Families Belong Together March - Sacramento

Where are the children?
Donde están los Niños ?

DSA Contingent in the Demonstration

Thank you!  All who participated in the  Families Belong Together marches across the nation. Thank you for showing up!  It is a tremendous statement. 

Having worked in the immigration fight for years, this is a peak moment.  It is humbling to see the millions and the families uniting to find the children taken by ICE.  Thank you for standing with the immigrants’ rights movements.  
See Bee video.
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article214134039.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter

It was a reminder that, for all the chaos and cruelty of those in power, a massive and growing movement exists in every corner of the nation that still believes in fundamental decency. It was a reminder that—at the ultimate wellspring of power in the American political system—the core values of we, the people blaze, undiminished, indivisible.

The horror that so many of us feel about the devastating policies of our government won't go away due to a march. But we are here, we are ready to fight, and we won't go away. This administration hopes to crush our will to resist. Today, we made clear that they will fail. 

In the days ahead, we'll be sharing more actions we, together, can take next to build upon this momentum, end these terrorizing and traumatizing policies, hold abusers accountable, and reunite families. Our movement needs to:

• Keep up the heat on decision-makers everywhere. We'll organize more in-person actions to create pressure to reunite families, close family prisons, and end indefinite detention—working with Indivisible, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and other organizations.
• Hold corporations accountable for profiting off this system—companies such as Wells Fargo must be held accountable for their role in funding family separation infrastructure.
• Rein in the excesses of the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are terrorizing communities and tearing apart families across the country.

And we need to make sure everyone who is eligible registers to vote—a critical way to get involved with all the issues that matter to all our communities and families. 

More on all of that soon. Watch your email for opportunities to take action, or join MoveOn's SMS list to get text messages with alerts about clear, impactful actions by texting FAMILY to 668366. 

NYT Editorial Board

The marches taking place across the country this weekend are really about the soul of America. Forcibly separating children from their parents is not about “deterrence,” or the legal technicalities of law, or illegal immigration, or anything else President Trump has claimed to justify his latest and most odious outrage. It’s about “Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation,” to borrow from the Declaration of Independence.

No, the United States does not have clean hands: It has tolerated many inequities and atrocities throughout its history, toward Native Americans, blacks, Japanese and women, among others. Yet against that is the tradition in American law, culture and practice to defend the weak, to welcome the other, to give refuge to the oppressed and to refuse to acquiesce when a government acts against basic dictates of conscience.

The Trump administration has committed a gross offense. It is the duty of every decent American to demand that it promptly reunite these children with their parents.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Texas Protesters March to Federal Courthouse Where Migrants Are Being Pr...

Families Belong Together _ June 30 Rallies

Seeing thousands of immigrant families torn apart, I am devastated and beyond furious.

Join me on June 30 in Washington, D.C., or in a city near you to demand an end to this disgusting family separation policy.

Sacramento Rally.  10 AM.  ICE Administration Building.  650 Capitol Mall.

Organized by Move On, ACLU, and many more.

Endorsed by Sacramento Progressive Alliance

Democratic Socialists of America,  and more

A new Trump administration policy has been separating children—including babies younger than a year old—from their parents at our border, and detaining them in cages and tent cities. It is cruel and appalling, and it is our moral obligation to demand that it stops.

Even now that Trump is feeling pressure, he's not solving anything, as there is no plan to reunite the thousands of kids who have already been taken from their parents. And instead of stopping the imprisoning of children, he's proposing locking kids up with their families in cages for indefinite spans of time. I have visited the inside of a "detention" center, and make no mistake, they are prisons in which families and children are treated like criminals for fleeing life-threatening situations and seeking asylum.

I just gave birth to my first child four weeks ago. When I hold him in my arms, my heart breaks with the weight of my love for him, and I can’t help but imagine the devastation these parents and their terrified children are going through. As a parent, I can’t help but feel a responsibility to speak out against this horrifying situation. As an American, I know it is my duty to condemn these dehumanizing actions and demand that this never happen in our country, on our watch.

