kept concentration camp. Not anymore.
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@Petbo
"The guide told us ..."
Do you believe everything that you are told?
Atrocities are enabled, in part, by demonizing the victims. Trump did his best to convince us that all migrants were rapists, killers, gang bangers, or drug dealers; that they were an existential threat to the American way of life. Demonizing the enemy works in warfare as well; it helps soldiers to rationalize the killing.
How did we get to the point where children became demons fit for sub-human conditions and treatment? Those responsible have no answer that would stand in the court of human decency.
6
I believe many of us have outrage fatigue and feel overwhelmed. I’m not in a position where I can “hit the streets” or travel to where ever these concentration camps are located. Having said that, I believe caring for these children needs to be a top priority. Members of Congress should be down there along with the news media broadcasting every day. Surely resources can be deployed. I just don’t know what they are. It’s deplorable enough that these children are separated from their parents but to see them being kept in such horrid conditions is unbearable. What can we as individuals do other than call our representatives, who don’t do anything? I feel helpless. Trump wants suffering. That’s part of his grand plan. That’s the only tool in his toolbox. He’s a bully, punitive, and vengeful. This is such a stain on our country and should constitute crimes against humanity as far as I’m concerned.
3
You ask how this evil can happen but the answer is very banal, to borrow from Hannah Arendt. After years of systematic dehumanization and criminalization of these people by Trump and his right wing media echo chamber, they are no longer seen as our brethren worthy of compassion and humane treatment. Maybe Trump’s evangelical sycophants should visit one of these camps to see what kind of treatment their savior believes they deserve.
4
Suffice to say we are running out of outrageous words to describe the Trump's administration policies.
If I am not mistaken the refugee can withdraw their claim of asylum and go back home at any time. People in concentration camps are not afforded that luxury.
We need refrain throwing around terms like concentration camp and Slavery less we become desensitized to them.
2
The cruelty is a feature. Trump voters put him into office with the specific mandate to carry this kind of thing out. Why? Because they are depraved, their minds have been poisoned by the shock of realizing that they don't matter more than they actually do simply because of race, religion, or whatever their favorite go-to identity is. Blow is asking what we're going to do about this specific case of egregious cruelty, but we should be asking ourselves what we're going to do about its source. Are we still quite certain that those among us, now self-identified as Trump voters, are mentally or emotionally qualified for full civic participation? Do we want these people making more decisions affecting the nation?
2
The number of children dying in Border Patrol custody has risen because the number of children crossing the border illegally has increased. While the children were technically in Border Patrol custody, they died in hospitals. If the Border Patrol has not taken them into custody, they would have died in the desert without medical care.
Charles Blow's assertion that migrant children are being held in conditions that resemble Holocaust death camps is a monstrous lie.The conditions he describes apply to Border Patrol processing stations, which have been in operation for decades. The processing stations are overcrowded due to a tsunami of illegal border crossers, but migrants on average spend less than 24 hours at the processing stations before they are transferred to other facilities.
Federal courts have ruled that migrant children apprehended at the border cannot be held in custody.
They have to transfer them to Health and Human Services childcare centers. The federal court orders are the only reason the Border Patrol separates migrant children from their parents and sends them to the childcare centers.
The childcare centers do not resemble concentration camps. Most children spend less than six weeks at the childcare centers before being released to parents, family members, family friends or other sponsors.
6
@William Case
Thank you for some relief from the crazy hyperbole being bandied about about children in concentration camps. Fortunately, even without these statistics, most Americans can see with their own two eyes that the situation at the border is untenable and must be addressed.
The Times and others until recently were denying there was a crisis. They are only now acknowledging a problem because they can use it as a cudgel on Trump. That's some moral message they're sending.
3
Wm Case, even assuming all you write is true, it’s what you leave out that is telling. The threatened Mexican tariffs, the threatened roundup of illegal immigrants now working, peacefully, here- put off. We don’t want to disrupt businesses, corporations supplying the impetus for illegal border crossings. We don’t want to cut off corporate supply lines from Mexico. Only the children will suffer. No soap, no diapers. Look at what you are justifying....only a few days, only six weeks. Perhaps the conditions compared are a “monstrous lie”. But the mindset that can justify this treatment of children- is something else. Get back to me when packing houses close, when supply lines close companies. When, adults, their pocketbooks, suffer.
@Jo Williams
It is usually 12 to 78 hours at the processing centers and six weeks at the childcare centers; however, the childcare centers have dormitories, classrooms, cafeteria and playgrounds. The bear zero resemblance to concentration camps.
