Immigration

[Vrede too]

Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes
The three-year-old group, which has roughly 9,500 members, shared derogatory comments about Latina lawmakers who plan to visit a controversial Texas detention facility on Monday, calling them “scum buckets” and “hoes.”

AOC decries ‘violent culture’ exposed in secret Border Patrol Facebook group

It's no surprise that violent, bigoted CBP officers are so stupid as to get caught like this.

[Boatrocker]

I've been circulating this:


"So I decided to do a little research into the $750/day figure I’d heard a private company was charging the US government per each detained migrant child. I wanted to, with my own eyes and brain, 1. verify this figure was accurate; 2. verify it was indeed a private company instead of a non-profit charging this, if true, as both have managed these detention centers (not that it really matters, ultimately, but stay with me); 3. try to figure out where this per diem sum — more than my monthly mortgage — was going, if not to even buy these tortured children toothbrushes and soap, which are about the cheapest basic necessities on the market, and which no individual has to replace every day.
$750/person A DAY should cover a lot of necessities, right? Right. So where the hell is all this money going? This can’t be true...
Well here’s what I found:
1. Yes, it’s a private company called Comprehensive Health Services (a subsidiary of Caliburn International). CHS operates the largest child migrant detention center, which is in FL and was already getting horrible press — especially from local FL papers — last year. But that didn’t matter, because CHS recently opened up a few more child prisons in TX, as it snagged a new government contract, despite many documented concerns about conditions there.
2. $750/day per child is an accurate sum of CHS’s CLAIMED operating costs, and what our federal tax dollars are paying for. A sum that was agreed to upon award of the contract. In fact, it was actually on the record as $775 last summer.
3. So where is this money going, you wonder, if not to soap and toothbrushes? Yeah, I did too, and it was quite easy to dig up. CHS, via Caliburn, is controlled by the private equity firm DC Capital Partners. For those of you who don’t know how private equity firms work, look it up, or ask me in the comments.
4. While I would not be able to find out vested shareholders in the DCCP portfolio, we do not have to assume they’re making some nice returns on these CHS operations and government contracts that line their pockets instead of covering even basic human needs for children. That’s clear, because why would a private company keep their costs down so low that they completely disregard humanity, even though they say they’re experts in “healthcare?”
PROFIT. FOR THEIR PRIVATE INVESTORS.
5. While I can’t name for you the private investors getting rich off of this humanitarian crisis, I can name for you members of the advisory board of DCCP, which approves everything in the portfolio.
First up: Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, who was named to the board LAST MONTH, and photographed riding a golf cart into a CHS child prison. So with his own eyes, he saw the conditions there. And he was cool with it all, because hey, there’s money to be made for his rich investor friends, and maybe even himself! Who knows! Can’t say for sure, so feel free to reasonably assume what you wish. I’m just stating facts here.
Coincidentally, prior to joining Trump in the WH, he was also a paid lobbyist for DCCP. Hmmmm...
6. So next up on the DCCP board: Richard L. Armitage, former U.S. deputy secretary of state; Michael Corbin; former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates; Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the National Security Agency; Donald M. Kerr Jr., former deputy director of science and technology at the CIA; Anthony C. Zinni, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command and former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East; and Stephen F. Loftus, former director of the Office of the Budget for the United States Navy.
Are y’all seeing any patterns here?
7. Michael Hayden, last June, said on the record he sees “commonality” between Nazi Germany’s separation of children at concentration camps and the Trump administration policy that is forcing children to be separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"I know we’re not Nazi Germany, alright. But there is a commonality there, and a fear on my part ... We have standards we have to live up to,” Hayden told CNN’s “New Day.”
It appears he left those standards at the boardroom door, along with many other individuals that dance with greed and corruption on the line of the private and public sectors COMPLETELY UNCHECKED.
8. Last month, the same month Kelly got his new gig, the government awarded CHS a brand new, hush-hush contract worth $341 million, even though there had been tons of pressure to close it due to its conditions.
THERE WAS NO COMPETITIVE BIDDING FOR THE CONTRACT, and it happened under the radar.
9. Just two months before this, in March, CHS/Caliburn cancelled its IPO after registering with the SEC to sell $100m public shares. The CEO cited “market forces,” yet made it clear the company was thriving and growing.
——————
I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions about all of this, or do more research. And I’ll post a ton of sources in the comments for those who actually think this administration is “draining the swamp,” or who want to debate the semantics of whether these ”centers” can reasonably be called child concentration camps or not without offending some non-brown people.
And for those of you who think children don’t deserve the most basic human rights because they’re not American: There’s a special place in hell for you, and I imagine hell to be a whole lot like this situation.
For those of you who are cool lining the pockets of private citizens in DC with YOUR tax dollars while dirty, hungry, sick children live imprisoned and stacked in cages without even a dime of your money going to pay for soap and toothbrushes for these kids like it was supposed to: I’m ashamed to share this country with you as legal citizens, and I think you’re disgustingly dumb. We failed you, too, but at least you got to go to school when you were a kid, and didn’t spend childhood dying in a cage.
America, NONE OF THIS IS OK. WAKE UP.
——————
FRIDAY NIGHT UPDATE (!!)
1. As mentioned upon writing this, I originally posted my sources at the beginning of the comments thread at time of publishing -- before it became a large discussion. For your convenience and further reading, I am now moving my sources here + some extra homework for everyone to do (no particular order):
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/CLBR:US
https://www.miamiherald.com/…/immigra…/ ... 44049.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/…/john-kelly-jo ... -of-calibu…/
https://news.littlesis.org/…/wall-stree ... former-def…/…
https://thehill.com/…/392727-hayden-see ... ity-betwee…
https://www.npr.org/…/florida-shelter-i ... zed-for-th…
https://www.nytimes.com/…/migrant-shelt ... r-crossing.…
https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/caliburn-international/…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doj-is-in ... g-whether-…
https://thebaffler.com/…/retirement-bro ... u-by-priso…
https://www.floridatoday.com/…/cape-can ... 717375002/
https://www.chsmedical.com/compliance"