Many of us feel this pain and call to action so deeply—which is why hundreds of thousands of us are preparing to take to the streets at more than 600 events around the country next weekend to declare Families Belong Together.

Join me and hundreds of thousands of people who have committed to showing up in Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country on June 30 to demand that the Trump administration keep families together and reunite the thousands of families it has already ripped apart.

Have you ever read about a moment of crisis in history and wondered how people could let something so evil happen? This is one of those moments. We have to speak up. The Trump administration chooses to brutally punish families like this. It’s immoral, it’s wrong, and we can force them to stop.

We're seeing that our outrage is working. But this crisis is far from over. Now's the time to declare that these brutal policies must end, families must be treated with dignity, and the monsters who created these policies deserve to be held accountable.

Families come to the U.S. seeking a better life than was possible for them in the country they came from. Can you imagine living in such a dangerous and untenable situation, that your best option is to subject your family to a harrowing and life-threatening journey, only to arrive in a new country and have your child ripped from your arms with no indication of whether you’ll ever see them again? Can you imagine your terrified and confused child imprisoned by themselves?

MoveOn, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, and others, are calling for June 30 to be a Families Belong Together national day of action. More and more Americans are mobilizing, and we need you to join us.

Sign up now to attend a rally in Washington, D.C., near the White House or in a city near you on June 30, and then ask your friends and family to attend with you to demand an end to family separation.

In solidarity,

—America Ferrera

Rally endorsed by DSA, ACLU, and many, many more. 

Federal Judge Orders Migrant Families be Reunited

JUDGE ORDERS MIGRANT FAMILIES REUNITED: "A federal judge has ordered the federal government to reunite migrant parents with children taken from them under the Trump administration's family separation policy," Josh Gerstein reported late Tuesday for POLITICO.

"San Diego-based U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday night requiring that nearly all children under five be returned to their parents within 14 days and that older children be returned within 30 days.," Gerstein writes. "'The unfortunate reality is that under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property. Certainly, that cannot satisfy the requirements of due process,' Sabraw wrote in his order." More here. Read the injunction here.

The ruling followed a statement earlier Tuesday by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that the Trump administration would not reunite migrant children with any parents held in immigration detention. Azar's declaration, made at a congressional hearing on an unrelated topic, "confirmed what immigrant advocates have feared," reported Jazmine Ulloa reports in the Los Angeles Times. "The administration will reunite children with their parents quickly only if the parents drop their claims for asylum in the U.S. and agree to be deported." 

"Under administration policy," Ulloa wrote, "immigrants claiming asylum are held in detention awaiting a hearing — a process that can often take months or years. Because current law allows children to be held in immigrant detention facilities for no more than 20 days, Azar's agency would not place any of the children with parents who are in those facilities, he said. 'If the parent remains in detention, unfortunately, under rules that are set by Congress and the courts, they can't be reunified while they're in detention,' Azar said." It wasn't clear last night how or whether Judge Sabraw's ruling would affect the newly-declared HHS policy. More here. 

Congress, meanwhile, struggled to address the issue. "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday urged bipartisan negotiators to reach a deal this week to fix the Trump administration's slapdash policy on migrant family separations — but he's poised to be disappointed," POLITICO's Elana Schor and Nolan D. McCaskill report. "Immigration talks that began this week are only in their early stages, according to senators in both parties. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) met on Monday, and their efforts are likely to stretch into next month given that lawmakers are scheduled to leave Washington next week for their Fourth of July recess."

McConnell told reporters he hoped the "unusual couple" of Cruz and Feinstein would be able to reach a solution that could pass the Senate on a voice vote. "That's what I'd like to see, and I think we have a pretty diverse group of people working together to try to get an outcome," he said. But big gaps remain to be bridged between Republican and Democratic lawmakers proposals, including what to do about the 1997 Flores settlement, which prevents children from being detained longer than 20 days. More here. 

Then there's this: "The pace of arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border dropped in June, according to a preliminary government estimate — potentially signaling that the Trump administration's controversial 'zero tolerance' policy discouraged migrants from traveling north," POLITICO's Ted Hesson reports. "U.S. Customs and Border Protection is projected to arrest roughly 37,000 people at the border in June, based on arrest data from June 1-16, a DHS official told POLITICO."

