By Robert Weiner and Ben Lasky
President Trump has kidnapped more young girls than Boko Haram and put them into black sites.
Since 2014, terrorist group Boko Haram has kidnapped nearly 400 girls. In the last two months, under the Trump-Sessions initiative, the Administration has separated over 2,300 children from their parents. That is the shocking reality: Donald Trump has kidnapped more young girls than Boko Haram. He has placed them in unknown locations -- essentially "black sites" around the country, as when the U.S, used to send torture victims abroad. Only by media investigations are the locations of the children slowly being uncovered. Yet no media is allowed inside.
On June 20, we asked Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic leader of the House Judiciary Committee (replacing John Conyers), after a news conference, whether or not the federal government has a computer database that lists the separated child and the father or mother. In a walk-and-talk, Nadler replied with a look of shock and horror about what he had to reveal about the Administration, "No there isn't." We also asked him what he thought about Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's White House podium statement that she had not seen the video of the children in cages, and the audio of them screaming for the absent "Mama" and Papa". Nadler replied, "inept, or vicious."
What happens to these kids once they are eventually released? What is the plan for reuniting them with their parents? Nadler in his new leadership position could play an enormous role.
There is no word of where exactly they are. According to The New York Times, the federal government sent 350 children separated from their parents to Cayuga Centers in Harlem. New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said that as of Wednesday, 239 children were in Cayuga's care, the youngest being a nine-month-old. Mayor de Blasio also said that the federal government won't tell city officials how many children have been sent to New York or where exactly they are being held.
"Come clean with the truth. Who are these children? How many are they? Where are they? What is happening here?" de Blasio asked.
We must also ask what conditions these children are living in? The Associated Press reported on Thursday that immigrant children as young as 14 claim they were, "beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells," in a juvenile detention center in Virginia. Now we have learned there are three "tender age" facilities in Texas, housing babies as young as nine months old and one, two, three, and four years old who were literally ripped from their mothers' arms. Rachel Maddow broke into tears unable to finish reading the report.
The world was outraged when the U.S. used black sites to torture suspected terrorists at the height of the Iraq War. People died in secret prisons at the hands of the U.S. government. About a decade and a half later, Donald Trump is using the same horrific tactics, this time with children.
The President's executive order, the so-called "cave" under pressure, by no means ends the story. Here is just a sampling of stories just in the New York Times, circulated by Senate Democratic Leaders Chuck Schumer, over the last day. Similar stories are throughout the media:
* "Trump Retreats on Separating Families, but Thousands Will Remain Apart"
* "'We're Sending Them the Hell Back,' Trump Says of Securing the Country's Borders"
* "Republicans Dislike Separating Families. But They Like 'Zero Tolerance' More"
* "GOP Lawmakers Hope Trump's Border Action Heads Off Political Threat"
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