Things are moving quickly. In 1933 Germany, the first political prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges to be held in various locations around the country. Forced labor began around 1939. Killing centers opened in 1941.
This timeline pretty much covers where my immediate concern is as an American. Don’t get me wrong; there is much more I am aware of and working on as the current regime spreads propaganda, works to eliminate rights and protections for Americans (they appear to already be gone for immigrants), and install their version of autocracy. It’s likely I’ll add to the timeline as I learn/understand more. Perhaps it will help you as much as it helps me to have it organized like this:
1997:
The United States of America Bureau of Prisons begins contracting with private companies due to severe prison over-crowding.
2008:
Maricopa County Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio calls his (now infamous) Tent City a “concentration camp.” His Tent City had been set up in 1993 as an extension of the Maricopa County Jail. Despite the admission that he was running a concentration camp, as well as other serious allegations against him regarding his practice of not investigating serious crimes (including rapes) and the inadequate, inhumane conditions the inmates endured in his Tent City, Arpaio was re-elected as sheriff in 2012. Arpaio’s Tent City was closed when he didn’t win re-election in 2016.
2011:
Reported September 2013: Management & Training Corp., threatens to sue the state of Arizona because the state isn’t keep their prisons at least 97% full as stated in their contract. “State officials renegotiated the contract, but ended up paying $3 million for empty beds as the company continued to address problems.” (quote from Huffington Post)
2014:
28 June: America does not handle immigration well. America does not handle detention of undocumented immigrants well. America has never handled immigration well, at least not in the last 100 years or so. But we knew that, and citizens and lawmakers have been calling for immigration reform for decades.
December: about 40,000 federal inmates are housed in 13 private prisons.
2015:
December: Need for private prisons nearly gone as prison populations are way down. “Thirteen of the federal government’s 146 prisons are privately run. Together, those 13 housed 22,600 inmates as of December 2015.” (figure is down from about 40,000 in 2014). (quoted from Reuters)
2016:
4 April: GQ, Vanity Fair remind us that in the 1990s Trump enjoyed reading Hitler speeches from his copy of “My New Order” which he kept by his bed.
18 August: Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announces Justice Department plans “to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.” Use of prisons would be phased out as contracts expired. (quote from The Washington Post, emphasis mine)
2017:
January: Two private prison companies that are currently housing detained migrant families, the Geo Group and CoreCivic, each donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.
20 January: Inauguration of 45th president.
25 January: DHS Secretary John Kelly issues a memo on 45’s “border security” executive order. The memo says it “implements new policy designed to deter illegal immigration,” including the zero-tolerance policy. It’s unclear if kidnappings were happening at this point. Under past administrations, it was recognized that asylum-seekers were not breaking the law, and even most first-time border-crossers had not been criminally prosecuted for illegally entering the country. When they were prosecuted it was a misdemeanor.
2 February: At a town-hall meeting for Department of Homeland Security staffers the agency’s asylum chief, John Lafferty, told Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers that they may have to “hold mothers longer” and “hold children in HHR/ORR.”
(HHR = U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ORR = Office of Refugee Resettlement.)
21 February: Attorney General Jeff Sessions sends a memo to Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons Thomas Kane that says an Obama policy impaired the government’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal prison system. At this time, occupancy in private prisons is way down. There is no reason to believe it’ll go back up any time soon, that is, unless Sessions has a plan to fill them back up.
23 February: Sessions’ memo from the 21st becomes public. Shares of the two leading U.S. private prison companies gained in after-hours trading, with GEO Group Inc up 2.15 percent and CoreCivic Inc up 3.44 percent.
Sessions said in a Feb. 21 memo that the Obama move had “impaired” the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s “ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”Those “needs” are not yet clear. Asked for an explanation, a Justice Department spokesman said only that Sessions’ move “returns discretion to the professionals at BOP who are in the best position to evaluate their needs.”