Dolores Huerta and Many Others - Texas

Great site.

https://www.breakbreadnotfamilies.org

Break Bread : Not Families

Border officials suspend handing over migrant families to prosecutors. NYT: “The nation’s top border security official said Monday that his agency has temporarily stopped handing over migrant adults who cross the Mexican border with children for prosecution, undercutting claims by other Trump administration officials that “zero tolerance” for illegal immigration is still in place. Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said his agency and the Justice Department should agree on a policy ‘where adults who bring their kids across the border — who violate our laws and risk their lives at the border — can be prosecuted without an extended separation from their children.’ Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have enough detention space for the surge of families crossing the border, many families will be quickly released, with a promise to return for a court hearing. Mr. McAleenan said that the agency would continue to refer single adults for prosecution for illegally crossing the border, and that border agents would also separate children from adults if the child is in danger or if the adult has a criminal record.”

Abolish ICE Demonstration - Sacramento

LACLAA ( Labor Committee for Latin American Advancement)  organized a dynamic demonstration today at the ICE offices in Sacramento to oppose the policies of jailing children and to slow down ICE.  Photos, videos, and sound recordings contributed to the scene.

Desiree Rojas

Desiree Rojas, Sacramento LACLA President pointed to large photos and said we have now seen children put into dog kennels.  We have seen ICE Separate families. And, we must resist. 

“We will fight for the children !  We will fight back against ICE !” 

LACLAA , a part of the AFL-CIO, has been organized and active in Sacramento since 1982 and was particularly active in the anti NAFTA efforts and in organizing annual Cesar Chavez marches. 

Local residents of the Japanese Citizens League,  who had themselves been incarcerated in 1942 in the Japanese Incarceration told of their stories.  And, how the incarceration haunted them for decades.

Fabrizio Sasso 

Fabrizio Sasso, Executive Secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council  described today’s effort as a part of the battle for Freedom and Democracy. 

Duane Campbell (DSA) the Co Chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee of Democratic Socialists of America told the crowd of some 200 of the DSA campaign to Abolish ICE.  

“This issue before us is one of human decency.  Under the Trump Administration ICE has developed a new policy of deliberately separating families of immigrants and refugees.  They are separating parents from their children as a form of collective punishment.    We have seen the photos. We know what is happening! 

Now they claim to have changed  the policy and they will keep the children with the families—in jail!

Resistance Now- Monday

RALLY:  Press Conference

  11 AM. Monday.  Federal Building.  650 Capitol Mall, Sacramento, 

Resistance Now ! DSA

Resistance Now!

DSA Immigrants Rights Committee launched a week of action to Abolish ICE as a part of the many demonstrations occurring around the country in opposition to the Trump Administrations policies and incompetence. #AbolishICE

Brandon Ramirez, co chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee hosted a Zoom dialogue last night, June 21, with over 50 DSA members participating from chapters around the country to mobilize DSA chapter responses to the crisis. Speakers included Maria Svart ( DSA) , Linda Sarsour ( Women’s March) and with participation from community based groups Mijente and Cosecha among others.

Each agreed that the current situation was intolerable. You can’t end the separation of children by locking up the entire families as Trump has ordered in this Executive Order. We will not permit it. Allied groups called for participation in the several national efforts including the June 30 Families Belong Together demonstrations by the ACLU, Move On and othershttps://act.moveon.org/event/families-belong-togetherand the Women’s March June 28 in Washington D.C. https://endfamilyseparation.us

Several DSA activists and DSA chapters reported on their work including the confrontation in Washington D.C. with Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsenhttp://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2018/06/homeland-security-secretary-nielsen.html

DSA activists reported from Texas and the border area on the conditions that migrants already suffer from including arbitrary arrests, detentions, and deportations.

