It’s A Con
Trump has bought some time and reduced the pressure on the White House with his latest Executive Order. He has not altered the policy of wasting time and money on arresting everyone who is considered an illegal border crosser, only the method of holding them, i.e. families will now be held as a unit, instead of being separated.
It doesn’t appear that the thousands of children that have already been separated will be returned to their parents, nor is it clear that the government can do that even if they want to as there is no system in place designed to facilitate that. It might require DNA testing to pair children with their parents, and those resources aren’t currently available.
It seems that the aversion DHS Secretary Neilsen has to the word “policy” is because her agency is being sued by a woman who wants her child returned. Homeland Security has apparently already denied the existence of any “policy” in its court filings.
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The children are in the custody of HHS. The adults are in the custody of DHS, an entirely different cabinet office. Two different bureaucracies. Two different sets of records. HHS doesn’t know where the childrens’ parents are and DHS won’t tell them. DHS doesn’t know where the parents’ children are and HHS won’t tell them. Talk about your perfect storm. We just created thousands of new orphans.
The new executive order is a con, but at least it gives parents twenty days to make bail or find a guardian for their children before the children disappear into the maw of Health and Human Services to be ground up and spit out into shelters and foster homes all over America.
All in all, it seems like there’s people who want to be cruel to children and they lead CBP and ICE. People who are cruel to children are bad people. People who defend cruelty to children are bad people.
Yes, it really is that simple. WWMRD (What Would Mr. Rogers Do). If it would make Mr. Rogers cry, it’s bad. That’s a rule that’s served me well for over half a century of my life now, and I see no reason to change it, since it’s kept me from participating in any atrocities during my lifetime.
Couldn’t agree more Badtux. You know what I think of anyone who is cruel to Children! Once upon a time, they appeared in my sights. And I didn’t miss, or spare them a thought. They got what they deserved. Sadly, not before they destroyed innocence. I would have preferred being preemptive, but of course in most cases, it was not easy or possible to know who would become an evil bastard.
The GOP and at least some Dem’s are complicit in this in some way. ~72% of Republicans & ~28% of Democrats in Congress take donations from the For-profit Prisons companies.
For-profit Prisons: Money to Congress 2018
Under “Zero Tolerance” most of the adults are going to belong to DoJ and be located in county jails or Bureau of Prison facilities, only asylum seekers who entered through a port of entry re going to be in DHS custody. HHS gets the children and passes them the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which places them with outside contractors and then into state foster care systems. Every one of the entities gives individuals an identifier, but there is no cross index of all of these identifiers.
DHS doesn’t photograph or fingerprint or otherwise identify children, so they are creating 50 or more missing person cases every day. Border Patrol takes them into custody, so the Border Patrol is responsible for the ‘chain of custody’.
That tent city they are building in Tornillo, Texas is 5 star expensive. It costs $775/day/person to put kids there. They could put them in beach hotels with room service for a hell of a lot less than that, including the cost of chaperones.
This is child abuse. The people in charge need impeachment and prosecution. “Following orders” is not acceptable, and has not been acceptable among public officials since the Nuremberg Trials.
I shared that on Twitter with attribution of course. It’s a good summation, as usual. You have a better handle on what’s happening there than I or many others do. Thanks Bryan. I just hope this nightmare will end sooner rather than later!
Oh… Badtux & I found each other on Twitter. Made me laugh (in a good way!) I needed it. Thanks Badtux mate! 😀
Bryan, Zero Tolerance is already the policy as of April 6 when Sessions wrote his memo ordering prosecutors at the border to prosecute every single border crosser. The magistrate judges at the border are rather frustrated right now, as are the public defenders at the border. Nobody is going to Club Fed or disappearing into the Bureau of Prisons, they’re being immediately released back to ICE for time served (usually less than 24 hours) the moment they appear before a judge and plead guilty of misdemeanor illegal entry. This is basically equivalent to misdemeanor trespassing and the judges are frustrated that the DoJ is putting these people in front of them to be released right back into ICE custody. It’s pointless and meaningless and it’s chewing up the court time and public defender budget for no good reason.
Which goes to show the limits of “zero tolerance”. It depends on the judicial system cooperating, and the judges are pretty pissed that they’re being used to make political points for Hair Twitler.
I have no idea how you can both have zero tolerance and keep families together, since it’s illegal to put children in jail for the crimes of their parents.