The memo itself suggests that the attorney general is concerned about running out of available space in the 122 prisons the BOP runs itself — although current trends run opposite.
The number of people in federal prison has been declining since 2013, and the 189,078 currently there is the lowest in a decade. That includes 21,366 people in private prisons, just 12 percent of the total population.
Compared to the more than 2 million people estimated to be behind bars across the American justice system, the private prisons under BOP contract play a bit role in a system that contributes to one of the world’s highest incarceration rates.(from NBC News, emphasis mine)
11 May: “A private prisons company called the GEO Group has allegedly asked (Texas) Republicans to submit a law that could lead to immigrant children being indefinitely detained in its lucrative centers.” (quoted from Newsweek)
31 July: Joe Arpaio is convicted for criminal contempt, a misdemeanor, for defying a court order to stop holding suspected undocumented immigrants.
18 August: Under 45’s regime, private prison industry sees boon. “The private prison industry – one of the most controversial pieces of the US carceral state – has essentially recovered a year after the Obama administration sent a chill down its spine.” (quoted from CNN)
25 August: Former sheriff Joe Arpaio is pardoned for “using state power toward racist ends.” (quoted from The Atlantic)
2018:
9 January: There’s a whole tourism industry around Russian women coming to America to have their babies here so the babies have U.S. citizenship. This is not satire. These women often stay in Trump properties for their visits. There are similar set-ups for Chinese women who travel to California for their babies to be born as U.S. citizens.
23 February: Arpaio is running for Senate (autumn 2018). He’s also still pushing birtherism.
“I’m not going to back down,” Joe Arpaio said in a recent interview. “So what? Maybe it is a concentration camp. I don’t want to make it look nice, like the Hilton Hotel. I want to say it’s a tough place so people don’t want to come there.”
. . . “Pardoning Joe Arpaio sends a very clear message to ICE agents,” said Kevin Landy, a former assistant director at ICE. Agents now understand they need not be “overly concerned about individuals’ due process rights,” Landy lamented. The pardon is a “green light” for racial profiling, worried Carlos Garcia of the Phoenix-based advocacy group Puente. Jessica Vaughan, an analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restrictive immigration policy, approved of the pardon because it telegraphs “no apologies for increasing immigration enforcement,” even if it is “politically incorrect.” (quoted from The Atlantic)
6 April: Sessions enacted policy change to “adopt immediately a zero-tolerance policy” for illegal border crossings, but only at the Southwest Border.
24 April: Court rules the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals protections must stay in place and that the government must resume accepting new applications. Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said that “the (Trump) administration’s decision to terminate the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was based on the ‘virtually unexplained’ grounds that the program was “unlawful.'”
16 May: President called migrants “animals” again. 45 definitely has the Hitler playbook down.
“We have people coming into the country — or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.” the President said.
Late May, 28th or before: It’s unclear exactly how soon kidnapping began after Sessions’ 6 April policy change. We started hearing a lot about it by late May.
5 June: It’s reported that there are more than 11,000 kidnapped and unaccompanied migrant children in ICE custody. (Unaccompanied children are the those who arrived at the border without a parent or guardian either because they made the trip alone or because their parent died or was not able to complete the trip with them for whatever reason.) Children of all ages are being taken from their parents at the border. Parents likely won’t see their children again. When/if they’re deported, their kids stay here. Somewhere.
7 June: Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduces S.3036 – Keep Families Together Act.
11 June: According to Sessions, “misfortune” such as domestic and gang violence are no longer grounds for asylum, further opening the door to criminalizing any attempt by asylum-seekers to find relief in the USA.
14 June: Racists all over America who once screamed about getting undocumented immigrants off welfare (which they do not qualify for and don’t receive) and out of their country are suddenly excited to keep as many as possible right here in America. And they’re thrilled to pay as much at $800/day for each one indefinitely. Yeah, don’t ask me. I got nothin’.
