• No Fascists at HOPE
    https://medium.com/@nofashathope/statement-no-fascists-at-hope-c6873a64cc94

    On Saturday, 2600 and HOPE Conference organizers refused to remove fascist and white nationalist disruptors from HOPE 2018 — including a man who appeared to be carrying a concealed weapon and who bragged about marching in the #UniteTheRight white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. HOPE claims to provide a “harassment-free conference experience for everyone,” however, on multiple occasions when the fascist attendees were reported to security for intimidation and harassment, HOPE security refused to intervene and even defended their presence at the event. The fascist attendees menaced other conference goers, cornering them, following them down the street, and threatening them; one even called the police on a conference attendee in retaliation for grabbing his hat. Following numerous complaints, HOPE finally expelled one white nationalist (with a full refund), but allowed all of the other fascists to remain at the conference and intimidate attendees.

    HOPE’s Code of Conduct states that anyone can attend the conference “regardless of race, class, gender identity or expression, age, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, personal appearance, or education level, text editor choice, and other aspects.” But creating space for fascists obviates the possibility of free speech. White nationalists are interested in violence, not speech, and allowing them into our community creates a chilling effect on all other participants’ freedom of expression. This is especially true for people who belong to marginalized groups that fascists often target for violence, such as people of color, trans and queer folks, and people with disabilities. In the past, HOPE has been criticized for providing a platform to speakers accused of stalking and sexual assault. Will they also be known as an organization that allows space for Nazis and fascists as well?

    Due to the events that were witnessed today we, the undersigned, are vocalizing our anger and outrage at the organizers and security staff for refusing to remove these fascist disruptors. We are left without faith in the mechanism designed to protect our expression, community-building, and physical well-being. Let this document rest as a declaration of no confidence in HOPE’s code of conduct mechanism at the time of writing, and, more importantly, rejecting any instances of fascism, nationalism, racist dogma and symbolism in our space.

    Organizations:

    Black Movement Law Project
    Digital Freedom Initiative
    Four Thieves Vinegar Collective
    Lucy Parsons Labs
    Riseup.net
    t4tech
    Technology Action Project

    Individuals:

    AJ Bahnken
    Barrett Brown
    Benjamin Rupert
    Bill Budington
    Bryce Vickery
    Caroline Sinders
    Chelsea E. Manning
    Chelsea H. Komlo
    Cooper Quintin
    Harlo Holmes
    Jan C. Rose
    Matthew Finkel
    Micah Lee
    Mixæl S Laufer
    Nima Fatemi
    R. Fox
    William Gillis
    Yael Grauer

    and many more who have decided to remain anonymous.

    https://itsgoingdown.org/statement-no-fascists-at-hope
    https://twitter.com/RiotDoge/status/1020722488404299777
    https://www.csoonline.com/article/3237591/security/captain-crunch-aka-john-draper-banned-from-defcon-for-sexual-misconduct.h

    #antifa #Alt-Righ #hackers #hopeconf #2600

  • Banane : une industrie pourrie à la racine
    https://www.franceculture.fr/histoire/banane-une-industrie-pourrie-a-la-racine
    De 1972 à 1993, un #pesticide puissant, le chlordécone, est utilisé massivement sur les bananeraies antillaises. La population et les sols sont empoisonnés pour des générations. Face à ce scandale, l’histoire nous apprend que l’industrie bananière est dès son origine viciée par les tares propres à une #mondialisation_économique sans scrupule, portée par la première entreprise mondialisée : la « United fruit company ».
    #entreprises_bananières #banane

  • Tomber entre les craques

    Les yeux de ces quatre enfants me hantent.

    En avril, ils attendaient un vol à Brownsville, au Texas, qui devait les réunir avec un membre de leur famille ou avec un tuteur légal avant de recevoir la décision du gouvernement américain quant à leur droit de rester (ou non) aux États-Unis.

    Aujourd’hui, qui sait où ils se trouvent ? Ces mineurs non accompagnés font partie des enfants placés sous la responsabilité du #Office_for_Refugee_Resettlement (#ORR). Or, cette agence fédérale américaine a perdu la trace de 1 475 enfants (sur 7 635) en 2017.

    Impossible de les retracer, car il est impossible de joindre les adultes qui en ont la charge. Ces enfants sont tombés entre les craques d’un système qui sacrifie leur sécurité au profit d’une lutte contre l’immigration « illégale ».

    Alors que l’ORR se défend qu’une fois l’enfant confié à un adulte (que celui-ci soit lié à l’enfant ou non), elle n’a pas de responsabilité de suivi, il n’en reste pas moins qu’aujourd’hui, l’état de ces 1 475 enfants ne peut pas être confirmé. Et cette incapacité à assurer la sécurité des enfants sous sa responsabilité survient à un moment où cette agence est de plus en plus sollicitée. L’annonce, le 7 mai dernier, d’une nouvelle directive obligeant des poursuites criminelles contre toute personne entrant sans autorisation aux États-Unis force la #séparation_des_familles, les enfants ne pouvant pas être détenus dans les prisons criminelles (jusqu’alors, les mères étaient détenues avec leurs enfants dans des centres de détention). Durant les 13 premiers jours d’application, cette directive a mené à la séparation de 658 enfants de leurs parents. Ces enfants sont placés auprès d’ONG (affiliées à l’ORR) qui ont pour tâche ou bien de localiser un membre de la famille (aux États-Unis) ou un tuteur légal, ou bien de s’occuper de l’enfant si un tel adulte ne peut pas être trouvé. L’entrée en vigueur de la nouvelle directive mènera inévitablement à plus de séparations.

    Penser que cette politique sera un véritable dissuasif à l’immigration dénote une incompréhension marquée de la réalité et des violences en Amérique centrale, moteurs principaux de la migration des enfants et des cellules familiales. La preuve ? Les tentatives de traversée n’ont pas diminué en mai.

    Éparpillés aux quatre coins des États-Unis, enfants et parents butent sur les obstacles bureaucratiques à la réunification. Celle-ci est mise en péril par l’absence de documents officiels d’identité : les enfants – et les parents – n’ont pas toujours de papiers prouvant le lien familial. Ces enfants perdus dans les entrailles bureaucratiques du système d’immigration américain pourront-ils être retrouvés ? Et les parents dont les enfants leur sont enlevés au moment de l’arrestation pourront-ils les retrouver lorsqu’ils seront relâchés ou avant d’être expulsés ? L’obsession pour le contrôle des frontières est telle que la séparation des enfants et de leurs parents est devenue une politique d’État, banalisée par l’administration Trump. Et ce sont ces enfants qui porteront les traumatismes de la séparation dans leurs yeux déjà trop marqués par la violence et par la peur.

    http://journalmetro.com/opinions/trajectoires/1602965/tomber-entre-les-craques
    #disparitions #enfants #USA #Etats-Unis #unité_familiale #mineurs #enfance #famille #détention_administrative #rétention #enfants_placés #dissuasion

  • ‘Barbaric’: America’s cruel history of separating children from their parents
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/31/barbaric-americas-cruel-history-of-separating-children-from-their-pa

    The policy has generated outrage among Democrats and immigration advocates. And it has conjured memories of some of the ugliest chapters in American history.

    “Official US policy,” tweeted the African American Research Collaborative over the weekend. “Until 1865, rip African American children from their parents. From 1870s to 1970s, rip Native American children from their parents. Now, rip children of immigrants and refugees from their parents.”

