US Immigration Policy Megathread

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Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Fritz the Horse posted:

-Under the Trump admin, unaccompanied minors were turned back at the border and forced to wait on the Mexican side. These Mexican border towns are very dangerous and kids have been camped there for up to a year or more.
-Biden admin is now allowing all unaccompanied minors through as a humanitarian response because holy poo poo we can't let unaccompanied kids sit in the Mexican border towns. That's part of what is contributing to the surge in kids crossing the border even though we're not to 2019 peak levels yet. Thousands of kids that have been camped on the Mexican side of the border are now being allowed to enter.
-Problem is, the US immigration system has for decades been focused on deterrence and punishment rather than increasing capacity to provide services to refugees and migrants. As a result we don't have the facilities to adequately house and process kids through. One of the interviews was with Jacob Soboroff who described the current conditions as better than Trump era cages but still prison-like and unacceptable.
-Under Trump a lot of the kids in camps were forcibly separated from their families, that's no longer occurring. This is a somewhat different scenario.
-The immigration system was compared to a large ship. It's slow and difficult to change direction.

In particular the part that was new to me was unaccompanied minors previously not being allowed entry and now there's a surge after Biden admin allowed all of them in. It seems like they are between a rock and a hard place--it's unthinkable to let kids camp on the Mexican side in very dangerous conditions so we ought to let them through as a matter of human rights. Problem is, we don't have the capacity to adequately house and process kids through to host families. My impression was the guests were basically saying this is the less bad option, but Biden admin could do more to respond and is going to need to because it's going to be an ongoing crisis.

What's causing the surge in migration are the problems in the countries of origin, mostly Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. It's not US policy that's causing more people to come. Until those root causes are addressed we're going to continue to have increasing numbers of refugees and the US immigration system has been geared toward deterrence and punishment rather than accepting refugees and asylum seekers.

According to the AP story the other day, some of the minors being interned crossed the border with adult relatives, the latter of whom were deported.

One of those minors is the traumatized & nonverbal 4 yr old who was sent to stranger-fosters in MI even though she had parents living in MD, and the 4 yr old came over in the care of her aunt, who was immediately deported.

So yeah: It's not as easy-peasy-mellow-breezy as NPR makes it out to be, or as internment apologists want it to be.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2021 21:11

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 16:40

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Fritz the Horse posted:

Could you elaborate?

Reading my post again, I probably should've said "It's not US immigration policy that's causing more people to come" because yes, US foreign policy certainly is a major driver of conditions in those countries of origin.

The point that the NPR guests were making is that migrants aren't really coming because the Biden admin is in power and they think they'll have a better chance of getting into the US, what's driving them is conditions in their countries of origin. And that's not my own take, I'm not super well read on immigration issues tbh. I was summarizing an NPR segment I found interesting.

But certainly a major part of the immigration reform conversation needs to be US foreign policy that is causing conditions in Central America that drive people to migrate.

Did the NPR story touch upon or delve into how U.S. destabilization policies in Latin America, such as Honduras, have led to the migrations to the U.S.?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2021 21:16

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

BRAKE FOR MOOSE posted:

I don't trust gag orders one bit when journalists are being denied access to the facilities. Like, yeah, you're going to get politically-motivated leaks out of CBP officers if you make them the journalists' only source, but you can also get around that by actually providing the information people want to know through the official channels.

Yes; it's an obvious attempt to control the narratives around the internment camps now that bad news is leaking out & outlets like the AP are covering the story in depth.

Gag orders are bad, no matter which party is in power.

eta: "the need for a unified message" as a rationale for censorship is sickening to me, because it elevates political needs over humanitarian needs.

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Mar 17, 2021

# ¿ Mar 17, 2021 21:21

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Discendo Vox posted:

The photos are not providing new information.

Also it appears the process is:

1. Veritas gets photos from "anonymous source," with all assertions about them attributed to anonymous source.
2. Photos somehow get in hands of Rep Cuellar.
3. Cuellar gives them to press.