15 June: America receives a ransom Tweet from 45. It wasn’t the first, but it was very clear: the kids in exchange for money for the Wall (and other policies of Hate).
16 June: We’re starting to hear more about the private prison businesses that profit directly from this policy/atrocity. Besides GEO and Core Civic, there is Phebe Novakovic, CEO of General Dynamics, which has a lucrative contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (the department enforcing Trump’s policy of detaining children away from their parents).
17 June: More information on private prison companies. Core Civic is a for-profit prison operator listed on the NYSE under the ticker-symbol CXW. “Core Civic made about $180 million dollars, and paid out 90% of that as dividends to its investors. The company is classified by the IRS as a Real Estate Investment Trust, which means it doesn’t pay federal income tax on most of its earnings, nor do its investors.” (quoted from a Tweet from John Roberts as part of a very interesting thread. Mr. Robert’s has done his homework.)
17 June: I’m starting to get serious about my question: who profits from kidnapping children and criminalizing all immigrants who come in across the Southwest Border? Even if 45 never gets funding for his Wall of Hate, who profits? besides the private prison contractors, who? 45? Sessions? which senators? which representatives? No shortage of stories on Texas congresspeople making out like bandits, but who else?
17 June: Over Father’s Day weekend, Fox and Friends co-host Abby Huntsman suggested the separation policy was “not sustainable,” then pivoted to bashing the media for its coverage of the facilities. “They’re not in cages, they’re not being gassed,” she said of the immigrant children. Actually, they are in cages, but at least they’re not being gassed . . . right?
18 June: Children are suffering in these camps and prisons; they are traumatized. Besides having been taken from their parents, the lights stay on at night in the warehouses (a form of torture used in facilities like Guantanamo). Children aren’t touched or consoled. Workers aren’t trained or skilled in caring for children.
18 June: Fox “News” host Laura Ingraham described detention centers and concentration camps as “essentially like summer camps” or as being “like boarding schools.” She was being serious.
19 June: 13 Republican senators asked the Trump administration (through A.G. Sessions) to discontinue the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Only 13 GOP senators.
20 June: At least three “tender age shelters” have been set up for child migrants who have been kidnapped from their parents. At this point more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents.
20 June: Stories come out about tent city popping up in Texas. It’s mentioned in social media that if Puerto Rico had been helped as quickly after the hurricane, if there had been no expense spared there as in this situation, the island would look very different now. Of course, there is little money (for the politicians) in helping our own compared to criminalizing people in need, kidnapping their children, and then tossing them all into separate concentration camps. Still, it’s an interesting point.
20 June (approximately): Costs for keeping kidnapped and unaccompanied children are very high. It costs $775 per person to keep the kids in the new concentration camps/tent cities. Estimates are $256 – 298 per person per night to hold children in permanent HHS facilities.
20 June: There are reports from court filings of children in the custody of these private prisons being drugged or killed or undergoing various other abuses while in custody.
20 June: 45 signs an executive order. It’s billed as a fix though ICE will continue to take hostages. The reports are that the E.O. means that the children might no longer be separated from their parents/guardians though now all can be held indefinitely.
In most cases, lawmakers and journalists are still not allowed to go into facilities. This means these inmates Americans pay $250-800/day per person to keep illegally incarcerated are being held in unknown conditions by unsupervised workers. We have no idea what is being done to these people in the concentration camps/prisons they’re held in or if their treatment or care have improved at all.
21 June: According to a Tweet from Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), “Secretary Nielsen privately told lawmakers the Administration may go back to separating children from their parents.”
21 June: “At least 10 states plan to sue the Trump administration over the separation of migrant children as a result of its “zero tolerance” policy at the U.S.-Mexico border and over President Donald Trump’s latest executive order, which he says will end the separations.” (quoted from NBC News) Recall, Secretary Nielsen says the E.O. likely won’t end the separations.
21 June: Three commercial airlines make it clear they want nothing to do with transporting or in any other way helping to keep children separate from their parents.