    #separation #enfants #parents #politique #états-unis

  • Droit de rester | Une maman renvoyée de force avec ses enfants alors que le père est à l’hôpital
    https://asile.ch/2018/05/24/droit-de-rester-une-maman-renvoyee-de-force-avec-ses-enfants-alors-que-le-pere

    Dans un communiqué, le collectif Droit de rester pour tou.te.s alerte sur la situation d’une maman avec ses 2 enfants renvoyée de force alors que le père est à l’hôpital. La famille vit en Suisse depuis 9 ans. Nous reproduisons ci-dessous ce communiqué de presse. Pour le lire directement sur le site du collectif Droit […]

  • The IDF’s Unit 9900: ‘Seeing’ their service come to fruition | JNS.org
    https://www.jns.org/the-idfs-unit-9900-seeing-their-service-come-to-fruition
    BY YAAKOV LAPPIN
    11.05.2018


    Cpl. O (face hidden for security purposes).
    Credit: IDF Spokesman Unit.

    The secretive and sensitive Unit 9900, which specializes in visual intelligence and plays an essential role in the activities of the Israel Defense Forces, has received some 100 autistic volunteer soldiers so far.

    (May 4, 2018 / JNS) A program designed to integrate young people on the autistic spectrum into the military—in fields where they have a relative advantage—is proving to be a “win-win” for all involved.

    The program, dubbed “Seeing Afar,” which is jointly run by the IDF and the Ono Academic College, is now in its fifth year. It includes a training course that teaches autistic youths to decipher aerial and satellite visual-intelligence images, based on their enhanced visual ability and their tendency towards patience, which allow them to explore the minutest details—an essential attribute for this role, an officer from an intelligence unit that received the volunteers has told JNS.

    The secretive and sensitive Unit 9900, which specializes in visual intelligence and plays an essential role in the activities of the Israel Defense Forces, has received some 100 autistic volunteer soldiers so far.

    Cpl. O (full name withheld) is one of them. He spent 10 months deciphering visual-intelligence images, helping the IDF track down suspicious enemy movements, before working to train others like him to do the same.

    When I first arrived here, I still felt like a civilian,” Cpl. O told JNS in an interview. Gradually, however, he began to feel like an organic part of the military.

    He described what it was like to sift through intelligence images, searching for that needle in the haystack.

    You search and search, and don’t find it at first. Sometimes, it feels like forever until you find it. But when you do, it certainly brings satisfaction,” said Cpl. O. “There were whole days that I couldn’t find what I was looking for. On other days, I’d locate it in every picture—six pictures in a row. On those days, I wanted to look for more! Sometimes, it feels empty; other times, full. Everything I found has given me satisfaction. It was a step forward that brought us all toward the goal.

    Asked what it takes to get good at this unusual work, which is critical to national security, Cpl. O said: “Deciphering aerial images is like everything else. You need experience and endurance. No one was born knowing how to decipher aerial images. [Guitar legend] Jimmy Hendrix got good with practice. We also trained, and then we started working, getting to know this work. It takes time until you become professional—a lot of time.

  • ODAE romand | Le TAF empêche un renvoi Dublin qui séparerait un père de son enfant
    https://asile.ch/2018/04/17/odae-romand-taf-empeche-renvoi-dublin-separerait-pere-de-enfant

    Dans un arrêt de février 2018, le TAF a admis le recours d’une requérante d’asile érythréenne contre une décision du SEM de la renvoyer vers l’Italie, en vertu du Règlement Dublin. Durant la procédure, cette femme a eu un enfant avec un ressortissant érythréen résidant en Suisse au bénéfice d’une admission provisoire (permis F réfugié). […]

  • Intégration | Sans famille
    https://asile.ch/2018/04/12/csdm-obstacles-regroupement-familial-refugies-freinent-integration-2

    Un rapport juridique publié par le Centre suisse pour la défense des droits des migrants (CSDM) et le HCR présente quelques recommandations à prendre en compte dans le cadre de litiges stratégiques sur le regroupement familial des réfugiés, écrit la présidente du CSDM, Jasmine Caye

  • Separating children and parents at the border is cruel and unnecessary

    The Trump administration has shown that it’s willing — eager, actually — to go to great lengths to limit illegal immigration into the United States, from building a multi-billion-dollar border wall with Mexico to escalated roundups that grab those living here without permission even if they have no criminal record and are longtime, productive members of their communities. Now the administration’s cold-hearted approach to enforcement has crossed the line into abject inhumanity: the forced separation of children from parents as they fight for legal permission to remain in the country.

    How widespread is the practice? That’s unclear. The Department of Homeland Security declined comment because it is being sued over the practice. It ignored a request for statistics on how many children it has separated from their parents, an unsurprising lack of transparency from an administration that faces an unprecedented number of lawsuits over its failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for government — read: public — records. But immigrant rights activists say they have noticed a jump, and in December, a coalition of groups filed a complaint with Homeland Security over the practice.
    When parents and children cross the border and tell border patrol agents they would like to apply for asylum, they often are taken into custody while their request is considered. Under the Obama administration, the families were usually released to the care of a relative or organization, or held in a family detention center. But under President Trump, the parents — usually mothers traveling without their spouses — who sneak across the border then turn themselves in are increasing being charged with the misdemeanor crime of entering the country illegally, advocates say. And since that is a criminal charge, not a civil violation of immigration codes, the children are spirited away to a youth detention center with no explanation. Sometimes, parents and children are inexplicably separated even when no charges are lodged. Activists believe the government is splitting families to send a message of deterrence: Dare to seek asylum at the border and we’ll take your child.

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-immigrants-border-asylum-ice-201802305-story.html
    #frontières #unité_familiale #séparation #enfants #enfance #parents #asile #migrations #réfugiés #USA #Etats-Unis #détention_administrative #rétention #dissuasion

    • Familias rotas, familias vaciadas

      Es delgada y pequeña. No rebasa el 1.60. La habitación en la que duerme —en el segundo piso del albergue para veteranos deportados que creó Héctor Barajas— tiene una cama con un oso de peluche que ella misma confeccionó y una mesa para cuatro personas. La sonrisa que a veces asoma en su rostro nunca llega a sus ojos, oscuros y con marcadas ojeras. Se llama Yolanda Varona y tiene prohibido, de por vida, entrar a Estados Unidos, el país donde trabajó 16 años y donde viven sus dos hijos y tres nietos.


      https://www.revistadelauniversidad.mx/articles/d2c0ac01-e2e8-464f-9d4e-266920f634fc/familias-rotas-familias-vaciadas

    • Taking Migrant Children From Parents Is Illegal, U.N. Tells U.S.

      The Trump administration’s practice of separating children from migrant families entering the United States violates their rights and international law, the United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday, urging an immediate halt to the practice.

      The administration angrily rejected what it called an ignorant attack by the United Nations human rights office and accused the global organization of hypocrisy.

      The human rights office said it appeared that, as The New York Times revealed in April, United States authorities had separated several hundred children, including toddlers, from their parents or others claiming to be their family members, under a policy of criminally prosecuting undocumented people crossing the border.

      That practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, told reporters.

      Last month, the Trump administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal border crossings, saying that it would significantly increase criminal prosecutions of migrants. Officials acknowledged that putting more adults in jail would mean separating more children from their families.

      “The U.S. should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalizing what should at most be an administrative offense — that of irregular entry or stay in the U.S.,” Ms. Shamdasani said.

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      The United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, clearly showed American irritation with the accusation in a statement released a few hours later.

      “Once again, the United Nations shows its hypocrisy by calling out the United States while it ignores the reprehensible human rights records of several members of its own Human Rights Council,” Ms. Haley said. “While the High Commissioner’s office ignorantly attacks the United States with words, the United States leads the world with its actions, like providing more humanitarian assistance to global conflicts than any other nation.”

      Without addressing the specifics of the accusation, Ms. Haley said: “Neither the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”
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      The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants — including those in families that are split apart — enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry. It has also said that some adults falsely claim to be the parents of accompanying children, a genuine problem, and that it has to sort out their claims.