The call is for DSA chapters and members to participate in the major marches and to organize active resistance events during the week of June 24-30 calling for the abolition of ICE as a terrorist organization. Chapters were encouraged to engage in the actions they found appropriate based upon the chapters own organizing capacity. Call participants were engaged by the rapid response conference while over 30 chapters made plans for actions and to coordinate their future work.

You can join the Immigrants’ Rights Committee here 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7YbhFhJerizQ2qoRh0FnBcukQBbKKeewwoKVlYRlu-FP5Lw/viewform

You can e mail the Immigrants’ Rights Committee atdsa.immigration@gmail.com

Duane Campbell

Immigrants’ Rights Committee - DSA

campd22702@gmail.com

When we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of people we are. ..I am convinced that the truest act of courage..is to sacrifice ourselves for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice.

Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)

'This Is What Solidarity Looks Like': Mass Demonstrations at LaGuardia Airport as Kids Ripped From Parents Arrive in New York

'This Is What Solidarity Looks Like': Mass Demonstrations at LaGuardia Airport as Kids Ripped From Parents Arrive in New York

Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen heckled out of D.C. Mexican restaurant

Oppose the Republican Deportation Bill

Trump's Answer to Separation of Children: Keep the Whole Family in Prolonged Detention On the heels of very bad media days spotlighting the horrendous separation and jailing of migrant children, Donald Trump today signed the Executive Order, "Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation". The executive order does not free the children -- instead, it allows for the incarceration of children with their parents, likely for prolonged periods of time. The order may lead to a violation of the Flores case settlement, which limited the length of time for children in detention; Trump wants the Attorney General to seek a "modification" to the Flores settlement, to provide family detention throughout the time of "criminal improper entry or deportation proceedings involving the parents". Because of the case backlogs, these can be very lengthy periods in detention. The order is not retroactive and there are no plans to reunite some 2,300 already separated children with their parents. This crisis continues. The order does not end the "zero tolerance" policy that is driving the criminal prosecution of all border crossers. Nor does it affect the new restrictions on access to asylum or the detention of asylum seekers, in defiance of US and international laws. * * * * *  Demand that ALL children are reunited with their parents! Release the families from detention pending  resolution of their cases!  More to follow on analysis and action behind this executive order,  the continuing criminalization of immigrants, and the horrific, inhumane border policies * * * * *  Oppose Both House Immigration Bills - Act NOW! Voting on the bills may take place today, Thursday, June 21 Trump's executive order comes just before House consideration of two Republican immigration bills. Both bills would dramatically increase funds for punitive and repressive immigration policies, practices and machinery. Neither would end the separation of families at the border, nor provide a clear path to permanent residency for DACA recipients. Both bills have been opposed by a broad cross-section of community, immigrant rights, faith, civil rights and other sectors and organizations. Each bill proposes shallow trade-offs in exchange for more repression of immigrant communities, workers and asylum seekers. They would undermine due process, cause further family separations, heighten fear and uncertainty among immigrants, and drive more wedges among communities--not to mention the outrageous cost of enforcement infrastructure and personnel. Bringing these two bills up for consideration in the House is a shameful act by Republicans to curry favor among their base. Read a summary of the two bills, HR 4760, the "Securing America's Future Act", and HR 6136, the "Border Security and Immigration Reform Act", offered as a "compromise" bill bridging moderate and hard-lined Republicans in the House. Spread the word! Urge your representatives to oppose both bills! Call now! Click here to access contact information for your representative in the House. Here's a simple message to use when you make your call: "Hello. My name is _______. I am calling to urge you oppose both HR 4760 and HR 6136, the immigration bills. These bills hold immigrant children and youth hostage to increased immigration enforcement, a costly  border wall, and severe cuts to our family immigration program. Thank you.   Update - Monster Bill #1  Dies.   193 Republicans Vote for Monster Bill ! The conservative bill, authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), mustered just 193 votes. All Democrats and dozens of Republicans rejected it because of its onerous limits on allowing undocumented immigrants brought here as children to stay in the country. The other, slightly less conservative version appears destined to a similar fate, with dozens of hardline conservatives and a handful of GOP moderates saying they’ll vote against the bill and promising its failure. But House GOP leaders moved to forestall that result, scuttling a planned Thursday afternoon vote as they cast about for another path forward.