The Democrats and Republicans are responsible for over $21 trillion in national debt, but they can't give Trump $25 billion to build a wall while getting back concessions that will solve, once and for all, a problem both parties have failed to solve for decades before Trump became president? Don't lie to yourself, the Democrats are not interested in fixing this problem because they come to the table with offers that do not meet Trump's demands and Trump, in kind, will offer the Democrats nothing without getting what he wants in return. At the end of the day, I think both parties need to shut their mouths and let Trump have his shot at fixing the problem, afterall...both parties created this mess.
6
If they are so bad why do migrants keep coming? When I read of cut backs in sports I knew Laura Ingraham’s comment about being like summer camp might be true.
2
Nomenclature matters.
These holding or processing centers are not concentration camps nor detention camps because Central American asylum seekers voluntarily travel to the southern US border without documentation. There is nothing coercive about their migration, except the pull of greater opportunity and the push of violence at home.
Jews were forcibly herded together and sent to concentration camps where they were systematically exterminated. Japanese Americans, too, were rounded up, relocated, and many sent to internment camps.
As many observe, the root of the problem lies in the untenable conditions in the countries of origin, in Guatemala and other Central American nations, a situation created by corrupt and impotent leadership, prejudice toward indigenous and mestizo populations, and US foreign policy. Mexico’s laxness toward managing its own borders contributes to the problem.
The family separation policy is unfathomable. The desire to process and prosecute adult asylum seekers according to the rule of law while extracting innocent children and treating them as wards of Health and Human Services has exacerbated an already tragic situation.
Asylum seekers can no longer travel to America with the assumption that they will be treated humanely and civilly, which has always been an integral aspect of the nation’s appeal.
America is no longer the lodestar for the world’s downtrodden, who are increasingly flocking to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.
1
We, the people, are going to do nothing about it. We have done nothing so far. Why expect more? We are all guilty. Don't blame Trump. He's with us because fools elected him and support him.
Trump should be charged with crimes against humanity for his criminality against children on our boarder. This action proves for sure he's dark, twisted, villainous and in a word evil. He also has that classic mistake proof evil rant. I'm also convinced the Evangelicals are likewise, and also of the worst hypocrites to call them selves Christians, except for the President Carter group. Good Americans must confront these Evangelicals whom act today like the old Christian sect that persecuted the Cathars in southern France.
Why is our press not holding Mike Pence accountable for the $40 million owed to government coffers for loans unpaid for polluted abandoned gasoline station in many states? Maybe he’s above the law like Trump? That’s all America needs is a national ticket with a tax cheat & a loan deadbeat. How low can the GOP go?
@A. Stanton Jackson
Yes, let's have a trial. Let's hear all the evidence and see how, exactly, democrats have played a role in this debacle.
3
All the accusations against an administration that is denied help by Congress. So you want the whole world immigrating here. We should cuddle them, give them free healthcare, schooling and hobbies. All the while, don’t talk about the poor kids in Chicago, Appalachia.
It doesn’t matter. Trump will be re elected and Dems May lose the House. Hopefully.
6
Let’s not be asking what “are” we going to do. How about what “can” we do? Angry though we might be, what—in concrete terms—can we do? Write letters? Big deal. No one reads them or cares.
This game was played in Europe with similar results. So why not call them refugee camps. Or call it something somewhere between reality and FEMA camps. Who's behind it Russia and the Koch brothers? Soros? The Mexican government? It has succeeded in dividing Europe and doing a good job in this country. Another way the Democrats loose votes.
Since World War 2 it's been a belief we have to take in any and all refugees. It was unworkable then and unworkable now.
2
Thank you for saying that these children are in concentration camps publicly and that the conditions of these children are torture. Why are not the so-called Christian ministers and priests condemning this from the pulpit? I have written and called my representatives and participated in protests but it seems no one is listening. If anyone has an idea of how to stop these atrocities please let us know what to do.
2
Where are the good Christians (and others) - who advocate so fiercely for an embryo - when it comes to these migrant children interred in a concentration camp? Where are the voices of moral outrage from the evangelists and other pro-lifers proclaiming the sanctity of human life? Where are the advocates of "life begins at conception" when it comes to these inmates in America's great and visible shame?
The hypocrisy of these pro-lifers is beyond comprehension. Stand up for an egg, but ignore the suffering of real human beings. Children no-less.
AOC got it exactly right - these are concentration camps and these children ARE being punished for the unspeakable crime of wanting the American dream (and being hispanic). Our government is engaged in one long and continuing violation of human rights. Supporters of this policy should look themselves the mirror and ask the question: "How would you feel if this was your child?"
