Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human rights. Show all posts

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies major at Boston University

"One step to keeping history’s darkest events from recurring is to learn as much as possible about how and why they happened.

BU’s new interdisciplinary major in Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies (HGHRS) will ask students to dig deep into the roots of those cataclysmic events and look for ways to head them off in the future."

— "BU Launches New Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Major", Joel Brown, BU Today, Oct. 24, 2022.

flower
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Wednesday, August 28, 2019

How the Trump administration plans to erect a border wall in 2020

As of mid-2019, the Trump administration has only managed to replace 60 miles of existing border fencing. Trump is suddenly demanding to build 500 miles of new fencing between now and the November 2020 election.

On August 27, 2019, Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey wrote for the Washington Post:

"President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave these construction orders to Army Corps engineers on a conference call in August. The story continued:

"Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper is expected to approve a White House request to divert $3.6 billion in Pentagon funds to the barrier project in coming weeks, money that Trump sought after lawmakers refused to allocate $5 billion. The funds will be pulled from Defense Department projects in 26 states, according to administration officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the matter."

And:

"The companies building the fencing and access roads have been taking heavy earth-moving equipment into environmentally sensitive border areas adjacent to U.S. national parks and wildlife preserves, but the administration has waived procedural safeguards and impact studies, citing national security concerns.

* * *

CBP has suggested no longer writing risk-assessment memos “related to the fact that we don’t have real estate rights and how this will impact construction,” the official said."

Furthermore, Trump insists that the fence be painted black (so that it is "hot to the touch, more slippery and therefore tougher to climb"), and "administration officials have stopped trying to talk him out of the demands," even though internal cost analysis says that it will be approximately $100 million to paint or coat 175 miles of fence — a hit to the construction budget that must reduce the total length of fence by about five miles. His other design demand is the removal of existing "the smooth metal plates that are used to thwart climbers" who reach the top of the fence because, even though these are functional, he finds them ugly; he wants the top part of the fence to be shaved to spikes instead. This, too, "is likely to reduce the overall length of the barrier by two to three miles, according to the administration’s cost assessments."

MTrump has also asked the Army Corps to award a contract to Fisher Industries, whose CEO has donated to Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Republican representing North Dakota.

That last part, Greg Sargent wrote in an opinion for the Washington Post the next day, reveals that Trump is "trying to hook up a politically connected crony while also perverting the governing process to stick to a political timetable — all to give his crowds something to chant about at his reelection rallies." Even Sen. Cramer, as Sargent pointed out, admits that Trump wants to award the contract to Fisher because the CEO has appeared on Fox News defending Trump's vision of the border wall.

Trump employs language used by White supremacists in rant against immigration, CNN, October 6, 2023

Trumpers, famous opponents of border walls

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 18, 2026 at 1:43 PM
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Friday, July 26, 2019

Three weeks, no shower, and 'Kafka By Way of Orwell'

The Dallas News tells the following story.

An 18-year-old U.S. citizen was recently detained by U.S. Border Patrol. He was born in Dallas and lives in Texas. He has dual citizenship with Mexico, and he has a U.S. visitors visa that he used dozens of times to travel back and forth. When Border Patrol stopped him, the man was "carrying a Texas ID, wallet-sized birth certificate and Social Security card." The government wrote up a "Notice to Appear" dated June 29, 2019 that says:

The Department of Homeland Security alleges that you:
1. You are not a citizen or national of the United States;
2. You are a native of MEXICO and a citizen of MEXICO;
* * *
6. [After being stopped at the Falfurrias, Texas Border Control Checkpoint on or about June 27, 2019] you falsely represented yourself to be a citizen of the United States..."

Notice to Appear dated June 29, 2019. The Department of Homeland Security alleges that you are not a citizen of the US and that you falsely represented yourself to be a citizen of the US.

He is a U.S. citizen. Nonetheless, Border Patrol detained him and his younger brother. After two days, his younger brother chose to be deported "so that he could tell his mother what was happening with his situation and that of his brother." The 18-year-old man was held for 23 days, during which time he was not allowed to shower and lost 26 pounds.

The Dallas Morning News reported his story on July 22, and the man was released from custody the next day.