Trump Signs an Executive Order to 'End Family Separation' by Locking Up Whole Families Indefinitely Instead | Alternet

Trump Signs an Executive Order to 'End Family Separation' by Locking Up Whole Families Indefinitely Instead | Alternet

Trump's New Executive Order

Getty Images

Section 1.  Policy.  It is the policy of this Administration to rigorously enforce our immigration laws.  Under our laws, the only legal way for an alien to enter this country is at a designated port of entry at an appropriate time.  When an alien enters or attempts to enter the country anywhere else, that alien has committed at least the crime of improper entry and is subject to a fine or imprisonment under section 1325(a) of title 8, United States Code.  This Administration will initiate proceedings to enforce this and other criminal provisions of the INA until and unless Congress directs otherwise.  It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.  It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.

WhiteHouse.gov

Note: this applies to new entries. Nothing is said about the divisions of families for the last 6 weeks. (editor)

Poor People's Campaign- Lets Stop this Atrocity at the Border

Duane Campbell 

This is just the beginning.  California Poor People's Campaign  enter the State Capitol for the 6th. week of non violent direct action.


Here is the presentation of your editor,

Thank you for being here today.  This is a critical day in our efforts. 

My Name is Duane Campbell.  I am a co-chair of the Immigrants’ Rights Committee of Democratic Socialists  of America.

Let us be clear. 

Seizing children from their parents at the border is immoral. 

This issue before us is  one of human decency.  Under the Trump Administration ICE has developed a new policy of deliberately separating families of immigrants and refugees.  They are separating parents from their children as a form of collective punishment.   They are violating both  due process and human rights.

 Many of us have seen the photos and the video.  We are here to disrupt the Immoral narrative  that terrorizes children for political gain. 

The United Nation says so.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops say so.

Most religious communities say so. 

 Trump, and Republicans in Congress have rejected a way to fix DACA and protect Dreamers. Now they are forcing a vote on two cruel bills that hold dreamers hostage to the Trump Administration’s deportation machine .

Hundreds March To Texas Tent City Holding Detained Immigrant Kids : NPR

Hundreds March To Texas Tent City Holding Detained Immigrant Kids : NPR

Opinion | Seizing Children From Parents at the Border Is Immoral. Here’s What We Can Do About It. - The New York Times

Opinion | Seizing Children From Parents at the Border Is Immoral. Heres What We Can Do About It. - The New York Times



Participate in protest at the Poor People's March.  June 18,  12:30 PM; Sacramento Capitol. North steps.

The Misogynistic Logic of Jeff Sessions’s Horrifying New Asylum Policy For Domestic Violence Victims

The Misogynistic Logic of Jeff SessionsHorrifying New Asylum Policy For Domestic Violence Victims

Jeff Sessions Cites The Bible In Separating Children From Parents

Marches Across the U.S. Protest Separation of Migrant Families - The New York Times

Marches Across the U.S. Protest Separation of Migrant Families - The New York Times

US bishops condemn immigration policies that separate families at border | National Catholic Reporter

US bishops condemn immigration policies that separate families at border | National Catholic Reporter

House Republicans Advance Monster Bill

JohnMoore/GettyImages

Republicans seek to protect their vulnerable candidates, not to protect people.

Funds border wall. 

Restricts asylum rules.

Legalizes separation of children and families. 

Offers limited protection for current DACA recipients. 

Reduces over all immigration. 

Unclear what it would do on TPS. 

This is Fascism

U.S. Catholic Bishops say current policy of separating families is immoral.  

Getty Images

A survivor of the NAZI Death Camps remembers life in Germany this way;

Pastor Martin Niemöller is best remembered for the quotation: 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. 1947.

We still talk about American fascism as a looming threat, something that could happen if we’re not vigilant. But for undocumented immigrants, it’s already here.