I hope some of these fuckers live in infamy with IG Farben. For you lurking RW dimwits, Farben was a big time user of slave labor during WWII and one of their subsidiaries produced Zyklon-B, the hydrogen-cyanide gas product used in Nazi death camps.

[Vrede too]

I've been circulating this: ...

Thanks, disgusting. It's weird that neither Comprehensive Health Services, Caliburn International nor DC Capital Partners are cited in the comprehensive 9/2018 In These Times article above.

I'm not suggesting anything and have no theories to explain it. A quick Wiki check doesn't show that any of the In These Times companies are subsidiaries or affiliates. Perhaps you or someone else can figure it out. If it's a (pretty big) In These Times lapse, maybe you could send them a note updating their research.

I found this:

Caliburn International

... Caliburn has received scrutiny for operations by subsidiary companies Sallyport Global and Comprehensive Health Services. Anonymous reports from Sallyport employees at Balad Air Base, near Baghdad, include accusations of racism, animal abuse, undue safety risks, and corruption. The company is also being investigated for alleged bribery of Iraqi officials for exclusive contracts. Comprehensive Health Services (CHS) has been criticized for its operations at Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, the only for-profit facility for detaining migrant children in the United States. As of May 2019, a non-partisan watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is investigating connections between Kelly's involvement with Trump's child separation policy and current role at Caliburn. CHS also operated at Balad Air Base at the same time as Sallyport....

Comprehensive Health Services

... In 2017, CHS paid the federal government a settlement of $3.818 million in a whistleblower lawsuit for knowingly double charging and mischarging the government for medical services...

Dayyum, they treat Iraqis, GIs and other Americans, taxpayers, patients and even animals like they do migrant children. Figures.

