Follow the money: child detention is big business in Trump's America.
ADDICTION
Our government is addicted to cruelty to immigrants, and especially inhumane treatment of immigrant children. We can no longer afford to look the other way. The Law is the Flores Agreement which limits the holding of children to 21 days, but our government is ignoring this Agreement and warehousing children intentionally, and in growing numbers, separated from their parents in a growing number of concentration camps. The private camps that are being established are not open to the same human rights regulations as governmental establishments are.
There are other options.
The best option is Family Case Management Programs which were established to keep immigrant/asylum-seeking families together while they awaited trials. They were immensely successful in getting 99% of immigrant/asylum-seeking families to their Immigration Court hearings. These programs were slashed in 2017 by the Trump Administration and deemed too expensive — They ran $36 per family per day.
The warehousing of children forcefully separated from their families is unethical, immoral, illegal and is costing American taxpayers a shitload of money. U.S. taxpayers are shelling out over $700 per child per day. And what does that money get you?
For profit prisons are making money hand over fist while putting 900 people in a space designed for 150. Kids are kept in deplorable conditions, drinking toilet water to survive and standing on toilets to breathe freely. Illnesses including mumps are raging through these camps. Schooling, language, outdoor activinty has all be cut “to save money.” Some people are being housed in dog pounds and under freeway overpasses in areas where they are forced to sleep on gravel and where daytime temps are over 100 degrees (40+ Celcius).
The simplistic answer is don’t come here, but as the Trump administration cracks down on the governments in Central America, for allowing these surges, the conditions for residents living there becomes more dire and unsafe. When it becomes untenable, the surges start to build and head northward.