There are countless horror stories about what’s happening to immigrants under Trump. Just last week, we learned that a teenager from Iowa who had lived in America since he was 3 was killed shortly after his forced return to Mexico. This month, an Ecuadorean immigrant with an American citizen wife and a pending green card application was detained at a Brooklyn military base where he’d gone to deliver a pizza; a judge has temporarily halted his deportation, but he remains locked up. Immigration officers are boarding trains and buses and demanding that passengers show them their papers. On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decreed that most people fleeing domestic abuse or gang violence would no longer be eligible for asylum.

See post: First They Came for the Migrants. http://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2018/06/first-they-came-for-migrants-then-they.html

First They Came for the Migrants : Then, they came for your family

First They Came for the Migrants

Michelle Goldberg NYT.

We still talk about American fascism as a looming threat, something that could happen if we’re not vigilant. But for undocumented immigrants, it’s already here.

There are countless horror stories about what’s happening to immigrants under Trump. Just last week, we learned that a teenager from Iowa who had lived in America since he was 3 was killed shortly after his forced return to Mexico. This month, an Ecuadorean immigrant with an American citizen wife and a pending green card application was detained at a Brooklyn military base where he’d gone to deliver a pizza; a judge has temporarily halted his deportation, but he remains locked up. Immigration officers are boarding trains and buses and demanding that passengers show them their papers. On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions decreed that most people fleeing domestic abuse or gang violence would no longer be eligible for asylum.

Pastor Martin Niemöller is best remembered for the quotation: 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. Germany  1947.

But what really makes Trump’s America feel like a rogue state is the administration’s policy of taking children from migrants caught crossing the border unlawfully, even if the parents immediately present themselves to the authorities to make asylum claims. “This is as bad as I’ve ever seen in 25 years of doing this work,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told me. “The little kids are literally being terrorized.”

Family separations began last year — immigrant advocates aren’t sure exactly when — and have ramped up with the administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting everyone who crosses the border without authorization. Over two weeks in May, more than 650 children were snatched from their parents.

The human consequences have been horrific. Last week, The New York Times described a 5-year-old boy from Honduras who had been separated from his father and cried himself to sleep at night with a stick-figure drawing of his family under his pillow. The Washington Post reported that Marco Antonio Muñoz, a 39-year-old who is also from Honduras, killed himself in a padded cell after his 3-year-old was wrenched from his arms.

We will never know what torments besieged Muñoz when he took his own life. But Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic congresswoman from Washington State, recently met with migrant women being held in a federal prison, many of whom, she said, were forcibly separated from children as young as 1. Some had their kids physically torn from them. Others were told that they had to go have their photograph taken; when they returned, their children were gone.

In some cases, Jayapal said, the women could hear their kids screaming in the next room. “Many of them were told by Border Patrol that they would never see their children again,” she told me.

America’s immigration system was capricious and cruel before Trump. Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, recently visited an immigrant processing center in McAllen, Tex. Describing how men, women, boys and girls were separated and kept in chain-linked enclosures, he emphasized that the site wasn’t new: “It’s essentially the same construction that was there during Obama,” he said. The difference is that, until recently, the kids’ section held older children who had crossed the border on their own. Now, he told me, the youngest was 4 or 5.

These kids are being used as pawns to persuade parents to give up their asylum claims and to warn others against coming to America. The administration, Merkley told me, has “decided that treating kids in this fashion would influence the adults not to seek asylum. They would hurt children to influence the parents.”

There are still mechanisms in American government that can stop this evil. Last Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, proposed a bill that would keep most families detained at the border together. The A.C.L.U. has filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents whose children were taken from them and is asking a federal court for a nationwide injunction to stop family separations.

But for now, what is happening is the sort of moral enormity that once seemed unthinkable in contemporary America, the kind captured in the Martin Niemöller poem that’s repeated so often it’s become a cliché: “First they came …” There is no reason to believe that undocumented immigrants will be the last group of people deemed beyond the law’s protection.

Senator Merkley told me he asked people working in the detention center if they were concerned about the impact that family separation would have on the children who had been put under their authority. The answer, he said, was, “We simply follow the orders from above.”

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Gobierno de Trump estudia albergar niños migrantes en campamentos instal...