      On Twitter, President Trump has appeared to agree that breaking up families was wrong, but blamed Democrats for the approach, saying that their “bad legislation” had caused it. In fact, no law requires separating children from families, and the practice was put in place by his administration just months ago.

      The Times found in April that over six months, about 700 children had been taken from people claiming to be their parents.

      The American Civil Liberties Union says that since then, the pace of separations has accelerated sharply. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the group’s immigrant rights project, said that in the past five weeks, close to 1,000 children may have been taken from their families.

      Last year, as Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly raised the idea of separating children from their families when they entered the country as a way to deter movement across the Mexican border.

      Homeland Security officials have since denied that they separate families as part of a policy of deterrence, but have also faced sharp criticism from President Trump for failing to do more to curb the numbers of migrants crossing the border.

      For the United Nations, it was a matter of great concern that in the United States “migration control appears to have been prioritized over the effective care and protection of migrant children,” Ms. Shamdasani said.

      The United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, she noted, but the practice of separating and detaining children breached its obligations under other international human rights conventions it has joined.

      “Children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status. Detention is never in the best interests of the child and always constitutes a child rights violation,” she said, calling on the authorities to adopt noncustodial alternatives.

      The A.C.L.U. has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in San Diego, calling for a halt to the practice and for reunification of families.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/us-un-migrant-children-families.html

    • U.S. policy of separating refugees from children is illegal, horrific

      Somewhere in #Texas, a 3-year-old is crying into her pillow. She left all her toys behind when she fled Guatemala. And on this day the U.S. government took her mother away.

      When we read about the U.S. administration’s new policy of trying to stop people from crossing its borders by taking away their children, we too had trouble sleeping.


      https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/06/05/us-policy-of-separating-refugees-from-children-is-illegal-horrific.html

    • What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated ?

      An expert on helping parents navigate the asylum process describes what she’s seeing on the ground.

      Everyone involved in U.S. immigration along the border has a unique perspective on the new “zero tolerance” policies—most notably, the increasing number of migrant parents who are separated from their children. Some workers are charged with taking the children away from their parents and sending them into the care of Health and Human Services. Some are contracted to find housing for the children and get them food. Some volunteers try to help the kids navigate the system. Some, like Anne Chandler, assist the parents. As executive director of the Houston office of the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, which focuses on helping immigrant women and children, she has been traveling to the border and to detention centers, listening to the parents’ stories. We asked her to talk with us about what she has been hearing in recent weeks.

      This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

      Texas Monthly: First, can you give us an overview of your organization?

      Anne Chandler: We run the Children’s Border Project, and we work with hundreds of kids that have been released from ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] care. We are not a legal service provider that does work when they’re in the shelters. To date, most of our work with that issue of family separation has been working with the parents in the days when they are being separated: when they’re in the federal courthouse being convicted; partnering with the federal public defenders; and then in the adult detention center, as they have no idea how to communicate or speak to their children or get them back before being deported.

      TM: Can you take me through what you’ve been seeing?

      AC: The short of it is, we will take sample sizes of numbers and individuals we’re seeing that are being prosecuted for criminal entry. The majority of those are free to return to the home country. Vast majority. We can’t quite know exactly because our sample size is between one hundred and two hundred individuals. But 90 percent of those who are being convicted are having their children separated from them. The 10 percent that aren’t are some mothers who are going with their children to the detention centers in Karnes and Dilley. But, for the most part, the ones that I’ve been working with are the ones that are actually being prosecuted for criminal entry, which is a pretty new thing for our country—to take first-time asylum seekers who are here seeking safe refuge, to turn around and charge them with a criminal offense. Those parents are finding themselves in adult detention centers and in a process known as expedited removal, where many are being deported. And their children, on the other hand, are put in a completely different legal structure. They are categorized as unaccompanied children and thus are being put in place in a federal agency not with the Department of Homeland Security but with Health and Human Services. And Health and Human Services has this complicated structure in place where they’re not viewed as a long-term foster care system—that’s for very limited numbers—but their general mandate is to safeguard these children in temporary shelters and then find family members with whom they can be placed. So they start with parents, and then they go to grandparents, and then they go to other immediate family members, and then they go to acquaintances, people who’ve known the children, and they’re in that system, but they can’t be released to their parents because their parents are behind bars. And we may see more parents that get out of jail because they pass a “credible fear” interview, which is the screening done by the asylum office to see who should be deported quickly, within days or weeks of arrival, and who should stay here and have an opportunity to present their asylum case before an immigration judge of the Department of Justice. So we have a lot of individuals who are in that credible fear process right now, but in Houston, once you have a credible fear interview (which will sometimes take two to three weeks to even set up), those results aren’t coming out for four to six weeks. Meanwhile, these parents are just kind of languishing in these detention centers because of the zero-tolerance policy. There’s no individual adjudication of whether the parents should be put on some form of alternative detention program so that they can be in a position to be reunited with their kid.

      TM: So, just so I make sure I understand: the parents come in and say, “We’re persecuted” or give some reason for asylum. They come in. And then their child or children are taken away and they’re in lockup for at least six weeks away from the kids and often don’t know where the kids are. Is that what’s happening under zero tolerance?

      AC: So the idea of zero tolerance under the stated policy is that we don’t care why you’re afraid. We don’t care if it’s religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you’re going to have your children taken away from you. That’s the policy. They’re not 100 percent able to implement that because of a lot of reasons, including just having enough judges on the border. And bed space. There’s a big logistical problem because this is a new policy. So the way they get to that policy of taking the kids away and keeping the adults in detention centers and the kids in a different federal facility is based on the legal rationale that we’re going to convict you, and since we’re going to convict you, you’re going to be in the custody of the U.S. Marshals, and when that happens, we’re taking your kid away. So they’re not able to convict everybody of illegal entry right now just because there aren’t enough judges on the border right now to hear the number of cases that come over, and then they say if you have religious persecution or political persecution or persecution on something that our asylum definition recognizes, you can fight that case behind bars at an immigration detention center. And those cases take two, three, four, five, six months. And what happens to your child isn’t really our concern. That is, you have made the choice to bring your child over illegally. And this is what’s going to happen.

      TM: Even if they crossed at a legal entry point?

      AC: Very few people come to the bridge. Border Patrol is saying the bridge is closed. When I was last out in McAllen, people were stacked on the bridge, sleeping there for three, four, ten nights. They’ve now cleared those individuals from sleeping on the bridge, but there are hundreds of accounts of asylum seekers, when they go to the bridge, who are told, “I’m sorry, we’re full today. We can’t process your case.” So the families go illegally on a raft—I don’t want to say illegally; they cross without a visa on a raft. Many of them then look for Border Patrol to turn themselves in, because they know they’re going to ask for asylum. And under this government theory—you know, in the past, we’ve had international treaties, right? Statutes which codified the right of asylum seekers to ask for asylum. Right? Article 31 of the Refugee Convention clearly says that it is improper for any state to use criminal laws that could deter asylum seekers as long as that asylum seeker is asking for asylum within a reasonable amount of time. But our administration is kind of ignoring this longstanding international and national jurisprudence of basic beliefs to make this distinction that, if you come to a bridge, we’re not going to prosecute you, but if you come over the river and then find immigration or are caught by immigration, we’re prosecuting you.

      TM: So if you cross any other way besides the bridge, we’re prosecuting you. But . . . you can’t cross the bridge.

      AC: That’s right. I’ve talked to tons of people. There are organizations like Al Otro Lado that document border turn-backs. And there’s an effort to accompany asylum seekers so that Customs and Border Patrol can’t say, “We’re closed.” Everybody we’ve talked to who’s been prosecuted or separated has crossed the river without a visa.

      TM: You said you were down there recently?

      AC: Monday, June 4.

      TM: What was happening on the bridge at that point?

