19 June 2018 - Children Are Being Separated From Their Parents at US-Mexico Border
Outrage in US as hundreds of children are kept in cages by border control in south Texas
Patrick Grafton-Green (Evening Standard, 18/06/2018)
Hundreds of children are being kept in cages by US border patrol in south Texas, with First Lady Melania Trump among those speak out amid fierce criticism.
The US Border Patrol allowed reporters to briefly visit a large warehouse on Sunday where it holds families arrested at the country's southern border.
One of the metal fenced cages had 20 children inside, with bottles of water, bags of chips and large foil sheets intended to be used as blankets scattered about.
The sound of children crying for their parents at the border
Emanuella Grinberg and Jamiel Lynch (CNN, 19/06/2018)
"I don't want them to stop my father," a child whispers in Spanish. "I don't want them to deport him."
So begins an excruciating audio clip of children howling for their parents after being separated from them at the US-Mexico border.
The audio was published Monday by the investigative nonprofit ProPublica. It adds a visceral element to the coverage of a controversial Trump administration policy of taking undocumented immigrant children from their families and putting them in government facilities on US borders.
The Trump Apologists and the Crying Children
Michelle Goldberg (The New York Times, 18/06/2018)
Apparently there are some people close to Donald Trump with the capacity for shame. Not decency or courage, of course, but at least furtive recognition that they’re complicit in something vile.
Over the last few days, stories of bureaucratic sadism have poured forth from America’s southern border. The Associated Press described a Texas warehouse where “hundreds of children wait in a series of cages” with up to 20 people inside. The New York Times reported on a mother deported to Guatemala without her 8-year-old son. In The Washington Post, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics described a shelter for toddlers where staffers aren’t allowed to hug or hold the bereft children. ProPublica obtained a recording of small children wailing for their parents in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, while a Border Patrol agent joked, “We’ve got an orchestra here.”
Border Patrol chief on zero tolerance: ‘I do agree that we need to do something’
Luis Sanchez (The Hill, 18/06/2018)
Manuel Padilla Jr., the Border Patrol chief for the Rio Grande Valley, on Monday said in response to a question about the Trump administration's “zero tolerance” border policy that he agrees that action needs to be taken at the border.
Asked if he agreed with the immigration policy that results in migrant children being separated from their parents, Padilla said he agrees “we have to do something.”
“I do agree that we have to do something. We created this situation by not doing anything,” Padilla told CBS’s Gayle King.