Has anyone come forth to state that the photos are either doctored or from under a different administration?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 22:43

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Fritz the Horse posted:

Veritas is not credible, period. I did see the Axios pictures (which are different than the Veritas ones) as attributed to Cuellar. O'Keefe and Veritas are trending on Twitter and a bunch of right wing shitheads are boosting both the Axios and Veritas pictures. I'm not saying the photos or fake or from six months ago or something, just pointing out that sourcing is important. If Cuellar got them from Veritas that would be suspect.

That's not what I said, I posted "doesn't seem like much news other than there are photos now."

For what it's worth it's important to distinguish between the three different facilities discussed recently in this thread:

-ORR camps for unaccompanied children.
-ICE housing families in hotels.
-CBP overflow facility for unaccompanied minors (pictures now being discussed)

So the photos aren't actually the ORR camps this thread was revived to discuss. The ORR camps might be worse! We don't know! That lack of access and transparency is a huge problem.

edit: oops, I missed this in the Axios article:

So those photos are not from Cuellar himself although he did visit a different shelter and says they are terrible conditions.

Has anyone come forth to state that the photos are either doctored or from under a different administration?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 22:44

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

BougieBitch posted:

Nobody assumes Biden is doing anything meaningfully different from Obama except where things are explicitly different in terms of literal published policy. The thing is, people are claiming that both Obama and Biden want kids to suffer and are deliberately keeping conditions bad, and that's not a question of policy but intention.

Who's claiming that Biden & Obama are sadists deriving pleasure from these conditions?

And are you referring to "people in this thread" or "some randos I saw on twitter"?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2021 22:47

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

BougieBitch posted:

Yes, agreed, but a handful of photos from Veritas are not a substitute for actual access, and shouldn't be used as the basis for any rational argument. The best thing to do is continue to push the admin on this backwards policy of not letting people access the facilities and treat the entire situation as if the Veritas photos did not exist - in all functional ways, the Donna facility has not been toured and rather than asking "what are you doing about the conditions depicted in these unverified photos from an unspecified source" the press should be asking "what are you doing about these numbers from your own admin, these reports of bad conditions from advocacy groups, and the lack of access to lawyers, reporters, and congresspeople?"

The problem is, CBS is running the photos to catch the eye in that tweet without saying where they came from there or in the article, the Axios story is running them credited to Cuellar even though he explicitly said he got them from someone else, and then Veritas is self-evidently a terrible source. If CBS had instead tweeted "the Biden admin continues to disallow our reporters access to the Donna facility, where concerns have been raised about hygiene and COVID safety" that would be a useful way to pressure Biden to get someone in there to take whatever pictures are needed, but by playing telephone we now have a bunch of places that could have been trying to get their own pictures or something more substantial like video interviews with detainees instead settling for recycling photos. Maybe that's because the Biden admin is just too tough to work with, but maybe they just aren't willing to do their own legwork on one facility of many when they can just crib someone else's notes and try to get the first scoop on the next one instead - the fact that they didn't credit the photos in that tweet in any way is a strike against them imo, and I hope that by the end of this week we have something more substantial out of that facility as well as the Dallas convention center HHS one that they have been spinning up

Once again, since no one has yet answered: Is there any proof at all that the photos were doctored or taken under a different administration?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 17:40

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Now I'm wondering if during tomorrow's presser Biden hands off border questions to Harris to answer.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2021 20:09

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

socialsecurity posted:

So you are saying they are continuing family separation but are doing so in secret? Do you have any sort of evidence of this seems like a huge deal?

I mean, the AP wire story from a couple weeks ago about the nonverbal 4 yr old who came over with her aunt, the latter of whom was "expelled" while the 4 yr old was put in a concentration camp then sent to strangers even when her parents in the U.S. tried to claim her, was sort of a big deal to those of us bothered by it at the time:

quote:

While the majority of youths detained by the government are teenagers, both Border Patrol and HHS are detaining very young children who were in some cases separated from adult caretakers.

The Associated Press this week interviewed the mother of one 4-year-old girl from Guatemala who crossed the border March 5 with her aunt. Border authorities expelled the aunt and labeled the girl unaccompanied by a parent, placing her in the Donna tent.