      AC: I talked to a lot of people who were there Saturdays and Sundays, a lot of church groups that are going, bringing those individuals umbrellas because they were in the sun. It’s morning shade, and then the sun—you know, it’s like 100 degrees on the cement. It’s really, really hot. So there were groups bringing diapers and water bottles and umbrellas and electric fans, and now everyone’s freaked out because they’re gone! What did they do with them? Did they process them all? Yet we know they’re saying you’re turned back. When I was in McAllen, the individuals that day who visited people on the bridge had been there four days. We’re talking infants; there were people breastfeeding on the bridge.

      TM: Are the infants taken as well?

      AC: Every border zone is different. We definitely saw a pattern in McAllen. We talked to 63 parents who had lost their children that day in the court. Of those, the children seemed to be all five and older. What we know from the shelters and working with people is that, yes, there are kids that are very young, that are breastfeeding babies and under three in the shelters, separated from their parents. But I’m just saying, in my experience, all those kids and all the parents’ stories were five and up.

      TM: Can you talk about how you’ve seen the process change over the past few months?

      AC: The zero-tolerance policy really started with Jeff Sessions’s announcement in May. One could argue that this was the original policy that we started seeing in the executive orders. One was called “border security and immigration enforcement.” And a lot of the principles underlying zero tolerance are found here. The idea is that we’re going to prosecute people.

      TM: And the policy of separating kids from parents went into effect when?

      AC: They would articulate it in various ways with different officials, but as immigration attorneys, starting in October, were like, “Oh my goodness. They are telling us these are all criminal lawbreakers and they’re going to have their children taken away.” We didn’t know what it would mean. And so we saw about six hundred children who were taken away from October to May, then we saw an explosion of the numbers in May. It ramped up. The Office of Refugee Resettlement taking in all these kids says that they are our children, that they are unaccompanied. It’s a fabrication. They’re not unaccompanied children. They are children that came with their parents, and the idea that we’re creating this crisis—it’s a manufactured crisis where we’re going to let children suffer to somehow allow this draconian approach with families seeking shelter and safe refuge.

      TM: So what is the process for separation?

      AC: There is no one process. Judging from the mothers and fathers I’ve spoken to and those my staff has spoken to, there are several different processes. Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification. In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.” Sometimes mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said, “Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. So the father just let the child go. So it’s a lot of variations. But sometimes deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may look like. We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th, and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of them had direct information from immigration on where their child was located. The one number they were given by some government official from the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know there are more parents who are being deported without their child, without any process or information on how to get their child back.

      TM: And so it’s entirely possible that children will be left in the country without any relatives?

      AC: Could be, yeah.

      TM: And if the child is, say, five years old . . .?

      AC: The child is going through deportation proceedings, so the likelihood that that child is going to be deported is pretty high.

      TM: How do they know where to deport the child to, or who the parents are?

      AC: How does that child navigate their deportation case without their parent around?

      TM: Because a five-year-old doesn’t necessarily know his parents’ information.

      AC: In the shelters, they can’t even find the parents because the kids are just crying inconsolably. They often don’t know the full legal name of their parents or their date of birth. They’re not in a position to share a trauma story like what caused the migration. These kids and parents had no idea. None of the parents I talked to were expecting to be separated as they faced the process of asking for asylum.

      TM: I would think that there would be something in place where, when the child is taken, they’d be given a wristband or something with their information on it?

      AC: I think the Department of Homeland Security gives the kids an alien number. They also give the parents an alien number and probably have that information. The issue is that the Department of Homeland Security is not the one caring for the children. Jurisdiction of that child has moved over to Health and Human Services, and the Health and Human Services staff has to figure out, where is this parent? And that’s not easy. Sometimes the parents are deported. Kids are in New York and Miami, and we’ve got parents being sent to Tacoma, Washington, and California. Talk about a mess. And nobody has a right to an attorney here. These kids don’t get a paid advocate or an ad litem or a friend of the court. They don’t get a paid attorney to represent them. Some find that, because there are programs. But it’s not a right. It’s not universal.

      TM: What agency is in charge of physically separating the children and the adults?

      AC: The Department of Homeland Security. We saw the separation take place while they were in the care and custody of Customs and Border Protection. That’s where it was happening, at a center called the Ursula, which the immigrants called La Perrera, because it looked like a dog pound, a dog cage. It’s a chain-link fence area, long running areas that remind Central Americans of the way people treat dogs.

      TM: So the Department of Homeland Security does the separation and then they immediately pass the kids to HHS?

      AC: I don’t have a bird’s-eye view of this, besides interviewing parents. Parents don’t know. All they know is that the kid hasn’t come back to their little room in CBP. Right? We know from talking to advocates and attorneys who have access to the shelters that they think that these kids leave in buses to shelters run by the Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement Department of Unaccompanied Children Services—which, on any given day there’s like three thousand kids in the Harlingen-Brownsville area. We know there are eight, soon to be nine, facilities in Houston. And they’re going to open up this place in Tornillo, along the border by El Paso. And they’re opening up places in Miami. They’re past capacity. This is a cyclical time, where rates of migration increase. So now you’re creating two populations. One is your traditional unaccompanied kids who are just coming because their life is at risk right now in El Salvador and Honduras and parts of Guatemala, and they come with incredible trauma, complex stories, and need a lot of resources, and so they navigate this immigration system. And now we have this new population, which is totally different: the young kids who don’t hold their stories and aren’t here to self-navigate the system and are crying out for their parents. There are attorneys that get money to go in and give rights presentations to let the teenagers know what they can ask for in court, what’s happening with their cases, and now the attorneys are having a hard time doing that because right next to them, in the other room, they’ve got kids crying and wailing, asking for their mom and dad. The attorneys can’t give these kids information. They’re just trying to learn grounding exercises.

      TM: Do you know if siblings are allowed to stay together?

      AC: We don’t know. I dealt with one father who knew that siblings were not at the same location from talking to his family member. He believes they’re separated. But I have no idea. Can’t answer that question.

      TM: Is there another nonprofit similar to yours that handles kids more than adults?

      AC: Yes: in Houston it’s Catholic Charities. We know in Houston they are going to open up shelters specific for the tender-age kids, which is defined as kids under twelve. And that’s going to be by Minute Maid Stadium. And that facility is also going to have some traditional demographic of pregnant teenagers. But it’s going to be a young kid—and young kids are, almost by definition, separated. Kids usually do not migrate on their own at that age.

      TM: That’s usually teens?

      AC: Teens. Population is thirteen to seventeen, with many more fifteen-, sixteen-, and seventeen-year-olds than thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. They’re riding on top of trains. You know, the journey is very dangerous. Usually that’s the age where the gangs start taking the girls and saying “you’re going to be my sex slave”–type of stuff. I’ve heard that it’s going to be run by a nonprofit. ORR does not hold the shelters directly. They contract with nonprofits whose job it is to provide essential food, mental health care, caseworkers to try to figure out who they’re going to be released to, and all those functions to nonprofits, and I think the nonprofit in charge of this one is Southwest Key.

      TM: So how long do the kids stay in the facility?

      AC: It used to be, on average, thirty days. But that’s going up now. There are many reasons for that: one, these facilities and ORR are not used to working with this demographic of young children. Two, DHS is sharing information with ORR on the background of those families that are taking these children, and we’ve seen raids where they’re going to where the children are and looking for individuals in those households who are undocumented. So there is reticence and fear of getting these children if there’s someone in the household who is not a citizen.

      TM: So if I’m understanding correctly, a relative can say, “Well, I can pick that kid up; that’s my niece.” She comes and picks up the child. And then DHS will follow them home? Is that what you’re saying?

      AC: No. The kid would go to the aunt’s house, but let’s just imagine that she is here on a visa, a student visa, but the aunt falls out of visa status and is undocumented and her information, her address, is at the top of DHS’s files. So we’ve seen this happen a lot: a month or two weeks after kids have been released, DHS goes to those foster homes and arrests people and puts people in jail and deports them.