I find myself overcome with disgust and dismay for where we are today as Americans. But not surprised as we have been here before. Hopefully the next generation will not make the same mistakes and treat others as they would themselves like to be treated.
It is never too late.
We need to organize a march and we need the media to make these stories front page news every day. And in the name of God, where are the voices of outrage from the Clergy in America?
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@Nancy
Many clergy are speaking out. Just not loud enough or often enough. The people in the pews have a responsibility too.
8
@Nancy
Unfortunately a large percentage of the “most Christian” of the clergy sold out to Trump in exchange for a few judges and promise of reversal of Roe. Godwin not withstanding, this all happened in Germany in the 1930s.
22
@Nancy We should definitely be marching and in a place that the children will hear us or see us. They need to know they are loved. I'm in a constant state of distress and just want to help them so much!! Planning a trip to Tucson later in the year but will move it if necessary. Tucson anyone?
7
Trump, in his campaign, and since his inauguration, " . . . promised to crack down on immigrants and yet under him immigrants seeking asylum have surged. And he is meeting the surge with indescribable cruelty."
"Make America Great Again" is little more than buzzword for the pro-cruelty movement that is growing in leaps and bounds in today's America. It's bad enough that we see it all over the internet and social media. We surely see it in the migrant detention camps; we see it in the various state legislatures in their efforts to control women through excessively restrictive anti-abortion laws; we see it in the Administration's effort to gut clean-water and clean-air safety regulations, with no consideration of the consequences for ourselves and future generations; leaving men to rot in jail at Guantanamo without ever giving them a trial; and we certainly saw it in the GOP-led Congress' efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with - - nothing!
You have a despotic regime running the WH and half of Congress. If people are growing weary of wrestling with their anger, one wonders if we will ever succeed in voting the GOParty of Mean out of power. Constant calls to our legislators may not be enough. What are we going to do about it, you ask. I hope we can rely on the voters who want Trump and his kind out of office; they are going to have to be just as loud, if not louder (but not obnoxiously so) as his base. I'll leave it there.
3
It's disingenuous to discuss our broken immigration system without making a single reference to our bipartisan Congress and it's utter lack of willingness to engage on this daunting challenge....arguing about semantics is a vivid illustration of our lack of confidence in our impotent legislators.....
4
@Dennis Holland: Congress proposed bipartisan immigration bills since 2013, and as recent as 2017. The Republicans sabotaged the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill and Trump refused to sign off on two bipartisan proposals after he promised to sign any such proposal. The ball is squarely in the court of Trump and the Republicans. Our legislators have been doing their jobs, but they are running against brick walls in the form of Boehner (2013) and Trump (2017).
1
I’ve never understood why Americans are so reluctant to march, to protest. The people of Hong Kong have succeeded, the Gilets Jaune (Yellow Vests) of France have had an impact, the Czechs are protesting. Why are we so meek? As someone pointed out a while ago, if when Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers, the nation’s truckers had gone on strike, it would have ended there.
As Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) said, “The people is a beast of muddy brain that knows not its own strength. . .With its own hand it ties and gags itself—gives itself death and war for pence doled out by kings from its own store.”
172
@Caryl baron Yes. If we had only done so for Bush v. Gore. When will all people vote?
12
@Caryl baron
Silly marches will not change the fact that 6 million Jewish people were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. This event in history has no comparison, especially not to detention centers holding illegal immigrants who willingly crossed our border, and entered our country.
@Caryl baron
It could be, that aside from a group of loud ethnic lobbies and people who really don't like the country's current demographics, that the problems of illegal immigrants are not very important to most American citizens.
If they are really fleeing danger, then detention would be a relief. Unless they're just benefit shopping, which is most likely the case.
7
Separated infants and young children are not in a position to "benefit shop" for anything.
4
“Well, getting your eyes put out is better than being crucified. We are clearly living up to our moral responsibilities by only doing the former to our fellow humans.” Dude. Come on.
Mr. Blow, Thank you for writing this article. Thank you for keeping this issue front and center. We need to hear this again and again until the cruelty we inflict on people seeking refuge is no longer tolerated. You are a pivotal voice in bringing us all to our senses in what is right and just. Thank you.
4
Every Sunday the Columbus Dispatch publishes a list of bills and how our Senators and Congressmen voted. And every Sunday, it is predictable as each side votes with their party. You can protest, you can write and yet no matter how horrific the situation, no minds are changed. We must vote these people out of office to get change and become the country we want to be.
