(Rep. Pramila Jayapal--'They Could Hear Their Children Screaming for Them in the Next Room')
This editorial, What Will We Do To Resist?, appearing in today's Santa Fe New Mexican, is truly an excellent editorial, as is David Leonhardt's also in today's New York Times, which follows:
It's like a jail for children. In Brownsville, Tex., the federal government has incarcerated more than 1,400 boys between the ages of 10 and 17. They are being held in a former Walmart, as part of the Trump administration's new policy of separating parents and children who illegally try to enter the United States.
The boys each have less than 40 square feet of living space. They spend 22 hours a day inside the former Walmart and receive two hours outside. Lights out is at 9 P.M. "I have been inside a federal prison and county jails," MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff said yesterday on Twitter, after visiting the shelter, which is called Casa Padre. "This place is called a shelter but these kids are incarcerated."
The facility predates the Trump administration, as a place to hold migrant children who attempt to enter this country by themselves. But the number of boys there is now growing because of the new child-separation policy. "The policy of criminally prosecuting all who cross the border illegally is creating a new category of residents at these holding centers, young boys and girls who are grappling with the trauma of being unexpectedly separated from their mothers and fathers," write Michael E. Miller, Emma Brown and Aaron C. Davis in The Washington Post.
I urge you to read a series of tweets by Soboroff or the Post story. Your government has separated these children from their families and is detaining them in warehouselike conditions.
"You might want to smile," Alexia Rodriguez, one of the executives who runs Casa Padre, told journalists who toured it yesterday (after Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon called attention to the facility by getting turned away at the door). "The kids feel a little like animals in a cage, being looked at," Rodriguez said.
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