      TM: And then I guess they start all over again trying to find a home for those kids?

      AC: Right.

      TM: What is explained to the kids about the proceedings, and who explains it to them?

      AC: The Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement goes through an organization called the Vera Institute of Justice that then contracts with nonprofit organizations who hire attorneys and other specialized bilingual staff to go into these shelters and give what they call legal orientation programs for children, and they do group orientation. Sometimes they speak to the kids individually and try to explain to them, “This is the process here; and you’re going to have to go see an immigration judge; and these are your rights before a judge; you won’t have an attorney for your case, but you can hire one. If you’re afraid to go back to your country, you have to tell the judge.” That type of stuff.

      TM: And if the child is five, and alone, doesn’t have older siblings or cousins—

      AC: Or three or four. They’re young in our Houston detention centers. And that’s where these attorneys are frustrated—they can’t be attorneys. How do they talk and try to console and communicate with a five-year-old who is just focused on “I want my mom or dad,” right?

      TM: Are the kids whose parents are applying for asylum processed differently from kids whose parents are not applying for asylum?

      AC: I don’t know. These are questions we ask DHS, but we don’t know the answers.

      TM: Why don’t you get an answer?

      AC: I don’t know. To me, if you’re going to justify this in some way under the law, the idea that these parents don’t have the ability to obtain very simple answers—what are my rights and when can I be reunited with my kid before I’m deported without them?—is horrible. And has to go far below anything we, as a civil society of law, should find acceptable. The fact that I, as an attorney specializing in this area, cannot go to a detention center and tell a mother or father what the legal procedure is for them to get their child or to reunite with their child, even if they want to go home?

      And my answer is, “I don’t think you can.” In my experience, they’re not releasing these children to the parents as they’re deported. To put a structure like that in place and the chaos in the system for “deterrence” and then carry out so much pain on the backs of some already incredibly traumatized mothers and fathers who have already experienced sometimes just horrific violence is unacceptable.

      https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/whats-really-happening-asylum-seeking-families-separated

      Mise en exergue d’un passage :

      The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.”

    • Why the US is separating migrant children from their parents

      US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has defended the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border with Mexico, a measure that has faced increasing criticism.

      The “zero-tolerance” policy he announced last month sees adults who try to cross the border, many planning to seek asylum, being placed in custody and facing criminal prosecution for illegal entry.

      As a result, hundreds of minors are now being housed in detention centres, and kept away from their parents.
      What is happening?

      Over a recent six-week period, nearly 2,000 children were separated from their parents after illegally crossing the border, figures released on Friday said.

      Mr Sessions said those entering the US irregularly would be criminally prosecuted, a change to a long-standing policy of charging most of those crossing for the first time with a misdemeanour offence.

      As the adults are being charged with a crime, the children that come with them are being separated and deemed unaccompanied minors.

      Advocates of separations point out that hundreds of children are taken from parents who commit crimes in the US on a daily basis.

      As such, they are placed in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services and sent to a relative, foster home or a shelter - officials at those places are said to be already running out of space to house them.

      In recent days, a former Walmart in Texas has been converted into a detention centre for immigrant children.

      Officials have also announced plans to erect tent cities to hold hundreds more children in the Texas desert where temperatures regularly reach 40C (105F).

      Local lawmaker Jose Rodriguez described the plan as “totally inhumane” and “outrageous”, adding: “It should be condemned by anyone who has a moral sense of responsibility.”

      US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials estimate that around 1,500 people are arrested each day for illegally crossing the border.

      In the first two weeks of the “zero-tolerance” new approach, 658 minors - including many babies and toddlers - were separated from the adults that came with them, according to the CBP.

      The practice, however, was apparently happening way before that, with reports saying more than 700 families had been affected between October and April.

      Not only the families crossing irregularly are being targeted, activists who work at the border say, but also those presenting themselves at a port of entry.

      “This is really extreme, it’s nothing like we have seen before,” said Michelle Brané, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a New York-based non-governmental organisation that is helping some of these people.

      In many of the cases, the families have already been reunited, after the parent was released from detention. However, there are reports of people being kept apart for weeks and even months.

      Family separations had been reported in previous administrations but campaigners say the numbers then were very small.
      Whose fault is it?

      Mr Trump has blamed Democrats for the policy, saying “we have to break up the families” because of a law that “Democrats gave us”.

      It is unclear what law he is referring to, but no law has been passed by the US Congress that mandates that migrant families be separated.

      Fact-checkers say that the only thing that has changed is the Justice Department’s decision to criminally prosecute parents for a first-time border crossing offence. Because their children are not charged with a crime, they are not permitted to be jailed together.

      Under a 1997 court decision known as the Flores settlement, children who come to the US alone are required to be released to their parents, an adult relative, or other caretaker.

      If those options are all exhausted, then the government must find the “least restrictive” setting for the child “without unnecessary delay”.

      The case initially applied to unaccompanied child arrivals, but a 2016 court decision expanded it to include children brought with their parents.

      According to the New York Times, the government has three options under the Flores settlement - release whole families together, pass a law to allow for families to be detained together, or break up families.

      It is worth noting that Mr Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly - who previously served as the head of Homeland Security - said in 2017 that the White House was considering separating families as a means of deterring parents from trying to cross the border.
      What do the figures show?

      The number of families trying to enter the US overland without documentation is on the rise. For the fourth consecutive month in May, there was an increase in the number of people caught crossing the border irregularly - in comparison with the same month of 2017, the rise was of 160%.

      “The trends are clear: this must end,” Mr Sessions said last month.

      It is not clear, though, if the tougher measures will stop the migrants. Most are fleeing violence and poverty in Central American countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and staying, for many, could mean a death sentence.

      Human rights groups, campaigners and Democrats have sharply criticised the separations, warning of the long-term trauma on the children. Meanwhile the UN Human Rights Office called on the US to “immediately halt” them.

      But Mr Sessions has defended the measure, saying the separations were “not our goal” but it was not always possible to keep parents and children together.
      What is the policy in other countries?

      No other country has a policy of separating families who intend to seek asylum, activists say.

      In the European Union, which faced its worst migrant crisis in decades three years ago, most asylum seekers are held in reception centres while their requests are processed - under the bloc’s Dublin Regulation, people must be registered in their first country of arrival.

      Measures may vary in different member states but families are mostly kept together.

      Even in Australia, which has some of the world’s most restrictive policies, including the detention of asylum seekers who arrive by boat in controversial offshore centres, there is no policy to separate parents from their children upon arrival.

      Meanwhile, Canada has a deal with the US that allows it to deny asylum requests from those going north. It has tried to stem the number of migrants crossing outside border posts after a surge of Haitians and Nigerians coming from its neighbour. However, there were no reports of families being forcibly separated.

      “What the US is doing now, there is no equivalent,” said Michael Flynn, executive director of the Geneva-based Global Detention Project, a non-profit group focused on the rights of detained immigrants. “There’s nothing like this anywhere”.

      Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled legislation to keep families together but it is unlikely to win the support of its own party or the White House.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44503514?platform=hootsuite

    • Les récits de la détresse d’enfants de migrants créent l’émoi aux Etats-Unis

      Plus de 2000 enfants ont été séparés de leurs parents depuis l’entrée en vigueur en avril de la politique de « tolérance zéro » en matière d’immigration illégale aux Etats-Unis. Ces jours, plusieurs témoignages ont ému dans le pays.

      http://www.rts.ch/info/monde/9658887-les-recits-de-la-detresse-d-enfants-de-migrants-creent-l-emoi-aux-etats-

    • Etats-Unis : quand la sécurité des frontières rime avec torture d’enfants mineurs

      Au Texas, dans un centre de détention, un enregistrement audio d’enfants migrants âgés entre 4 à 10 ans pleurant et appelant leurs parents alors qu’ils viennent d’être séparés d’eux, vient de faire surface.