4
Thank you for the article. As an individual I feel powerless about this despite taking what action is available to me. I feel we need more and more call out from high profile and wide distribution voices keeping this issue in front of us all and calling it what it is. Please don't stop. Thank you.
8
It would be a good time for some interested agency or educational institution to fund a study that compares the conditions in U.S. prisons to the conditions in the camps housing migrants in U.S. Customs custody. Seriously.
4
They’re literally the same as when Obama operates them. It’s clear Democrats want open borders and that is not going to be tolerated by most American voters.
30
@Ed If they are the same, how come one approach produced no deaths in eight years and the other has produced seven in only two years? Also, pick an argument. Either Obama was the same as Trump or Democrats do not want open borders. You can't claim that both are true. However, you can complain that neither is. That Obama's deportations were more reasonable and his detention more humane. Also, while some may have been treated unfairly or cruelly during Obama's tenure, he did not revel in that cruelty as Trump does.
13
@Ed President Obama never allowed camps like this.
And even if, in some other reality, he did, that does not give President Trump the excuse to continue operating them.
Nothing stops him from shutting them down other than his own lack of a soul.
2
False. Obama did not adopt this monstrous policy wholesale like Trump.
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I agree America can and should treat these children more humanely. But there are hundreds of millions of children worldwide suffering from much worse circumstances, many of whom we as a country could help. But we don't. And for columists like Blow, the incentives are to criticize anything linked to Trump, and ignore things their readers don't much care about, like children dying in Africa.
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@Mark Nuckols
The distinction is between bad “circumstances” elsewhere in the world, and harm we, the US, are directly causing. It’s odd that you wouldn’t see that difference.
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@Mark Nuckols That is a false equivalence. Children dying in Africa were not put there at the command of Donald Trump, nor are they prisoners on American soil. Mr. Blow is correct to criticize Trump, for the forced separation of children from their parents with the express purpose of hurting them is a crime against humanity and one for which Donald Trump will be held accountable -- if not by his fellow citizens, then surely by God.
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@Mark Nuckols What has us so upset is that this is a direct result of positive action by our government, rather than something nasty way over there. Americans still hold the self-congratulating view of themselves as more rational and just than other countries. However, it appears that Trump voters have turned the corner on that and are happy to embrace atavistic cruelty in order to feel 'stronger'.
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Look, it’s sad, but so is the state of our immigration law. We don’t have the funds allocated by congress to create the beds necessary to handle the surge. The courts don’t allow simple denials of entry and swift deportations. So what’s left? Either let them in freely or what we’re seeing. What’s happening now is awful but release is obviously unacceptable as well. It’s unfortunate that congress won’t change asylum laws to allow for quick adjudication and deportations.
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@DRS I think the black and white argument you present is a bit disingenuous. It relies on an assumption that we don't have the resources to handle the surge. This presumes that a) we lack funds to create infrastructure necessary for the number of people seeking entry and b) that we should be channeling asylum seekers into such infrastructure in the first place. Perhaps we should be doing what international law requires us to do: admit asylum seekers. The veracity of their claims should be determined in the courts, and the overwhelming majority of people seeking asylum show up for their court date. To speed up the process, have more judges and court dates, not more crimes against humanity.
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@DRS, why is release and monitoring unacceptable? It worked well under the Obama administration, with 99 percent of refugees showing up for their asylum hearings.
The current situation is both tragic and unnecessary. We know that monitoring works, and we could keep families together and save taxpayer money too.
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@SandraH.
Post a link to back up this claim. It is completely contrary to anything I have ever heard about the rate of people showing up for hearings.
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I read through this pretty carefully and saw no hint of an alternative approach. The problem is clearly the Flores decision. Once the decision to hold the parent(s) has been made -- which is the correct decision -- the Flores decision essentially mandates separating parents and children.
Parents and children should be held together. Since the overwhelming majority of asylum cases are rejected and it makes no sense to do "catch and release", the only alternative is to hold families together. This will probably require mass DNA testing to verify that we are actually dealing with related families in the first place.
The best path forward would be to greatly increase capacity to much more quickly adjudicate and reject the 90% of asylum filings.
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@Kurfco-
let the experts ( economists, etc)- study the CAUSES for the migraion north from south central america.
formulate informed, expert suggestions for solution. ( not a wall ...).
think about it : when you have pain in your chest - you want a CHEST EXPERT TO EXAMINE YOU. NOT A POLITICIAN.
... maybe introducing economic improvements in central America may have a positive effect on reducing local gangs killing / terrorizing the population, removing the incentive to migrate north.
and formulating a smart system of dealing with migration is clearly way over due.