22 June: Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) shares in a Tweet that she found out female prisoners in San Diego can work for $1/day. It costs 85¢/minute to make a phone call.
“Arbeit macht frei.”
22 June: Another one right out of Hitler’s playbook, now we’re seeing propaganda insinuating that immigrants are violent criminals when, in reality, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes.
24 June: “ICE is reportedly dangling family reunification as an incentive to drop asylum claims. They’re telling parents they can be reunited with their kids at the airport — but only if they sign a voluntary order to be deported back to the country they fled.” Immigration lawyers are skeptical about if agreements would be honored. (quoted from Tweet from Caroline O.)
24 June: Well, lookie here. I’m not the only one working this angle this weekend. Tweet from Robert Reich on private prison industry, Trump, and undocumented immigrants. This includes video (two minutes 19 seconds).
24 June: 45 is no longer interested in law, rights, our Constitution, or due process. Clearly, he’s confused about the law he swore to uphold and protect. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party called themselves “socialists” (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), but there is no doubt they were building a state based on racial superiority and fascism. Exactly like 45 is doing. We know where this goes. It’s up to us, our Constitution, and our laws, to stop him.
26 June: Federal judge in San Diego orders government to reunite children and parents separated at the border within 14-30 days and to discontinue the practice of separating children from their parents/guardians. All children must be returned to their families within 30 days, while children under 5 must be reunited with parents within 14 days.
10 July: Migrant children under five years old who were removed from their parents were to be reunited today. It didn’t happen but for a few (38 children out of 102 they intended to give back to their parents which means not all of the children under five years old who were taken from their parents). There are questions as to whether the regime is even trying to reunite children with parents they have already deported. The remaining children (ages five and up) are to be reunited with their parents by 26 July, according to the court order from the 26th of June.
10 July: Meanwhile, “the Office of Refugee Resettlement is preparing for the possibility of another surge in family separations.” This is an important point and article. Take the time to read it if you can. It’s not long.
16 July: Summit in Helsinki includes Trump and Putin. It’s also now know as the “Treason Summit” for obvious reasons.
23 July: White House considering revoking security clearances of former Obama officials because they are critical of Trump. This is some seriously autocratic BS here.
26 July: Deadline to have ALL of the migrant children the USA kidnapped back with their parents or guardians was missed, but government officials are making excuses or claiming some parents chose to be separated from their kids (through trickery, it turns out). 711 kids are still separated from their parents. More than 400 of their parents have already been deported. Inexplicably, the court has complimented the administration on their progress. For the half-assed job they’re doing. Fixing the atrocity they committed.
Yeah, I got nothin’.
4 August: Judge upholds April ruling that DACA must be restored.
“Although the Nielsen Memo purports to offer further explanation for DHS’s decision to rescind DACA, it fails to elaborate meaningfully on the agency’s primary rationale for its decision,” Bates wrote. “The memo does offer what appears to be one bona fide (albeit logically dubious) policy reason for DACA’s rescission, but this reason was articulated nowhere in DHS’s prior explanation for its decision, and therefore cannot support that decision now.” – from DC District Judge John Bates’ decision, via CNN
7 August: Trump regime working on a proposal that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used public welfare programs including Obamacare.
7 August: I can’t believe we have to hear that border agents are not immune from consequences for murder from a court, but:
“A federal appeals court has ruled that a Border Patrol agent who fatally shot a Mexican teen on the other side of the border doesn’t have immunity and can be sued by the boy’s family for violating his civil rights.” – AP News
8 August: ACLU announces in Tweet: “We’re suing Jeff Sessions for illegally denying asylum protections to immigrants fleeing domestic violence and gang brutality. These policies undermine the fundamental human rights of women and violate decades of settled asylum law.”
30 August: More than 500 children are still waiting to be returned to their parents. Meanwhile, after so much time away, some reunions are not going well. Is the damage we’re doing to these children, these families, permanent? It’s unnecessary, but is it also permanent?