[Vrede too]

Another round of protests:

LIGHTS for LIBERTY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd1V7iv1bKY

"On Friday July 12th, 2019, Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps, will bring thousands of people to locations worldwide as well as to concentration camps across country, into the streets and into their own front yards, to protest the inhumane conditions faced by migrants."

LOCAL EVENTS
Canada, BC - Burnaby
Canada - BC - Vancouver
FL - bunches
NC - Asheville
NC - Hendersonville!
NC - bunches more
IL - Chicago and bunches more
SC - several
TN - Johnson City and several more
WA - bunches
And tons more in other states.

[Vrede too]

... Continuing on the theme of Repugs trying to repress effective protest:

Felony Trial of No More Deaths Volunteer Scott Warren Ends in Mistrial

... Eight jurors believed Warren was innocent on all counts. Four believed he was guilty....

Scott Warren of No More Deaths Faces Retrial for Providing Humanitarian Aid to Migrants in Arizona

Federal prosecutors announced Tuesday they will retry humanitarian aid volunteer and immigration rights activist Scott Warren on two charges related to aiding migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. This comes just a few weeks after a jury refused to convict Warren for providing water, food, clean clothes and beds to two undocumented migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona....

Seriously?


Democrats Are Complicit in Trump’s Fearmongering About Immigrant Youth

Sigh This is why it matters when we ID former Dem appeasers of racists.

[Vrede too]

http://www.blueridgedebate.com/forum/vi ... 559#p98559

After reading about the Yale experiment, I came away feeling that folks like Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, and all those others must be scared to death and it made me feel even better about telling Meadows how I hoped his female family members would be sexually assaulted by members of groups that he most detests (fears the most).

They are wussy snowflakes. EVERY SINGLE FACET of "conservative" ideology is rooted in fear. Illogical, unreasoned fear.

Earlier this month, a North Carolina County Sheriff’s Office refused to notify ICE and comply with a lawful detainer request. The Sheriff released a dangerous illegal immigrant from county jail who was charged with multiple domestic violence charges for strangling a woman and threatening to kill her. This was only one of more than dozens of troubling instances throughout North Carolina. It’s disturbing to see sheriffs across North Carolina establish sanctuary jurisdictions and release dangerous individuals back into communities, while refusing to notify federal immigration officials.

Today, my colleagues and I introduced the Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act. This legislation holds sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for failing to comply with lawful detainer and release notification requests made by federal authorities, therefore jeopardizing public safety. If politicians want to prioritize reckless sanctuary policies over public safety, they should also be willing to provide just compensation for the victims.

The Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act is commonsense legislation that will enhance public safety and hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable....

The Marshall Project:
Is There a Connection Between Undocumented Immigrants and Crime?
It’s a widely held perception, but a new analysis finds no evidence to support it.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019 ... -and-crime


Proposed Rule Could Evict 55,000 Children From Subsidized Housing

Take Action to keep immigrant families together
Let’s demand HUD immediately withdraw its current proposal of mass evictions.

Stop hotels from enabling mass deportations



The petition to Best Western, Choice, Drury, G6 Hospitality, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott, Red Roof and Wyndham reads:

"Publicly refuse to let ICE use your properties as jails for immigrants."

[1 CAT FAN]

[O Really]

(usual silly meme)

Who writes this stuff?
Nobody said "the border" is like a concentration camp, and nobody is "climbing a fence" to get into the kiddy-cages.
Maybe the author would like to make light of the people who survived Auschwitz or Japanese internment camps and who agree that the circumstances and conditions of the "detention centers" meet the criteria for concentration camps.

But hey, nobody said editorial-style cartooning had to be accurate to fact. If the author wants to ridicule AOC, go for it. But how anybody can find it justifiable, reasonable, or defensible to separate kids from their parents, lock them up with insufficient care is totally beyond me, much less how they can find humour in it.