The DoJ has also sent a request to Mattis to send 21 JAG criminal trial prosecutors to Arizona, Texas and New Mexico for 179 days! Mattis has agreed to the request and ordered the JAG deployment. According to MSNBC & Maddow, these JAG’s have no training in immigration law or federal criminal procedures. Apparently, they will receive a *short* course.
W.T.F?! Is that even remotely legal?
The USA is getting more insane by the day, if that’s even possible!
Kryten, whether it is legal depends upon whether the Federal magistrate courts at the border that are handling all these trespassing cases will accept their credentials. Hair Twitler can’t order the courts to do diddly.
And a one day course is plenty for a prosecutor to file a frickin’ trespassing charge using a standard charging package. We’re not talking about a murder case, it’s a frickin’ trespassing charge. The worst that can happen is that the defendant is found “not guilty”, after all, which has the exact same penalty as being found “guilty” — immediate release back to ICE custody. Because the magistrate courts are pissed about all this BS, it’s clogging them with frivolous cases, and that’s the sentence they’re handing out if people plead guilty at their first hearing — time served and release back into ICE custody.
Badtux, they go to DHS detention centers after their hearing before the Federal magistrate, but are in jails or local prisons before hand. The pictures of the hearings show the defendants in the orange prison jumpsuits. DHS uses olive drab jumpsuits with “Detainee” on the back. I have no idea how long they are in pre-trial detention given the lack of prosecutors, court rooms, magistrates, and public defenders. As you and I have said multiple times you don’t charge these people with crimes because it is too damn expensive, and they get real trials with attorneys, not administrative hearings before an immigration judge.
You have to be admitted to the Federal bar to appear in a Federal court. Relatively few JAGs bother with the time and expense. The 179 days is, was, and always will be a con to prevent payments for a PCS [permanent change of station]. That allows the military to deploy you for 179 days, bring you back to your base for a visit and the send you back for another 179 days.
DHS is spending other Departments’ money. Where is the money for all of these new facilities coming from? I would suggest that it come from any funds allocated to Trump’s wall.
Yes, that was my point, Brian, when I said I don’t know how you can keep families together and still have zero tolerance because it’s illegal to put kids in jail for the crimes of their parents. The parents are being kept in pre-trial detention at the local jail for anywhere from 24 to 72 hours before appearing for an initial hearing where they can either plead guilty or ask for a trial. They’re told by the public defender and magistrate judge at the initial hearing that if they plead guilty to misdemeanor illegal entry, they’ll be released back to ICE custody for time served and be able to continue on with their asylum request. Most of them take that deal. Misdemeanor illegal entry does *not*, after all, affect the asylum request. Felony illegal entry would, but that requires a prior conviction for misdemeanor illegal entry.
In short, the magistrate courts at the border are processing these cases lickity split without a trial for the most part, because they’re annoyed they’re even being forced to process all these people. I’ve read several anonymous blog posts from public defenders at the border and they simply don’t have the capacity to handle all these cases if people demanded to go to trial, and the judges don’t want these people clogging up the local jails while waiting for trial either. Thus the little conspiracy between the public defenders and the magistrate judges to just get these people the f**k out of the system for “time served” and back into ICE custody ASAP with as little time and effort as possible.
All of which is utterly incompatible with keeping parents and children together, which is why I think Hair Twitler is funning us when he says he’ll both keep them together, and continue with the zero tolerance policy. The two just can’t happen simultaneously. Not without a lot of cooperation between multiple incompatible bureaucracies — CBP, ICE, the local jails, the local magistrate judges, HHS Child Protection Services, the Federal prosecutor’s office, the U.S. Marshall’s Service… you’d have to make this whole machine mesh like one machine, instead of the cranky bucket of parts they usually operate as. I don’t see how. Heck, the paperwork alone takes 24 hours or more to scribble and move between all these pieces and parts.
Cocaine is a hella drug. Just sayin’.
In New York this is classed as a B Misdemeanor {<= 6 months in jail and/or <= $500 fine] which results in an appearance ticket from a supervisor for a court date. You don't book them into jail because it is too expensive. It is already expensive to fill out the arrest report and the criminal information [the minimum required paperwork] which is why you had better have a good reason for doing anything other than a "stern lecture". That's why these charges weren't being made before DoJ/JB [Ernie Keebler] Sessions instituted the "zero tolerance" policy.
If they fail to appear there will be an arrest warrant issued and the maximum penalty if convicted. Pre-trial confinement for a first offense B Misdemeanor was unheard of during my time in law enforcement.