On July 25, Brian Hastings, Chief of Law Enforcement at the U.S. Border Patrol, testified about the matter before the House Judiciary Committee. Hastings claimed that the man was detained because he had "claimed to be a Mexican National who was born in Reynosa, Mexico....with no immigration documents to be in or remain in the U.S....At no time in Border Patrol custody did he say that he was a U.S. citizen.”

In response to this, the man's attorney produced the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security's "Notice to Appear" with its statement that "you falsely represented yourself to be a citizen of the United States." This written statement, signed by Sherman Kemp, Acting Patrol Agent in Charge, contradicts Hastings' testimony. Furthermore, two weeks into the 18-year-old's detainment, his lawyer presented his birth certificate to ICE, and yet he wasn't released for another week.

Now free, the man says that Hastings' testimony is "a lie. I showed them my documents and I told them right away that I was a U.S. citizen.” The conditions he endured in Border Patrol custody, according to the Dallas News, almost coerced him to choose deportation.

(It's not the first time a U.S. citizen has been detained. In March 2019, a 9-year-old girl was apprehended on her way to school and held for two days. Authorities blamed the girl for giving "inconsistent information." Again, she is 9.)

And in September 2018, Jennifer Wright wrote for Harper's Bazaar:

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens' homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another."

In response

A a Twitter thread by @AlexandraErin referred to the officer's testimony as "Kafka By Way of Orwell logic" and excellently describes the situation.

"To the fascist mindset, there's no contradiction here. ... All of this could have been averted, they want us to know, if he had been honest from the start and simply told them he was a citizen. But instead he lied. He was deceitful. They know he lied because he had the cheek to falsely claim he's a citizen. Falsely claiming he's a citizen is something any lying immigrant might do. It's a distinct and separate act, they are sure, from a citizen simply stating the truth. Very much this. They make up their mind about your motives, which colors whatever you say, even if it's the exact right thing and the literal truth, and they will never grant that this is the same as telling them the truth. No contradiction, to them. When things got hot with media scrutiny and politicians getting involved in the teenager's detention, the people he'd pleaded his case to, I guarantee, did not think "Why didn't we listen?" but "Why couldn't he have just told us, the right way, so we'd know he meant it?" "Falsely claiming to be a citizen" is a distinct enough act in their mind that a ~*certain type*~ of person can manage it, even if they happen to be an actual citizen. Which just makes it cheekier, of course. The nerve of making them look foolish by falsely claiming the truth! ... What is truth to a fascist? The truth is what they say, and only when they say it, only when it is useful. ... And so the shock and dismay and outrage of the right when they realize their opponents and targets were telling the truth is genuine, is honest, maybe the most honest thing about them. They feel cheated. They feel... lied to. "What do you mean by telling me the truth, just because it's true? That's a dirty trick. I've never seen anything more underhanded, more unscrupulous..."

She continues by pointing out that, had he chosen to allow the Dept. of Homeland Security to deport him, it may have been difficult for him to re-enter the US, the country where he lives and of which he is a citizen by birth. "The creation of a stateless other is part of the model." Thus, he was not truly "free to leave at any time" (as one Internet commenter tried to argue with her).

His only power to end the torture was to agree that he was An Illegal, agreed he had no right to due process and no right to remain here, and agreed to do what they wanted. It wasn't true, but it was the only answer the torturers would have accepted. Which is the purpose of torture. Not to get at the truth, but to establish something already believed by the torturer as true. ...you can't gain information through torture. It's confirmation bias through pain. The torture ends when the torturer hears the truth. "The truth" therefore must be something the torturer already knows, otherwise how can they know it's true?

2026, Second Trump doesn't want due process:

I need people to understand that this administration’s litigating position is (1) federal law currently mandates the detention, without bond, of every noncitizen who is allegedly unlawfully present and (2) constitutionally, they don’t get a day in court. they’re generally losing, but they’re trying.

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— Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof (@evanbernick.bsky.social) July 16, 2026 at 11:35 AM
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Thursday, June 13, 2019

Dispatches from the US/Mexico border (June-September 2019)

In early June 2019, it was announced that the federal government would add three thousand new beds for migrant children. About half this number would be housed at a new facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas in a building that was previously used to house oil field workers. The rest would likely be housed at Army and Air Force bases in Georgia, Montana and Oklahoma. Per an Associated Press article:

"All the new facilities will be considered temporary emergency shelters, so they won’t be subject to state child welfare licensing requirements, [Office of Refugee Resettlement spokesman Mark] Weber said. In January, the government shut down an unlicensed detention camp in the Texas desert under political pressure, and another unlicensed facility called Homestead remains in operation in the Miami suburbs."

