Month: July 2018

Latest on the immigrant family separation crisis

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There appears to be some confusion created by the judge’s orders in the Ms. L. v. ICE case and the Flores Settlement Agreement, that Trump administration lawyers from the Department of Justice are taking advantage of — some would say abusing, at the expense of innocent children.

Dara Lind at Vox.com explains, A new court ruling officially opens the door for Trump to separate some migrant families again:

Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California formally refused the administration’s request to modify the Flores court settlement, which governs the treatment of children in immigration custody. The Flores agreement was the court ruling that the administration had pointed to for its policy of family separation — because it couldn’t keep children detained longer than 20 days, per Flores, it had to split children from their parents while the parents were in detention.

Gee rejected the administration’s request to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep migrant families in detention facilities for as long as it took to process their cases (a process which, for asylum seekers, can take months or longer).

It’s a defeat on the second front of a legal war for the Trump administration and its “zero tolerance” policy at the US-Mexico border. In the Flores case, the administration is fighting for indefinite family detention. In a separate federal case in San Diego, it’s being stopped from resuming family separation and hounded to quickly reunite the nearly 3,000 families separated while the policy was in full effect through mid-June.

But Monday night’s ruling also makes it clear that the administration has the power to start separating some migrant families again.

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Helping Children is the First Priority for State Senate Candidate and 2016 Arizona Teacher of the Year Christine Marsh.

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LD 28 Democratic State Senate Candidate and 2016 Teacher of the Year Christine Marsh

While petting a year old German Shepard Mix named Zuzu at the Democratic Party LD 28 office on Shea and 32nd Street, State Senate Christine Marsh relayed her reasons for wanting to replace incumbent Kate Brophy McGee in the Arizona Senate and the legislative goals she would like to pursue after taking office in January 2019.

Partially inspired by a conversation with a student, in her English class at Chaparral High School, on whether children in Arizona were worth as much as children in other states, Ms. Marsh, a 2016 State Teacher of the Year, is running largely on a pro-public education platform in the Purple Arizona District 28 on a ticket with State House Incumbent Kelli Butler and House Challenger Aaron Lieberman. A very attainable Marsh win in LD 28 would help Democrats achieve their realistic goal of gaining control of the State Senate in November’s elections.

Arizona Legislative District 28 is similar in some ways to Arizona Legislative District 18. It is a district that is becoming increasingly blue as evidenced by Kelli Butler’s State House win in 2016 and Kate Brophy McGee’s two-point squeaker over Democrat opponent Eric Meyer in the same election. A district that includes parts of Phoenix, Paradise Valley, and Glendale, Democrats have a well-organized and energized team led by Field Director Chris Fleischman (the dog parent of Zuzu) and able volunteers like Tyler Kowch, an Arizona resident who found education in Canada a cheaper option.

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Federal judge rejects request to modify Flores Settlement Agreement

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A federal judge in Los Angeles dealt the Trump administration another significant blow on Monday by rejecting its attempt to indefinitely detain immigrant children caught crossing the border illegally with their parents (in the decades-old Flores case). Judge rejects Trump administration bid to indefinitely detain immigrant children with parents:

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee issued an   order lambasting the Justice Department for its request to modify the 1997 [Flores] settlement agreement that set rules for how the government can deal with immigrant children in its custody. Calling President Trump’s executive order on immigrants “ill-considered,” the judge accused the administration of attempting to shift blame to the courts for a crisis of Congress’ and the president’s making.

Gee’s order came as Justice Department attorneys told a federal judge in San Diego [Ms. L. v. ICE] they would miss Tuesday’s deadline for authorities to reunite parents and children younger than 5 who were forcibly separated at the border.

Just over half the 102 children identified by the government will be reunited by Tuesday’s deadline, the attorneys told U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who had previously ordered the reunifications in response to a legal action brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The rest includes children whose parents were already deported, have criminal records and are unfit to care for them, Justice Department attorneys said. In the case of one 3-year-old boy, they said, authorities couldn’t find any parental records.

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Five Powerful Families

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[Cross-posted from Inequality.org]

We’ve reached the point where a handful of extraordinarily wealthy clans essentially have the power to suffocate our democracy.

Five powerful families? Is this about the mafia? No, for these five families, it’s not la cosa nostra, “the thing of ours.” Rather, it’s la cupidigia nostra, “the greed of ours.”

And it’s their greed that’s killing our democracy.

Six hundred billion dollars approximately equals the budget for the United States Department of Defense for an entire year — enough to pay, feed, and house over 1,000,000 active duty service personnel and 800,000 reservists, operate close to 1,000 military bases, pay 750,000 civilian personnel, and fund all military equipment purchases.

That $600 billion also equals the combined wealth now hoarded by just five American families — specifically, the Walton, Bezos, Koch, Gates, and Mars clans. The Walton family alone has a combined net worth estimated at $150 billion. The poorest of the five families, the heirs of the Mars candy fortune, hold about $90 billion.

What happens when we let just five families in a society of over 325 million hoard that much wealth? Society suffers.

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