The girl�s parents live in Maryland. Her mother told the AP that she didn�t know their daughter�s whereabouts until Sunday and didn�t speak to her until Monday. According to the mother, the girl was unable to speak in a nearly 20-minute phone call. The AP is not identifying the girl or her mother to protect the child�s privacy.

�She cried as if something was going on, as if she was scared,� the mother said this week. �I started crying when I heard her that way. It didn�t seem right to me.�

The parents asked for their daughter to be released to them directly but on Monday she was sent from South Texas to foster care in Michigan.

When she spoke to her mother Tuesday morning, the girl was no longer crying but still wasn�t able to speak.

�She didn�t say anything,� she said. �I tried everything I could, but nothing.�

# ¿ Apr 2, 2021 16:52

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Sarcastr0 posted:

Why does not seem like the right question. I can't see it leading to much more than the same Dems evil/just bad debate that's extremely tired.

Better to ask
1) What do we need to prevent this kind of crisis from happening again?

Allow lawyers & media unfettered access to the concentration camps.

quote:

2) What are better policies politicians can pursue to get to said better situation?

Allow lawyers & media unfettered access to the concentration camps.

quote:

3) What can activists do to realize 1) and 2)?

Allow lawyers & media unfettered access to the concentration camps.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2021 20:38

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Lawyers should absolutely get total access, media definitely should not get 'unfettered' access for a bunch of reasons just related to turning media loose in facilities with minors. Media definitely should get some access, but not in a way that compromises the functioning or the privacy of the kids. Frankly I trust immigration lawyers vastly more than news crews to meaningfully and effectively look out for the well being of people in the camps

When I said "unfettered access" I didn't mean that the National Enquirer should have open visiting rights whenever it wants.

I meant that the media of lawyers' choice (even if it's the National Enquirer) should be allowed to see what's going on even if it's not Spruce Up the Joint & Let Rachel Maddow In Day once a month or w/e.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2021 22:31

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

The AP has a new story out about the horrifying conditions in the HHS camps:

quote:

The Biden administration is holding tens of thousands of asylum-seeking children in an opaque network of some 200 facilities that The Associated Press has learned spans two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children packed inside.

Confidential data obtained by the AP shows the number of migrant children in government custody more than doubled in the past two months, and this week the federal government was housing around 21,000 kids, from toddlers to teens. A facility at Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army post in El Paso, Texas, had more than 4,500 children as of Monday. Attorneys, advocates and mental health experts say that while some shelters are safe and provide adequate care, others are endangering children�s health and safety.

�It�s almost like �Groundhog Day,�� said Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Luz Lopez, referring to the 1993 film in which events appear to be continually repeating. �Here we are back to a point almost where we started, where the government is using taxpayer money to build large holding facilities ... for children instead of using that money to find ways to more quickly reunite children with their sponsors.�

***

A few of the current practices are the same as those that President Joe Biden and others criticized under the Trump administration, including not vetting some caregivers with full FBI fingerprint background checks. At the same time, court records show the Biden administration is working to settle several multimillion-dollar lawsuits that claim migrant children were abused in shelters under President Donald Trump.

Part of the government�s plan to manage thousands of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border involves about a dozen unlicensed emergency facilities inside military installations, stadiums and convention centers that skirt state regulations and don�t require traditional legal oversight.

Inside the facilities, called Emergency Intake Sites, children aren�t guaranteed access to education, recreational opportunities or legal counsel.

***

Of particular concern to advocates are mass shelters, with hundreds of beds apiece. These facilities can leave children isolated, less supervised and without basic services. The AP found about half of all migrant children detained in the U.S. are sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. More than 17,650 are in facilities with 100 or more children. Some shelters and foster programs are small, little more than a house with a handful of kids. A large Houston facility abruptly closed last month after it was revealed that children were being given plastic bags instead of access to restrooms.

***

�The children are coming out sick, with COVID, infested with lice, and it will not surprise me to see children dying as a consequence, as we saw during the Trump years,� Cohen said. �The Biden administration is feverishly putting up these pop-up detention facilities, many of which have no experience working with children.�

# ¿ May 11, 2021 20:01

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Whoops, missed this bit:

quote:

Some of the facilities holding children these days are run by contractors already facing lawsuits claiming that children were physically and sexually abused in their shelters under the Trump administration, while others are new companies with little or no experience working with migrant children. Collectively, the emergency facilities can accommodate nearly 18,000 children, according to data the agency provided earlier this month.