And yes, I know - you don't care, you're just trying to yank chains.

[1 CAT FAN]

All the families have to do is say that they wish to go home.

[Vrede too]

Holocaust Survivor: Yes, the Border Detention Centers Are Like Concentration Camps

[O Really]

All the families have to do is say that they wish to go home.

Not the point. And nowhere near accurate.
Not that you care, but you do know that we're talking mostly about people seeking legal asylum and attempting to jump through the proper hoops for a ruling, right? We're not talking about the garden variety Mexican who comes across looking for work and overstays.

And besides, what difference does it make how or why they got here in deciding whether children should be treated worse than a stray dog?

[1 CAT FAN]

Dang, O Really, Vrede contradicted your statement.

[1 CAT FAN]

All the families have to do is say that they wish to go home.

Not the point. And nowhere near accurate.
Not that you care, but you do know that we're talking mostly about people seeking legal asylum and attempting to jump through the proper hoops for a ruling, right? We're not talking about the garden variety Mexican who comes across looking for work and overstays.

And besides, what difference does it make how or why they got here in deciding whether children should be treated worse than a stray dog?

Things must be really bad in Mexico.

[O Really]

Things must be really bad in Mexico.
[/quote]

In some places, yes - in other places Mexico is very nice. But here's the thing [assume Sam Kinison voice] It's not the Mexicans who are driving up migration numbers! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/c ... stics.html

And besides, no matter who it is and where they came from is there really any justification for being cruel to kids?

[1 CAT FAN]

You have any room in your Itasca Ellipse?

[Vrede too]

Migrant children held in Texas facility need access to doctors, says attorney

Hundreds of children at a migrant detention center in Texas are being held in “inhumane” conditions that amount to an “emergency public health crisis” and should be allowed immediate access to doctors, according to an attorney who gained rare access to the facility....

The team found that children had no adequate access to medical care, had no basic sanitation, were exposed to extreme cold and did not have adequate access to drinking water or food.

“I’ve been visiting children detained in federal immigration custody for 12 years,” Mukherjee told the Guardian. “I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen, smelled, had to bear witness to such degrading and inhumane conditions.”

The UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet on Monday said she was “appalled” at the conditions. “As a paediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions,” the statement quoted Bachelet as saying.

Two weeks ago, the attorneys met with 60 children between the ages of five months and 17 years to interview them about the conditions in the facility, which is holding 350 children. Some had bodily fluids including breast milk, urine and mucus stained on their clothes and many were wearing the same clothes they had crossed the border in, days or weeks earlier....

A week before their visit to Clint, at a similar facility in McAllen, Texas, lawyers and a pediatrician had identified five detained babies who needed immediate hospitalization and were transferred to a local hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

“The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities,” the physician, Dolly Lucio Sevier, wrote in a medical declaration obtained by ABC News.

CBP initially denied the attorneys’ reports, but its own watchdog, the homeland security department’s Office of Inspector General, had already put together – then released last week – reports warning of dangerous overcrowding in border patrol facilities.

On 10 June, the auditor said it witnessed “serious overcrowding” in four of five facilities and prolonged detention at the other five facilities – of both adults and children – that needed to be addressed immediately....

Rightwingers just don't care about health, safety and lives once fetuses become children, especially if the children aren't Anglos. In fact, some like sicko 1 FAT CAN are quite gleeful about the abuse.

[1 CAT FAN]

You condone the killing of would be Native American children.

O Really did say that Mexico is very nice.

[O Really]

You have any room in your Itasca Ellipse?

Aside from the practical issue of being 2,000 miles away, the obvious answer is "no." But I have contributed substantially to reputable organizations who are directly helping. What about yourself? (rhetorical)

[Vrede too]

There is enough "room" and money here to not torture kids and not place adults in concentration camps. These are deliberate policy choices, not inevitables.

[1 CAT FAN]

O Really said that Mexico is very nice.