      Cet enregistrement a fuité de l’intérieur, remis à l’avocate Jennifer Harbury qui l’a transféré au média d’investigation américain ProPublica. L’enregistrement a été placé sur les images filmées dans ce centre. Il soulève l’indignation des américains et du monde entier. Elles sont une torture pour nous, spectateurs impuissants de la barbarie d’un homme, Donald Trump et de son administration.

      Le rythme des séparations s’est beaucoup accéléré depuis début mai, lorsque le ministre de la Justice Jeff Sessions a annoncé que tous les migrants passant illégalement la frontière seraient arrêtés, qu’ils soient accompagnés de mineurs ou pas. Du 5 mai au 9 juin 2018 quelque 2’342 enfants ont été séparés de leurs parents placés en détention, accusés d’avoir traversé illégalement la frontière. C’est le résultat d’une politique sécuritaire dite de “tolérance zéro” qui criminalise ces entrées même lorsqu’elles sont justifiées par le dépôt d’une demande d’asile aux Etats-Unis. Un protocol empêche la détention d’enfants avec leurs parents. Ils sont alors placés dans des centres fermés qui ressemblent tout autant à des prisons adaptées.

      https://blogs.letemps.ch/jasmine-caye/2018/06/19/etats-unis-quand-la-securite-des-frontieres-rime-avec-torture-denfants

    • Aux États-Unis, le traumatisme durable des enfants migrants

      Trump a beau avoir mis fin à la séparation forcée des familles à la frontière, plus de 2 000 enfants migrants seraient encore éparpillés dans le pays. Le processus de regroupement des familles s’annonce long et douloureux.


      https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/aux-etats-unis-le-traumatisme-durable-des-enfants-migrants
      #caricature #dessin_de_presse

    • The Government Has Taken At Least 1,100 Children From Their Parents Since Family Separations Officially Ended

      “You can’t imagine the pain,” Dennis said. “If you’re not a dad, you don’t know what it’s like.” I reached Dennis by phone in a small town in the Copán Department of Honduras, where he lives with his wife and three children. For five months this year, the family was fractured across borders. Sonia, age 11, had been separated from Dennis after they crossed into the United States and turned themselves in to the Border Patrol to ask for asylum. Dennis was deported from Texas, and Sonia sent to a shelter in New York.

      The U.S. government is still taking children from their parents after they cross the border. Since the supposed end of family separation — in the summer of 2018, after a federal judge’s injunction and President Donald Trump’s executive order reversing the deeply controversial policy — more than 1,100 children have been taken from their parents, according to the government’s own data. There may be more, since that data has been plagued by bad record keeping and inconsistencies. The government alleges that separations now only happen when a parent has a criminal history or is unfit to care for a child, but an ongoing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that the current policy still violates the rights of children and families. Border Patrol agents, untrained in child welfare, make decisions that some parents are unfit to stay with their children based solely on brief interactions with them while they are held in custody.

      Dennis picks coffee during the harvest season and works other basic jobs when he can, but he struggles to put food on the table and pay for his kids’ school supplies. In April, unable to find steady work in the coffee fields and receiving regular threats from a creditor, he headed north, hoping to find safety and opportunity in the United States. “We were barely eating. I couldn’t give my kids a life,” Dennis told me. (He preferred that I only use first names for him and his family due to safety concerns.) Thinking that his two boys — ages 2 1/2 and 7 — were too young to travel, Dennis took Sonia and together they left Honduras. They trekked through Guatemala and Mexico by bus, train, and on foot. They were robbed once, terrified the whole way, and had to beg for food. They slept wherever they could — sometimes in the woods, along the tracks, or, when they could scrounge enough money together, in migrant flophouses.

      After about a month of travel, Dennis and Sonia crossed the Rio Grande in a small raft outside of McAllen, Texas, on the morning of May 17. They walked for hours before they turned themselves in to a Border Patrol agent and were taken to a processing center, where they were locked up in one of the freezing-cold temporary holding centers known as hieleras, or iceboxes. Only a few hours later, a Border Patrol agent took Dennis and Sonia and locked them in separate rooms. It was the last time he would see his daughter for five months.

      For the next 11 days, Dennis remained in the hielera, asking repeatedly to see his daughter. Border Patrol officers tried to get him to sign papers that were in English, which he couldn’t read. He refused. “You can’t see her,” a Border Patrol agent told him about his daughter. The agent said that she was fine, but wouldn’t tell him where she was. Border Patrol transferred Dennis to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Port Isabel, Texas. They told him that because of a previous deportation and a felony — a 10-year-old charge for using false work authorization papers — he was ineligible for asylum. For the next 30 days of his detention, he knew nothing of his daughter or her whereabouts. Finally, an agent called him over and told him that she was on the phone. The call was brief. They both cried. He told her to be strong. He told her that they were going to send him away. Two weeks later, without talking to his daughter again, he was deported back to Honduras. “I’m a man, but I cried. I cried,” he told me. “Oh, it was so hard.”

      Sonia was in New York in an Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, shelter, where she was living with a number of other children. In Honduras, after Dennis’s deportation, the rest of the family waited in agony for nearly 5 months, until October 9, when Sonia was released and then flown home. “My wife,” Dennis said, “she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. You can’t imagine the suffering. And, don’t forget,” he reminded me, “she had two other kids to raise.”

      In 2018, much of the world looked on aghast as U.S. immigration agents separated thousands of children from their parents in an unprecedented anti-immigrant crackdown. In one notorious instance captured on audio, Border Patrol agents laughed and joked at desperate children crying for their parents. The separations, part of a series of policy changes to limit total immigration and effectively shutter refugee and asylum programs, stemmed from the so-called zero-tolerance policy that began in El Paso in 2017 and was rolled out border-wide in the spring of 2018. The administration had announced that it would seek to prosecute all people who illegally crossed the border (despite the fact that, according to U.S. law, it is not illegal for an asylum-seeker to cross the border), but it later emerged that the government had specifically targeted families. A strict zero tolerance policy — prosecuting every individual who was apprehended — was always beyond capacity. The focus on families was part of a distinct effort by the Department of Homeland Security and the White House to try and dissuade — by subjecting parents and children to the terror of separation — more people from coming to the United States.

      After widespread uproar and international condemnation, Trump issued an executive order to halt the separations on June 20, 2018. Six days later, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued an injunction, demanding the reunification of parents with their children within 30 days. For children under the age of 5, the deadline was 14 days. For some, however, it was too late. Parents had already lost custody, been deported, or even lost track of their children. Even for those who were reunified, trauma had set in. In 2018, the number of publicly known separations was 2,800. In fact, as the government revealed this October after pressure from the ACLU lawsuit, that original count was over 1,500 children short. Furthermore, the government has admitted that more than 1,100 additional families have been separated since the executive order and injunction — bringing the total number of children impacted to at least 5,446. That number may still be an undercount and will continue to rise if immigration officials’ current practices continue.

      The grounds for the ongoing separations — the 1,100 new cases — stem from a carve-out in Sabraw’s injunction: that children should not be separated “absent a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.” That language, the ACLU and others allege in an ongoing lawsuit, is being interpreted too broadly by the government, resulting in unwarranted separations. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who has been litigating against the government on behalf of a class of separated families, called the ongoing separation policy “as shocking as it is unlawful.”