# ¿ May 11, 2021 20:03

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

I dunno; it might be me but I'd say it's pretty horrifying to not conduct background checks, to not have agencies vetted or overseen, and denying children access to healthcare & education. Kids having to to piss & crap in plastic bags definitely is horrifying.

It's going to be hard finding "primary" sources when media aren't allowed in the concentration camps, and the handful of volunteers who have come forward to tell the truth about the concentration camps have been summarily fired. I trust the AP's reporting, especially about the concentration camps, since they've been following the story over the last few months.

Were you as cavalier about the concentration camps when Trump was running them as you are about Biden running them?

# ¿ May 11, 2021 22:23

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Konstantin posted:

What would you prefer be done instead? You can't wave a magic wand

Woot, I'm so glad to see this Obama-era trope reappear under Biden. :allears:

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ May 12, 2021 06:43

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

GreyjoyBastard posted:

I mean, one of the major points in that quote is "apparently the Biden administration doesn't have the staff yet to do better on this thing", which isn't a rapid thing to fix at the federal level. It also dovetails with what I have anecdotally seen as far as federal job notifications. It's not a Trump admin "lol why would we staff these offices or do these things" protocol.

based on this post the proposed remedy is to occasionally post "I am very mad at Joe Biden", which is obviously neither very interesting nor very productive

or to not argue against mischaracterizations and not talk about what positive things the Biden admin is trying to do, which sorry, that's not an acceptable norm to establish in this thread

I'm having troubled parsing the meaning of the bolded part; can you please clarify, as a mod, what this means?

# ¿ May 14, 2021 18:06

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Fritz the Horse posted:

That's paywalled so it's hard to make much of it. The HHS facilities are still unacceptable, yes. Building detention capacity is a short-term stopgap, I'm sure we can agree that "build more detention facilities" is not the right solution long-term. Instead what we need is more staffing to speed safe placement of children with family or foster care.

I'm not sure where the disagreement is. The HHS facilities are better than CBP but they still aren't remotely acceptable conditions. Your objection seems to be with whether the improvement in conditions is praiseworthy or not?

The disagreement is because "out of sight, out of mind" is not an acceptable excuse for handwaving unvetted third parties from running the top-secret HHS concentration camps, and due to the banning of media/lawyers from seeing the kids we have no idea whether HHS concentration camps are an upgrade from the CPB concentration camps.

According to the few reports we've gotten from whistleblowers the HHS concentration camps don't sound like much of an upgrade--and they are even allowed to elude oversight to which the CPB concentration camps were subjected.

I'd be a lot happier with the administration if there were unfettered legal access, stringent & public oversight, and far more media access. (The technology is there to anonymize the children in the concentration camps, as far as that concern goes.)

# ¿ May 14, 2021 18:14

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

1. Do your standards for productive conversations apply to all presidencies, or just this particular presidency? Do they extend beyond presidencies to other elected offices? And for both major political parties?

2. If you have a direct question to me or other posters, maybe frame it with our quotes & ask it, instead of posting walls-of-text that are hard to wade through. Are there particular questions within your posts that have asked questions to the people you're calling out, or are we expected to sift through every source & point out their fallacies about HHS's control of concentration camps being different from CBP's concentration camps? Once again: It's hard to challenge or support sources on this topic bc of the lack of transparency for media and lawyers. You can post all the hagiographic coverage you want, but if it boils down to "you have to take our word for it that things are better" I'm not going to.

3. This is why I would like a mod to elaborate on his statement, rather than participants.

eta: I'm happy to take this to QCS if mods would prefer.