Elizabeth C. McLaughlin reported on Twitter that people who are detained at the border are first sent to a place called the "Dog Pound," where people are kept in outdoor cages with "no running water, no covers, no tarp, no care, no safety from the elements. It is freezing at night, and deathly hot during the day." They do not receive adequate nutrition, especially for small children. Then they are sent to "The Freezer," which is maintained at 55 degrees F (13 C) and has no beds, where they are kept for weeks. The government is supposed to send them to residential facilities, but those residential facilities are empty and ICE plans to close them. Instead, they are being sent to concentration camps run by the military, including the former Japanese-American internment camp Fort Sill, where lawyers, journalists, and human rights monitors will not be permitted. "The Trump administration will be able to conduct itself in whatever way it wants to without anyone knowing what's going on inside. Think about what that means. Think about why they would want that. This is happening RIGHT NOW," McLaughlin wrote.

Similarly, Bradford Pearson:

Pearson points us to the organization Densho, which has more information about Fort Sill.

Jonathan M. Katz's article "Call immigrant detention centers what they really are: concentration camps" in the LA Times (9 June 2019) made these points:

"Certainly it helps that the news media covers these horrors intermittently rather than as snowballing proof of a racist, lawless administration.

* * *

A year ago, Americans accidentally became aware that the Trump administration had adopted (and lied about) a policy of ripping families apart at the border. The flurry of attention was thanks to the viral conflation of two separate but related stories: the family-separation order and bureaucrats’ admission that they’d been unable to locate thousands of migrant children who’d been placed with sponsors after crossing the border alone.

* * *

It is important to note that Trump’s aides have built this system of racist terror on something that has existed for a long time. Several camps opened under Obama, and as president he deported millions of people.

But Trump’s game is different. It certainly isn’t about negotiating immigration reform with Congress. Trump has made it clear that he wants to stifle all non-white immigration, period. His mass arrests, iceboxes and dog cages are part of an explicitly nationalist project to put the country under the control of the right kind of white people.

After an emergency Caesarean section in Mexico, a 17-year-old Guatemalan girl crossed the border into the US on June 4, 2019 with her premature baby. Immigration legal advocates found her a week later at the McAllen facility, in pain and in a wheelchair, with the baby—its head smaller than an adult's fist—in poor health condition with only the onesie it was wearing. After attention on social media, it was announced that mother and daughter were to be transferred to a more appropriate facility for minors.

Others have died. However:

(And the list would anyway not have included deaths that occurred shortly after an injured or sick person was released from custody.)

Rabbi Ruttenberg wrote in the Washington Post:

But it is important to note that Nazi concentration camps — which, in Germany, began in 1933 — and the Holocaust’s death (or “extermination”) camps, which began in 1941, are not the same thing, though they’re often conflated in American discourse. And what we now know of the CBP camps does not include many of the hallmarks often associated with Nazi camps — forced labor, for example, or the detention of U.S. citizens. But it’s also true that the earliest camps — known as “wild camps” — were makeshift centers that did not have the infrastructure of later state camps. Concentration camps have a history beyond just the Nazis, too. Pitzer’s definition also puts CBP centers in the context of other such camps in France, South Africa, Cuba, the Soviet Union and, of course, here in the United States during World War II, targeting Japanese Americans. (Those who quibble that “internment camps” are not “concentration camps” might note that both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harold Ickes, his secretary of the interior, referred to U.S. camps as the latter.)

A photo taken illegally in federal court shows 37 immigrants in orange prison jumpsuits being processed simultaneously. Such processes have been in place for a decade but are more frequent under Trump.

It's happening for reasons including this:

Since the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019, there has only been an acting Secretary of Homeland Security, not a permanent one. Might that not reduce stability and accountability?

Some have contact information for relatives and no one is bothering to make the phone calls.

Not that it should matter, but human rights abuses are expensive.

Some companies are turning a profit.