      The reason that Dennis and Sonia were separated, for example, goes back to 2008, when Dennis’s wife was pregnant with Sonia, and Dennis came to the U.S. to find work and support his family. He made it to Minnesota and was loaned false papers to get a job, but he was quickly picked up and charged with forgery. He spent three months in a federal prison before being deported. Eleven years later, that conviction led to Sonia being taken from him. “You could call any child expert from anywhere in the country, and they would tell you that these parents are not a danger to the child,” Gelernt said in a September 20 hearing. “The government is simply saying, ‘We are going to take away children because the court said we could.’”

      In a brief filed to the court in July, ACLU attorneys pointed out cases in which children were taken from their parents for “the most minor or nonviolent criminal history.” The reasons for separation cited in those cases included marijuana possession convictions, a 27-year-old drug possession charge, and a charge of “malicious destruction of property value” over a total of $5. An 8-month-old was separated from his father for a “fictitious or fraudulent statement.” A mother who broke her leg at the border had her 5-year-old taken from her while she was in emergency surgery, and ORR did not release the child for 79 days.

      In an example of a dubious determination made by the Border Patrol of a father being “unfit” to care for his 1-year-old daughter, an agent separated the two because the father left his daughter in a wet diaper while she was sleeping. She had been sick and, after caring for her and taking her to the hospital on two separate occasions for a high fever, the father “wanted to let her sleep instead of waking her to change her diaper,” according to the ACLU brief. Nonetheless, a female guard took his daughter from his arms, criticized him for not changing the diaper, and even called him a bad father. The government’s own documents show that the father has no other criminal history.

      In another instance, a 3-year-old girl was separated from her father due to Customs and Border Protection’s allegation that he was not actually her parent. Although the father’s name does not appear on the child’s birth certificate, he presented other documentation showing parentage and requested a DNA test as proof. Officials ignored his request and separated the family. After an attorney intervened, the family took a DNA test and confirmed paternity. Meanwhile, the daughter was sexually abused while in ORR care and, according to the brief, “appears to be severely regressing in development.”

      CBP did not respond to a request for comment.

      The ACLU’s brief received some coverage this summer, but many of the most egregious stories it collected went unmentioned. Overall, even as the separations have continued, media attention has flagged. From a high of 2,000 stories a month in the summer of 2018, this fall has seen an average of only 50 to 100 stories a month that mention family separation, according to an analysis by Pamela Mejia, head of research at Berkeley Media Studies Group. Mejia told me that the issue had “reached a saturation point” for many people: “The overwhelming number of stories that generate outrage has made it harder to keep anything in the headlines.”

      At first, the child victims of the government’s actions were easy to empathize with. There was no “crime frame,” as Mejia put it, to explain away the children’s suffering, in contrast to the way that immigration is often covered. Whether denominating migrants as “illegals,” seeing them as “hordes” or “invaders,” or using a broad brush to associate them with crime or terrorism, politicians and the media alike often wield anti-immigrant or dehumanizing language when discussing immigration. Young children, however, are something different. The broad consensus in 2018 was that the family separation policy was an outrageous and unnecessary cruelty.

      But, despite the outrage, the policy continued and now there’s a sense of “futility that this is going to keep happening,” Mejia said. Gelernt likewise attributed the lack of ongoing coverage to “media burnout,” noting especially that there are more than 200 kids under the age of 5 who have been separated from their families. It’s hard to cover so many heartrending stories, Gelernt said. And now, simply, “People think it’s over.”

      But it’s not. Sabraw, the southern California judge who issued the injunction in 2018, is expected to rule soon on the ACLU’s challenge to the continued separations. But even if he again orders the government to reunify families, or narrows immigration officials’ latitude in carrying out separations, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the government can, or will, comply. CBP, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, has already proven negligent in keeping track of the separated children — calling families who had undergone separation, for example, “deleted family units.” Some children still remain unaccounted for.

      “At this point, no government official can plausibly claim that they are unaware of the damage these separations are doing to the children,” Gelernt told me, “yet they continue to do it.”

      In late November, back in Copán, Sonia graduated from sixth grade. One of her favorite things to do, Dennis told me, is to draw with her younger brothers. She is also teaching the older of the two boys to read, practicing his letters with him. She’ll go into seventh grade soon, but her father worries about her growing up in what he described as a gang-ridden town. Honduras has one of the highest incidence rates of violence against women in the world. He also doesn’t know how he’ll be able to pay for her high school. “I know it’s desperate,” he said, “but I’m thinking of heading north again. I can’t see how else to do it.”

      Sonia doesn’t talk much about her time separated from her family, but Dennis notices that she’s changed, and he and his wife are worried: “She told me she didn’t feel good. She was just crying at first [while in the ORR facility]; that’s all she did.” Now when she goes quiet sometimes, her parents wonder if she’s still affected by the trauma. As Dennis contemplated aloud another potential trip north in search of personal and financial security, he reflected, “I just ask that we have enough food to eat every day. I just want my family to be safe.”

      https://theintercept.com/2019/12/09/family-separation-policy-lawsuit

  • L’assureur américain Aetna prévoit d’offrir 500 000 Apple Watch
    http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/02/12/l-assureur-americain-aetna-prevoit-d-offrir-500-000-apple-watch_5255523_3234

    Plusieurs assureurs offrent des montres Apple Watch ou des bracelets connectés Fitbit à leurs clients aux Etats-Unis. En échange, ces derniers acceptent de partager leurs données personnelles ou de faire du sport. Source d’économies ou simple argument marketing ? Aux Etats-Unis, plusieurs assureurs offrent des montres Apple Watch ou des bracelets connectés Fitbit à leurs clients. En échange, ces derniers acceptent de partager leurs données personnelles ou de faire du sport. Objectif : les encourager (...)

    #Aetna #Apple #bracelet #montre #iWatch #Fitbit #géolocalisation #santé #UnitedHealthcare

    ##santé

  • La #Route_de_la_soie_polaire agite les esprits, ici un point de vue atypique (poutino-maoïste ?) : que les É.-U. commencent par signer la Convention des Nations Unies sur le Droit de la Mer…

    Don’t Fear China’s Arctic Takeover - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/don-t-fear-china-s-arctic-takeover


    (illustration personnelle récupérée là http://www.laboiteverte.fr/la-terre-en-vue-polaire-par-la-chine )

    Last week, China said it plans to build a “#Polar_Silk_Road” that will open shipping lanes across the largely pristine region at the top of the world. It’s an ambitious idea for a country that lacks an Arctic border, and it has raised concerns around the world about China’s ultimate intentions and its capacity for environmental stewardship. Although these are reasonable worries, they’re almost certainly overblown.

    In theory, melting Arctic ice will create a significant economic opportunity. By one account, the region holds 22 percent of the world’s oil and gas reserves. As the ice recedes due to climate change, those reserves will be easier to mine. As new shipping lanes open, they should also be easier to transport. A cargo vessel going from Shanghai to Rotterdam via the Northwest Passage, rather than through the Panama Canal, will shave 2,200 miles off its journey. Already, some 900 Arctic infrastructure projects are at various stages of development.

    To be sure, most won’t get anywhere. It’s hard to predict exactly how and where polar ice will melt. Some hoped-for shipping lanes may not open until the 2070s, and those routes that have already opened are unlikely to support profitable shipping businesses, thanks to their remoteness and the high cost of insurance. In 2016, only 19 vessels traversed the Northern Sea Route between Asia and Europe — hardly evidence of an Arctic “gold rush” or competition for the Panama Canal.
    […]
    With that in mind, clearer rules and stronger institutions are still needed. For starters, the U.S. should set an example by finally ratifying the #United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea, the treaty governing the oceans. In doing so, it would gain more influence in discussions over the Arctic, and help ensure that disputes in the region’s international waters can be resolved in an orderly way. Additionally, the #Polar_Code, which regulates cargo vessels and cruise ships in the area, should be extended to fishing boats, which arguably pose the greatest risk to Arctic ecosystems. Finally, it would make sense to establish an international scientific body — perhaps modeled on the North Pacific Marine Sciences Organization — that could provide timely information on the Arctic’s environment and fish stocks.