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 15, 2021

# ¿ May 15, 2021 18:53

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

I mean, props to Biden for not arresting as many people under ICE as Trump & Obama did, and for increasing visas after being pressured to do so, but that has nothing to do with kids being held in concentration camps while barring media & legal access, which was the thrust of my objections to Biden's immigration policies and one I didn't see countered in any of the sources provided.

eta the graf for which I asked for clarification:

GreyjoyBastard posted:

or to not argue against mischaracterizations and not talk about what positive things the Biden admin is trying to do, which sorry, that's not an acceptable norm to establish in this thread

I've pretty much focused entirely on the kiddy kamps itt rather than other aspects of immigration policy. I wanted to know whether I am supposed to counter that with the positives Biden's done on immigration in order to follow a mod's directive that it's "not an acceptable norm" to not do so, although I haven't seen that directive used for any other topic or politician in dnd, and I find it to be a baffling request.

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 21:06 on May 15, 2021

# ¿ May 15, 2021 20:55

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Thanks for the clarification!

I got confused between your seeming to say "balance things out or else" and TWT's demand that I react to posts of his that weren't responsive to the particular matters I was discussing (ie: kiddy concentration camps).

# ¿ May 15, 2021 21:44

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Indeed; "pop-up sites" has a much warmer feel to it, like a sudden music venue or an aromatic food truck.

But given reports that children are being denied food & told to poo poo in plastic bags, I'm gonna stick with the nomenclature that most suits it.

# ¿ May 15, 2021 22:19

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

evilweasel posted:

the key element you are missing is social policy: there are scads of republican voters who don't like lower taxes on the rich, but vote republican anyway because of social issues. they make a choice knowing its against their economic interests because it is in their perceived social interests. it's not like republican voters are too stupid to know they're not paying upper-class tax cuts and polling is pretty consistent about that (as is trump's 2016 primary win renouncing republican economics). they just swallow their annoyance at that to stick it to liberals on guns, abortion, church, racism, etc.

The GOP cut taxes for poors as well as richies (and expanded the child tax credit), to the extent that the Dems now plan to extend those tax cuts (and further expanded the child tax credit).

# ¿ Jul 21, 2021 18:12

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

socialsecurity posted:

temporarily vs the permanent and greater ones for the rich, your phrasing here seems like you are trying to ignore that to make the Republicans look better then they are for some reason.

The tax cuts were in effect & practically guaranteed to be extended no matter which party held Congress or the presidency, in spite of Dems moaning about how they were "temporary."

It's been a pattern for the last several decades: GOP pols cut taxes for all tax brackets; then Dems retain the lower-end tax cuts while fiddling with (but not fully restoring) the tax cuts for richies when Dems are in power; then the GOP cuts taxes across the board once in power again.

I'm p. sure non-richies' personal tax rates are at record lows, and "middle-class" people making a quarter-million/year (ie: the 1 percent) won't see anything in the way of increased income taxes under Biden, although Dems love doing poo poo like Medicare surcharges for anything above that bracket (thus undermining the universality of earned benefits).

eta: See, e.g., the "Bush" tax cuts that were extended by Obama for all but the .1 percent. Those were "temporary," too.

etaa: Although given the ACA mandate penalty, come to think of it, I guess one could say that Obama raised taxes on the poors. Looking forward to seeing if Biden restores the financial penalty thru the reconciliation bill with the excuse of it being an "offset" for spending.

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Jul 21, 2021

# ¿ Jul 21, 2021 22:39

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

That link to "read the government's vaccine appeal here" just downloads the list of DoJ respondents, not the actual appeal.

What in the world was the DoJ's rationale in appealing the decision? Too much work for temporary detainees? Too hard to track the vaccinated? Too expensive, given the money they're doling out to flood-remediation specialists as contractors overseeing the kiddy concentration camps?

I wish any of the posters who earlier itt seemed to have arguments for why every action under Biden was far better than when it was happening under Trump would weigh in & explain this one, too--and I mean that sincerely, not as a gotcha, bc I have no clue why the government would contest this decision, either from a humane angle or a public-health one.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2021 20:44

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Devastating ProPublica investigative piece on a Chicago shelter for Afghan child refugees:

quote:

Dozens of Traumatized Afghan Kids Struggle Inside a Shelter That�s Ill-Equipped to Care for Them

Some children who were evacuated from Afghanistan and are being cared for at a Chicago shelter for immigrant minors have hurt themselves, harmed other children or threatened staff. Others have tried to escape or talked about wanting to die. Some have required psychiatric hospitalization.

