The horrors being inflicted on children by Trump

Read this excerpt from The Guardian about today’s USA. It tells of the MAGA world that 30% of “Americans” still support. 

Trump ally Stephen Miller leads sweeping push to accelerate removal of migrant children

Stephen Miller is leading an unprecedented and intense White House drive across a host of government departments to accelerate the removal of undocumented immigrant children from the US, using tactics that critics say are cruel and racist and, in some cases, flout federal law, the Guardian has learned.

As deputy chief of staff at the White House, focused on immigration policy, Miller is seen as the mastermind and enforcer behind Donald Trump’s hardline anti-immigration agenda. He is directing a whole-of-government approach that has been ramping up throughout Trump’s second term and is targeting a vulnerable population of undocumented children.

Many abruptly find themselves denied access to legal immigration pathways in the US, with their applications fast-tracked and then rejected before being forced out of the country.

Sources warned of the White House pushing each department to boost efforts individually and by working together in new ways to speed up and expand the deportation of undocumented children – especially by dismantling inter-agency communication safeguards designed to protect children, and hurrying them in vast numbers, without lawyers, in front of asylum officers and immigration judges who are either inclined or are under pressure to take a hard line and get them out of the US.

However, the White House and some other agencies that responded framed their endeavors as an anti-trafficking initiative instead of a means to enforcement. “The Department of Homeland Security, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Homeland Security Council are working to locate and rescue these children. We are ensuring these children are reunited with their parents and families in their home countries,” said White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, an immigration policy fellow at Hyphen, a nonprofit intermediary focused on racial equity, said: “A facade of trafficking is sort of a convenient, feel-good cover that has nothing to do with trafficking and everything to do with reducing the program [of federal care for undocumented children], getting rid of services, getting rid of things they don’t like, and then removing kids.”

Trickler-McNulty was previously an assistant director at ICE and a senior counselor at USCIS during the Biden administration. “What is my biggest fear? A lot of it is [already] happening,” Trickler-McNulty said.

She is concerned by the administration gutting legal services and due process for children, closing down higher quality facilities, and having ICE officials take on senior roles in immigrant child welfare at HHS’s office of refugee resettlement (ORR).

Many unaccompanied children are facing the prospect of a forced return to dangerous situations in their countries of origin, particularly in Central America, including Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, or even places as unstable as Afghanistan.

Many have relatives in the US whom they could live with, who are vetted by the government and are known as sponsors. But the second Trump administration has severely restricted this from happening, either through new bureaucratic methods that keep children in custody until they can be deported, or by making prospective sponsors too scared of ICE to come forward.

Experts interviewed for this article describe many measures and the extent to which they required inter-agency collaboration which have not been previously reported, including:

*An influx of immigration and criminal enforcement officials joining ORR in key roles, with the likely effect of shifting the agency’s priorities further away from child welfare and toward mass deportations, given the expertise and point of view of its new leadership and their known closeness with Miller.

*ORR having ICE officers present – and sometimes waiting to detain people – at new in-person appointments that are now part of the sponsorship process, and the two agencies appearing to share information so that prospective sponsors are detained just before or shortly after a child is set to be released from federal custody, which critics believe is not a coincidence.

*ORR seemingly collaborating with USCIS to schedule and rush through asylum adjudications for the children in their custody, sometimes through unorthodox, virtual interviews, not giving the children enough time to truly prepare or consult with attorneys.

*ORR receiving feedback from the White House that its policy ideas were not sufficiently punitive and Miller forcing the agency to implement new tactics with the express purpose of increasing deportations among children and their family members.

*Immigration judges allegedly being told by supervisors to rubber-stamp some of the requests by ICE’s attorneys who are arguing to deport immigrants – including these children – in court, with the White House watching closely.

*State department officials warning some countries of origin to expect increases in deported minors.

Or else?

*The Pentagon being asked by HHS to supply forensic auditors to scour for fraud among legal services organizations representing the children.

A tactic to frighten legal services so they will not represent the children.

In a particularly dramatic case that a source suspects of involving inter-agency collusion, enforcement agents located and detained a small child’s parent just one day before the child was going to be released from ORR custody and reunited with the parent.

Then, the source said, USCIS quickly asked the child’s attorneys if they wanted to withdraw their client’s asylum application – given that the child no longer had a relative available to care for them.

If it was, indeed, a tactic, it was successful: that family agreed to be deported so they could finally be together and free again.

Yes, this is America under Trump. It should make every American mad as hell.

Be sure to vote your anger.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell