human rights

The Trump administration’s defense of the indefensible goes off the rails (updated)

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President Donald Trump on Monday, with his sycophant Vice President looking on adoringly with puppy dog eyes, announced that the plaque bearing the text of the poem by Emma Lazarus,”The New Colossus,” mounted inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, with its famous inscription of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” is no longer operative in America.

Someone please check to see whether Stephen Miller has had this plaque removed from the Statute of Liberty.

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Also on Monday, a recording of immigrant children calling out desperately for their parents after being separated from them by United States immigration authorities was released by the investigative news site Pro Publica. The audio went viral in the media.

Also on Monday, These photos were the Trump administration’s attempt to quiet criticism. They’re only increasing critics’ horror.

As attention to the issue of child separation reaches a new high on Monday, the Trump administration [sought] to defend what critics call a “cruel” and “immoral” policy. It’s even releasing photos and video of the facilities where children separated from their parents are being held — but far from tamping down criticism, it’s only increasing critics’ horror.

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Children in cages, like dogs in a kennel. Yeah, this is not making your case.

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Senate Republicans are complicit in Trump’s evil

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The New York Times headline reads, Leading Republicans Join Democrats in Pushing Trump to Halt Family Separations.

The online Washington Post headline reads, Growing number of Republicans urge Trump to change policy on separating families.

Talk is cheap.  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.

ChildImmigrant
“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” – Donald Trump

Steve Benen reports, So far, no Republicans endorse the Dems’ ‘Keep Families Together Act’:

The official line from the Trump White House is that critics of the administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the border should simply change the law. The argument is indefensibly wrong: Donald Trump chose to implement a policy that separates these families, and he can change course at any time.

But Democrats have more or less accepted the challenge anyway, and have proposed specific legislation to prevent the Republican president from keeping his current policy in place. Vox.com highlighted the Senate Dems’ effort to pass the “Keep Families Together Act,” which was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

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Trump flip-flops on immigration bill, using separated children as hostages for his border wall

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Yesterday morning, “President Trump said he would not sign a carefully crafted GOP bill addressing the predicament of Dreamers, news that caught House Republicans by surprise and left the legislation on life support.” Trump crushes hopes for compromise DACA plan. “I’m looking at both of them,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” aka “Trump TV” in an interview Friday morning from the White House lawn. “I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one.”

By Friday evening, Trump had flip-flopped. White House says Trump backs GOP immigration bills, despite comments opposing them. One official says Trump misunderstood Fox News’ question.

The White House said Friday that President Trump supports House legislation that closely tracks his priorities on border security and limiting legal immigration, walking back comments he made on national television rejecting the GOP bill.

The reversal came after hours of confusion on Capitol Hill, where Trump’s words roiled an already fragile internal debate between conservative and moderate House Republicans who have been trying to find an immigration compromise after months of false starts.

“The president fully supports both the Goodlatte bill and the House leadership bill,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said, referring to legislation drafted by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and a separate compromise measure.

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Militarize the border? Has this fool ever heard of posse comitatus?

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FOX & Friends and FOX prime time pundits (aka presidential advisers) have our nativist racist Twitter-troll-in-chief all worked up about a “caravan” of Central American refugees coming to America. Why Is Trump Still Obsessing About a Caravan of Migrants?

But the truth is that, according to the Washington Post, Trump’s ignorance about what is going on is even worse than we thought. Here are some things he doesn’t seem to know:

  • “The Mexican government on Monday evening moved to break up the caravan of migrants moving through southern Mexico”
  • This is an “annual caravan intended to raise awareness about the plight of people making the dangerous trek across Mexico toward the United States”
  • “Mexico deported 16,278 people during the first two months of 2018; 97 percent of them were Central Americans, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group.”
  • “Mexico increased its immigration enforcement in 2014, when it enacted a “Southern Border Plan” in response to a flood of unaccompanied Central American children who were transiting the country and arriving in the United States.

While Trump is rage tweeting, this is happening:

On Monday, Mexico’s interior minister, Alfonso Navarrete, said he and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had spoken. “We agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country,” Navarrete tweeted.

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