These events at the shelter were described by three employees and other people familiar with the conditions there, as well as being detailed in police records and internal documents obtained by ProPublica.

Employees at the shelter, which is operated by the nonprofit Heartland Alliance, say they are overwhelmed and ill-equipped to care for the roughly 40 Afghan children and teens placed there by the U.S. government, many of them traumatized by war in their homeland and their hasty evacuation.

The employees said they have never experienced this level of disorganization or stress, even though some of them worked through the chaos inside Heartland shelters following the Trump administration�s zero-tolerance immigration policy of separating children from their parents.

Language and cultural barriers have exacerbated the problem. Workers said no employees speak Pashto or Dari, the children�s main languages, and access to phone-based interpretation lines is limited, making it difficult to deescalate tense encounters.

�We don�t know if [the children are] saying they�re going to self harm until we finally get a translator on the line,� said one worker at the shelter in Chicago�s Bronzeville neighborhood on the city�s South Side. �They could be telling us something. ... We try to guess. We try to communicate with cues, sign language, making motions like if you�re hungry or they need this or that.�

Altogether, Heartland officials said they were caring for 79 Afghan children across four Chicago shelters on Wednesday. But the shelter in Bronzeville, the largest in Heartland�s portfolio, is where workers are reporting problems.

As of Wednesday, 41 of the 55 children and teens at that shelter were from Afghanistan, records show. Of those, 25 had been at the facility for at least 50 days, while 15 had been there for at least 60 days. ProPublica reported in 2018 on how prolonged stays in Heartland�s shelters led to despair, confusion and suicidal ideation among children.

No organization in the country is sheltering more Afghan children than Heartland at the moment. A total of 186 Afghan youth were in the government�s care as of Friday. (Federal officials did not respond to requests for updated figures this week.)

The children are among the tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the U.S. after America�s widely criticized military pullout from the country following two decades of war. In the chaos, many children were separated from parents or adult relatives at Taliban checkpoints and airports, or later at U.S. military bases in other countries. Many wound up on planes alone, according to workers and advocates who have spoken to the children.

And unlike many of the Central American children who typically pass through the shelter system with a plan and a destination in mind � and the knowledge from relatives� experiences to prepare them � these young Afghans had no idea what to expect when they arrived. Some have no relatives or family friends here to take them in. Many didn�t even want to come here and are worried about their families back home, the workers and advocates said.

�These Afghan youth are experiencing very high trauma burdens and mental health issues from living in a war-torn country, exacerbated by their chaotic and untraditional arrival alone in a foreign land,� Heartland said in a statement. �Something as simple as a phone call home is highly emotional �. What if my parents don�t answer? Are they dead? Missing? Will I ever see them again? What if the Taliban finds me here?�

Heartland officials said that, from the start, sheltering the children has been a challenge.

�Details of arrivals, governmental guidelines, and other information has been limited or changing, literally by the hour,� they said in the statement. �National, federal, state, local, and nonprofit organizations are trying to operate within a seriously under-resourced and broken infrastructure dismantled by the previous federal administration.�

***

The Afghan children started arriving at the Heartland shelter in Bronzeville around Aug. 23, according to records and interviews with workers. Most are boys in their teens, but workers said the youngest they received was 2. Records indicate that once the Afghan youth started arriving, the facility stopped receiving children and teens from other countries, though it�s not clear why.

It�s unusual for the shelter to receive so many children at once who don�t speak a language spoken by staff members, according to workers and people familiar with the situation. Many of the workers speak Spanish.

To communicate with the Afghan youth, workers rely on cell phones to call interpreters, but they said there aren�t enough phones. Heartland said last week it distributed 61 devices to translate information into multiple languages, including Dari and Pashto, across its four shelters, and that it will distribute 39 more this week.