Some people are determined not to care. "Quit trying to make us feel teary-eyed for the children. Yes, I love children a great deal, but to me, it's up to the parents to do things rightfully and legally," a Trump supporter says at a diner in Mesa, Arizona.

A government report on Sept. 4 found that children who were separated from their families at the border last year have, unsurprisingly, suffered PTSD.

In early July, the Trump administration denied reports of inadequate hygiene.

A look inside a detention center (8 June 2019, New York Times and El Paso Times)

Never Again Action, a Jewish activist group, is protesting at ICE centers. (13 July 2019, Times of Israel)

On August 13, acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli said on television that the poem on the Statue of Liberty should read: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge." (In other words, that immigrants are welcome as long as they are able to work and will not require assistance from the government.) Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — herself once a refugee from the Nazis and an immigrant to the United States, now 82 years old — said that Cuccinelli's comment was "one of the most un-American things I have ever heard." On August 14, BuzzFeed News immigration reporter Hamed Aleaziz complained that Cuccinelli, who assumed his position only two months previously, has since "pushed asylum officers to stop allowing some people seeking refuge in the country passage at an initial screening at the border...sped up initial screenings of immigrants seeking asylum, a move that advocates say will give immigrants less time to prepare for their interviews or recover from dangerous journeys...ended a policy that allows Filipino veterans of World War II to bring family members to the United States before their green cards are available...asked USCIS staffers to volunteer for ICE jobs...[and] rolled out the public charge rule." Cucinelli responded on Twitter: “Thx Hamed. The best is yet to come!” In response to which, Eli Valley: “Whoever’s compiling shit in The Hague, save this one.”

On August 21, 2019, the Trump administration announced a new policy allowing detained migrant families to be "kept indefinitely, until their cases are decided." The policy implies "an expectation that cases be resolved comparatively quickly — within around two months." The policy will take effect in two months. The Trump administration only a week ago "announced steps to limit legal migration, including a declaration that by seeking government benefits, migrants would jeopardize their chances of becoming permanent residents."

If those rules "are allowed to stand, we will have entered a new era," wrote Sasha Abramsky, as the change "will take away state licensing authority over family detention facilities and hand that power over to ICE. At the same time, it will remove the ability of designated lawyers, who have a mandate under Flores to monitor the conditions children are kept in, to even set foot in the detention centers."

In September, an ICE officer in Tennessee opened fire on an undocumented immigrant who fled their attempt to take him into custody.

In August, a forty-year-old man deported from the US to Iraq (despite having been born in Greece and never having been to Iraq) died in Iraq, probably due to a lack of diabetes medication, as his lawyers had argued would likely happen, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed ICE to continue with deportations. Many immigrants to the US could face similar fates if they are deported to Iraq or elsewhere. One example is a 16-year-old with cystic fibrosis whose story was featured in the New York Times on September 9. He received a letter telling him that his medical excuse for being in the country was provided, and then he'd have to leave.

On September 11, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to limit asylum claims by Central American migrants. The Trump administration can now deny asylum claims from people who passed through another country (usually Mexico) before arriving in the US, since they didn't "request protection at the first opportunity" (i.e. they didn't claim asylum in Mexico). The rule is still being appealed in lower courts, but the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to behave as it wishes until the results of the legal appeals come in.

The National Park Service believes (according to an internal report obtained by the press in September 2019) that 22 archaeological sites inside Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, containing the history of the peoples of the Sonoran Desert, are threatened by the construction of the border barrier. Noting that archaeology cannot be performed on the government's schedule, a senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association said, "This is just one more reason why ramming this wall through, using illegal, unconstitutional money, is damaging to these public resources. We're destroying what the wall is supposed to protect."

“We’re building a wall in Colorado," Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania on October 23, 2019. “Well this is awkward ... Colorado doesn’t border Mexico,” Colorado's governor, Jared Polis, tweeted.

At the White House Halloween party in 2019, a game was designed for children to "build the wall."

In 2018, ICE was luring foreign-born students to a fake university and then arresting and deporting them. (The fake school was shut down in January 2019 by other authorities.)

In September 2020:

In October 2020, the New York Times revealed more about the origins of family separation: article

UNHCR Age, Gender and Diversity Accountability Report 2015 (PDF)

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