Been running a bunch of threads on Twitter & sharing your comments (badtux knows, I hope that’s OK with you Bryan?) A couple new items have come to light:
Exclusive: Navy Document Shows Plan to Erect ‘Austere’ Detention Camps
DHS has realeased this:
Fact Sheet: Zero-Tolerance Prosecution and Family Reunification
Regarding that fact sheet, note that “criminal alien” has a specific meaning in immigration law. It means that the alien has been convicted of one of a list of felonies that are grounds for immediate removal from US soil. It does not apply to the vast majority of those apprehended at the border.
It looks like a lot of hand waving to me. The numbers don’t match up, for one thing. 500 children reunited when they’ve ripped at least 3500 children away from their parents since this policy started ramping up in May? And they’re building tent cities to hold at least 20,000 children? Talk about your cons.
Yeah.
The 3 new Navy facilities mentioned are supposed to support up to 119,000 people. I’m guessing most of those will be American’s that aren’t white… *sigh*
Think I’ll go play some Diablo 3 RoS. I created a new Seasonal character (Season 14 is on) called Roasroar (from the Spellsinger book series). 😉 😀 About 3/4 way through the season tasks.
Oh! Have you seen this one, it’s just about Pruitt doing what he does best… Killing American Citizens & covering it up.
Report: White House, EPA Blocked Study on Military Water-Contamination Crisis to Avoid ‘PR Nightmare’
“The impact to the EPA and Defense Dept is going to be extremely painful. We (DoD and EPA) cannot seem to get ATSDR to realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be.”
Yep. Worried about a PR nightmare. Oh, the horror.😒🙄🤨
I have plausible deniability, Kryten, so it’s OK as far as I’m concerned.
After the performance of the Secretary of Homeland Security at her press conference I don’t think we should beieve anything they say. Without unannounced inspections and audits of their records I trust them less than Iran. DHS is more in the category of North Korea. 😈 The MSM keep reporting on the numbers announced up to June 9th. Some of the hardest working reporters are guessing over 3K and maybe 4K is more realistic. When you are moving kids in the middle of the night, you aren’t building trust. They’re kids, not vampires.
There are reasons the military isn’t using those areas:
Building a tent city in a low-lying coastal zone like Orange Beach, Alabama during hurricane season is not a fabulous idea.
Where is the drinking water coming from for 10s of thousands new people in Yuma, Arizona?
They have really created a a fire suppression plan to protect a tent city built at Camp Pendleton, to deal with brush fires caused by live fire at the training ranges?
The area outside of San Francisco looks good, if they have done a thorough EOD sweep of the former weapons text facility. Tents are less of a threat to people if there’s an earthquake.
I think they should hold off and just buy up a farm that went under from the trade war with China.
The White House and EPA should read a newspaper occasionally. The reality of groundwater pollution is in multiple courts. Blocking a report sure looks like obstruction to me. Maybe Michael Avenatti would like to take it on 👿
After looking at the photos of those tents, they’re going to be horrifically expensive to heat and cool. They have portable HVAC units set up next to them to do that. These appear to be the kind of tents that the military uses for temporary forward bases, I wonder how many of these that the military has, or are they going to be buying more of them? Whose budget is the purchase coming out of? Whose budget is the expense of heating and cooling these things coming out of?
Apparently the tent city near San Antonio is already nearly full, thus why they’re rushing to open more of them. Just in time for Trump to announce a “suspension” of the zero tolerance policy because they couldn’t figure out how to keep kids and parents together if they had to go through the court system. Like, duh?
Oh yeah, the facility in Concord is full of toxic waste. No, I’m not joking. The city has been talking about asking Congress to sell it to them for years in order to build much-needed housing, but every time they go out there to do the required environmental survey, the cost of cleaning it up just goes higher. So they’re going to put a bunch of families / kids in tents in the middle of a bunch of toxic waste. What could go wrong?
They are apparently getting the tents from a contractor who worked/works for the Emergency Management Agency. These guys normally work setting up temporary shelters after hurricanes. The equipment all looks to be new and they are outrageously expensive to heat and cool according to the guys in Red Horse [Air Force combat engineers]. It is also hard to sleep with the equipment droning away. It is probably Mil Spec off the same contract used for Iraq, etc. but not from current inventory because “private companies are cheaper and more efficient that the government”.
Military bases are almost always super fund sites. The fuel used for many of the early missiles my Dad worked on could kill you a half dozed different ways. They had huge showers all over the launch sites to wash it off people if there was a leak or spill.