***

In spite of Heartland�s efforts, the shelter has been the scene of a series of troubling incidents, described in police records, internal documents and interviews. In emails sent to management and staff last week, one shelter worker wrote that the young Afghans were �displaying behavior that I have not seen in my almost 5 years at [Heartland].� Another wrote that police and ambulance workers had been on site �a record amount over the last few days and weeks alone.�

# ¿ Oct 30, 2021 23:57

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Another immigration story likely destined for the p. 2 memory hole, but I thought it was notable bc of the implications it might hold for U.S. for-profit prisons holding non-immigrants, which might generate some interest counter to the prevailing trend of "out of sight, out of mind" as applied to current immigration issues:

quote:

Owner of Washington for-profit detention center owes immigrant detainees $17 million in back pay, jury rules

SEATTLE � A federal jury has determined that The GEO Group must pay nearly $17.3 million to immigration detainees who were paid $1 a day to perform tasks such as cooking and cleaning at the company�s for-profit detention center in Washington.

Friday�s decision came two days after the same jury determined that the Florida-based company must pay its detainee workforce at the Tacoma facility minimum wage, The Seattle Times reported.

GEO may have to pay even more when a judge on Monday considers separate damages sought by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who had filed another lawsuit on behalf of detainees held since 2005. The two lawsuits were consolidated for the first phase of a trial, determining whether GEO was obligated to pay minimum wage.

Adam Berger, one of the attorneys representing detainees in the private lawsuit, said he and his colleagues had asked for $13.7 million, but the jury decided the immigrants were owed more. The award is expected to be divided among 10,000 people who were held at the facility since 2014.

�Immigrants held in GEO�s for-profit facilities are not criminals and should not be beholden to enriching the corporation�s bottom line,� Berger said in a statement. He added that if GEO appeals, no money will be distributed until that process is resolved.

GEO did not respond to a request for comment.

GEO maintained that the detainees were not employees under the Washington Minimum Wage Act. Even if they were, the company said, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for Washington to require GEO to pay them minimum wage � now $13.69 an hour � when the state doesn�t pay minimum wage to inmates who work at its own prisons or other detention facilities.

The definition of �employee� in Washington�s minimum wage law is broad � it includes anyone who is permitted to work by an employer, without regard to immigration or legal work status. The law says residents of �a state, county, or municipal� detention facility are not entitled to minimum wage for work they perform.

The detention center, now known as the Northwest ICE Processing Center, didn�t fit that exemption because it�s a private, for-profit facility, not a �state, county or municipal� one, attorneys for the state and for the detainees argued.

The detention center houses people who are in custody while the federal government seeks to deport them or reviews their immigration status. It can hold up to 1,575 detainees, making it one of the nation�s largest immigration jails, though the population has been drastically reduced during the pandemic.

Similar lawsuits have been brought on behalf of immigration detainees in other states, including New Mexico, Colorado and California, seeking to force GEO and another major private detention company, CoreCivic, to pay minimum wage to detainees there.

https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-...jury-rules.html

Any lawyers out there who can weigh in on whether the judgment has broader implications for for-profit prisons in general?

# ¿ Nov 3, 2021 22:02

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

CommieGIR posted:

Maybe people don't want to discuss it with you, that's a very real possibility. Nobody engaged with my post in there either.

That could very well be the case! I wasn't alleging a conspiracy; your post reminded me that I found this story at least as newsworthy as Mike Pompeo's current skin tone & weight when I came across it.

I also had a question for lawyers in the post above yours, and legal questions usually elicit responses in dnd.

eta: Thanks for bumping this thread to page 1, though!

Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Dec 2, 2021

# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 16:32

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

You mean being told to lay off their personal attacks based on ideology? That mistreatment? There isn't a :qq:

big enough if they can't answer people with a civil tongue (or fingers), or are forced to share online spaces among people with differing opinions.

I think it's more that people have lost interest in the concentration camps since they stopped being called concentration camps. Ain't no one interested in locked-up kids unless a cheeto is doing the locking up.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 22:46

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 16:40

Willa Rogers: Mar 11, 2005

Gosh, I could've sworn they were called concentration camps prior to this year, and no one got "riled up" about it.

In any case, what do you guys think of the propublica story or the Washington court award?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2021 23:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Immigration Policy Megathread