    #UNCLOS #Montego_Bay
    #OBOR

  • Sanctions dans les centres fédéraux | Puni pour avoir voulu assister à la naissance de son enfant
    https://asile.ch/2017/12/21/sanctions-centres-federaux-puni-voulu-assister-a-naissance-de-enfant

    https://asile.ch/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Capture-d’écran-2017-12-21-à-15.33.03.png

    Un couple est arrivé séparément en Suisse. La femme, arrivée la première, a été attribuée à un canton, où elle a attendu le terme de sa grossesse. Lorsque son mari est arrivé en Suisse, le SEM l’a envoyé trois mois au centre fédéral des Rochats, dans la montagne loin de tout, à six kilomètres à […]

  • « Unités laïcité » à l’école : le poison du soupçon envers les élèves (Libération)
    http://www.liberation.fr/france/2017/12/11/unites-laicite-a-l-ecole-le-poison-du-soupcon-envers-les-eleves_1615726

    Ce discours sur la laïcité à l’école s’inscrit dans un esprit du temps qui voudrait faire croire que la République est menacée chaque jour, en chaque lieu, par des extrémistes religieux. On transforme de jeunes citoyens en pleine formation intellectuelle en de dangereux éléments exogènes qui tenteraient par tous les moyens d’imposer leur religion à leurs camarades, et à leurs professeurs avec. Le fond de sauce de cette pensée, c’est celui, classique aujourd’hui, d’une « islamisation rampante ». De toute évidence, l’extrême droite n’est pas la seule à y prendre sa part.

    #éducation #laïcité #islamophobie #Unités_Laïcité

  • On a pu filmer une visite au centre de rétention pour femmes migrantes du Palais de justice

    MIGRANTS - Des anciennes cellules reconverties en chambres, des grillages un peu partout, des barquettes repas qui ressemblent à celles d’un hôpital et la télé branchée sur BFM TV dans la salle de détente. Bienvenue dans le centre de rétention administrative (CRA) pour femmes du Palais de justice de Paris. C’est ici que sont retenues les migrantes qui n’ont pas les papiers adéquats pour résider sur le territoire français.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2017/11/20/on-a-pu-filmer-une-visite-au-centre-de-retention-pour-femmes-migrante
    #vidéo #Paris #rétention #détention_administrative #migrations #asile #réfugiés #femmes #migrants_chinois #migrants_roumains #Roumanie #Chine #CRA #ordre_public #grossesse #unité_familiale #Roms #femmes_enceintes
    cc @isskein

  • Voix d’Exils | Séparation… Mot familier et tragique pour les exilés
    https://asile.ch/2017/08/29/voix-dexils-separation-familier-tragique-exiles

    Il n’est pas rare que des familles soient séparées sur le chemin de la migration. Des souffrances supplémentaires se greffent alors sur une situation déjà difficile. Une femme afghane témoigne de la situation tragique qu’elle vit aujourd’hui en Suisse. Article de Morrasa Sadeghi , publié le 22 août 2017. Cliquez ici pour lire l’article sur le […]

  • Etats-Unis : l’état d’urgence est décrété à #Charlottesville, où se rassemblent des militants d’extrême droite

    Le gouverneur démocrate de la Virginie, Terry McAuliffe, a déclaré un état d’urgence à Charlottesville, où de nombreux militants d’extrême droite veulent dénoncer le retrait d’une statue du général sudiste Lee. Un véhicule a foncé dans un groupe de contre-manifestants, tuant au moins une personne.
    [edit vu ailleurs : TROIS morts et 19 blessé-e-s]

    http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/usa/etats-unis-l-etat-d-urgence-est-decrete-a-charlottesville-ou-se-rassemb

    http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2017/08/12/aux-etats-unis-un-rassemblement-d-extreme-droite-interdit-a-charlottesville_

    La #fachosphere de twitter, très active comme à son habitude, a très vite lancé la rumeur que le conducteur serait un « jeune déséquilibré » antifa et anti #Trump, qui se serait « trompé » de manif... Le jeune en question, Joel Vangheluwe, a très vite démenti mais la rumeur était déjà partie et infectait jusqu’aux mainstream français pendant un temps...
    https://www.facebook.com/joel.notavailable

    Pour le contexte, je ne sais pas trop ce que vaut ce site mais il recense pas mal de sources d’automedias sur twitter sur le déroulé de la manif interdite, les affrontement entre suprémacistes blancs et antifas, mais aussi les milices et les flics...
    http://theantimedia.org/charlottesville-state-of-emergency

  • Festival du droit d’asile de Cannes - par CRS (Collectif Roya Solidaire) - YouTube
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHF2BwFsb5o

    Lundi 24 Juillet j’ai été mis en garde à vue puis mis en examen pour « aide à l’entrée et a la circulation de personnes en situation irrégulière » alors que je suivais des demandeurs d’asile en train jusqu’en gare de Cannes afin d’être témoin d’éventuelles interpellations illégales et violations de leur droit.

    Le collectif CRS dont je fais partie avait pour projet de réaliser un film documentaire retraçant le parcours chaotique d’un demandeur d’asile dans les Alpes-Maritimes.

    Ce projet a du être précipité à cause de mon arrestation. Le présent film a été tourné en caméra cachée avec des téléphones portables et des caméras professionnelles.

    Il démontre les violations des droits des demandeurs d’asile qui se sont vus interpellés et reconduits à la frontière au mépris de leurs statut de demandeur d’asile, sans examen de leur demande, sans accès à des interprètes ni à leurs avocats.

  • Collectif R | Vaud : Séparation d’une famille de quatre enfants lors d’un renvoi forcé
    https://asile.ch/2017/07/27/collectif-r-vaud-separation-dune-famille-de-quatre-enfants-lors-dun-renvoi-for

    « La police est entrée directement dans la chambre pendant que nous dormions. Elle a enlevé les enfants du lit et les a amenés dans les fourgons, ma femme a été menottée et enchaînée aux pieds et moi, j’étais entouré des 4 policiers et je n’ai pu rien faire pour protéger ma famille. C’est la police […]

  • La famille a quitté l’Afghanistan à neuf, elle est arrivée Grande-Bretagne à deux

    Saïd Norzai et son fils Wali attendent un statut à Derby pour partir à la recherche des frères et sœurs disparus en route. Un chapitre du projet « The new arrivals ».


    http://mobile.lemonde.fr/les-nouveaux-arrivants/article/2017/03/08/la-famille-a-quitte-l-afghanistan-a-neuf-elle-est-arrivee-grande-bret

    #familles #unité_familiale #parcours_migratoire #itinéraire_migratoire #asile #migrations #réfugiés #séparation

  • A right to family reunification for persons granted international protection? The Strasbourg case-law, state sovereignty and EU harmonisation

    For a long time, the European Court of Human Rights showed great respect for state sovereignty in the field of migration and was very reluctant to affirm a right of aliens to enter a Convention State to reunite with family members living there. Only in very rare cases has the Court found violations of the European Convention on Human Rights when migrants or refugees have been denied reunification with their children or spouses in the state of residence. However, recent case-law points to an increasing shift from respect for states’ prerogatives in the field of immigration to a strengthening of the human rights of aliens. On the one hand, the Court has adjusted its approach under Article 8 ECHR giving increased weight to the interests of refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection to be reunited with their loved ones (1) and on the other hand, applicants have been successful in utilising the Article 14 prohibition of discrimination to claim a right to family reunification (2).

    http://eumigrationlawblog.eu/a-right-to-family-reunification-for-persons-under-international-p
    #unité_familiale #regroupement_familiale #asile #migrations #réfugiés #CEDH #CourEDH #jurisprudence #famille