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An alternative approach would be to rethink the issue entirely. The borders should be patrolled for weapons and drugs; that’s unobjectionable. Otherwise I think George Washington’s toast at a dinner celebrating the end of the Revolutionary War has it right: that America should be a refuge for the persecuted of the earth.
Libertarians and conservatives should love this idea: it entails shrinking the government. Too bad they either don’t know or don’t care that the vast, indeed overwhelming, majority of American crime is not committed by immigrants. Guess unthinking hate, er, trumps reading, learning, and the pursuit of goodness too.
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@amir burstein
You can study why people rob from banks, why people abuse their spouses, but, in the here and now, we enforce the law against those crimes. We should be doing the same with illegal "immigration". We are in our present mess because of inadequate law enforcement that has sent the de facto message that if you can get into the US, by any means at all, you can stay. We are seeing just how hard it is to undo this messaging.
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There is a very low standard for letting migrants who request asylum into the country. All the migrants have to do is say they are fleeing persecution in their own countries and that they fear having to return. Virtually every Central American migrant knows to say this, with the result that 90% of them are entered into our formal asylum process.
Single adults who request asylum are placed in detention until it is time for their hearings to determine if they qualify. The Flores decision said that families could not be detained for over 20 days. An appeals court said parents could be detained until their hearings, but not minors. The problem with this is that detaining parents for longer than 20 days means they are separated from their children. Obama decided against family separation, and now, Trump has belatedly come to the same conclusion.
Central Americans know that all they have to do to be admitted to U.S. is to arrive with a minor and say that they fear returning home. They know they will be told to show up for an immigration hearing at a future date, but that once admitted to the country, that they can disappear into the general undocumented population.
Up to 40% do not show up for their asylum hearings. Overall, immigration judges are finding that only 10 - 15% of Central Americans qualify for asylum. But, once admitted to the U.S.,few leave.
Why are we admitting 90% of those requesting asylum, if only 10 - 15% qualify for it?
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Because this is the process that we have in place. You’re very lengthy comment also does not address the reality that young children are being separated from their parents. I can’t imagine a scenario in which this would be appropriate.
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@ann, do you have a citation for the claim that 40 percent of those refugees released into the general population don't show up for their asylum hearings?
Also, the Trump administration isn't releasing or monitoring anyone. Every refugee is held in detention.
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@SandraH.
The 6/26/18 Politifact article titled "Majority of undocumented immigrants show up for court, data shows” has a chart which shows in Fiscal Year 2012 that 24% failed to attend their immigration hearing. The percentage who failed to attend rose to 27% in FY 2013, to 35% in FY 2014, and to 43% in FY 2015. In the last year on the chart, FY 2016, 39% failed to show up for their immigration hearings.
12 days ago, the Independent Journal Review had an article titled "Acting DHS Secretary Reveals Whopping Percentage of Migrants Don’t Show for Their Court Hearings” which said the following:
"Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told the Senate Judiciary Committee during Tuesday’s hearing that 90 percent of asylum-seekers who come into the country are not to be seen again."
“It depends on demographic, the court, but we see too many cases where people are not showing up,” McAleenan said. “Out of those 7,000 cases, 90 received final orders of removal in absentia, 90 percent.”
“Ninety percent did not show up?” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked.
“Correct, that is a recent sample from families crossing the border,” McAleenan responded."
>
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This is the consequence of the policy that says that anyone with a child on them can skip through the immigration process that would normally take years. It's a child trafficking operation based on a loophole. I'm an immigrant and very liberal on immigration. But this needs to stop. We need more money to SECURE our border and help the migrants.
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@natan Your comments suggests that you are convoluting two separate issues. Immigration policy is forward-looking, as it can only affect FUTURE choices and outcomes.
The issue at hand is what to do RIGHT NOW - we have a crisis and we are handling it badly. RIGHT NOW children's lives are being destroyed. We are a nation that purports to care about children most of all, as they are innocent. Surely we can SHOW that we care about these children? Surely there is a better way to handle this influx?
We can disagree about immigration policy. No one should disagree that what is happening right now is wrong and has to stop.
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@natan. just to clarify--when you say there's a "child trafficking operation," are you saying that children are being brought across the border to be sold into sexual slavery? Or that children are being sold to prospective adoptive parents? What does child-trafficking mean?
Asylum is difficult to obtain. Very few of those detained will be granted asylum, regardless of whether they came with children. You have to belong to an endangered class or race; it isn't enough that your life is in danger because of gangs, which is the case for most of these refugees.
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