12 September: Hundreds of children still waiting to be returned to their parents. More than $29 million dollars have been taken from the Coast Guard (rescue) budget and almost $10 million from the FEMA (response and recovery) budget (just as hurricane season begins) to be given to ICE to cover costs of government jailing immigrants. We’re taking funds intended for rescue and disaster relief for Americans and we’re giving it to private companies so they can jail immigrants, many of whom are here legally in need of asylum. That isn’t enough, though. That’s not enough money, though. ICE told Congress it needs about $200 million more to do this horrid thing. And we’re all paying for it. We’re letting them do this.
30 September: Hundreds of children from all over are being moved in the cover of night to a “tent city” (aka concentration camp) in the middle of nowhere in western Texas where there is no school and only limited access to legal services.
11 October: Kidnapped immigrant children still not reunited with their families. While some are being kept in concentration camps, others are adopted out to families in America who may not know the child they’re adopting was kidnapped from their fit, living parent(s). Government abuses continue as children are kept from anyone who is looking out for their best interests. Then we find out that there were many more kidnappings than originally reported. And that they continue.
22 October: At a rally in Houston, Texas, president admits he’s a nationalist.
22 October: Pipe bombs begin arriving at homes and businesses of individuals (such as George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and John Brennan) Trump has painted targets on as “enemies.”
26 October: Pipe bomber suspect is arrested in Florida. Suspect is a Trump fan and a believer of all the propaganda put out by the Trump regime and the far right.
26 October: After racially-motivated murders of black people in a Kroger in Louisville, Kentucky, the National Black Church Initiative raises its terrorist alert to highest level.
27 October: Hate crimes have been up over the past couple of years, much of it due to the GOP and president stoking fears of “others” with lies about non-white people. Trump regime blames everyone but themselves for division and hate and the rise in domestic terrorism. On this Saturday morning 11 people are murdered at the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Six others, including police officers, were injured in the terrorist attack. Seven of the 11 killed were alive during the Second World War and the Holocaust (though none were Holocaust survivors). All of them were killed in the United States of America by a domestic terrorist because they were Jewish.
29 October: Trump regime is setting up the appearance of circumstances in which he could suspend the writ of habeas corpus with a lie about a group of refugees, a “caravan,” that are currently located in southern Mexico. They are NOT invaders. Period.
16 November: There were a record-setting 14,056 unaccompanied immigrant minors in Department of Health and Human Services custody as of Friday.
“The number of undocumented immigrant children in government custody has topped 14,000 for the first time, a rise that shows no signs of slowing as the Trump administration enforces policies that are keeping them in government facilities longer.” – The San Francisco Chronicle
Photo: Ivan Pierre Aguirre / Ivan Pierre Aguirre Sanders/Wingo
25 November: The Sunday after America’s Thanksgiving day, “Migrants enveloped in tear gas after heading toward US” near the San Ysidro Port of Entry. United States (Border Patrol) agents launched tear gas into Mexico, and the breeze carried the gas hundreds of yards. People ran away with their children, even toddlers, choking on the gas. Reminder: seeking asylum is a right of all human beings.
27 November: Family separation has not stopped:
“Immigration lawyers say border agents are again removing children from their parents. The explanation? They’re protecting kids from criminal dads and moms. Immigration advocates say it’s zero tolerance by another name.” – ProPublica
27 November: Sinclair broadcasting requires all of its local stations to air propaganda defending gassing refugees at the border and calling these desperate people an invasion force.
6 December: Jakelin Caal and her father, 29-year-old Nery Caal, are detained by U.S. border agents.
7 December: Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin stops breathing while on an hour and a half bus ride. She dies in DHS custody.
14 December: A Congressional requirement directs CBP to report the death of individuals in its custody within 24 hours to the appropriations committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives. Jay Tilton, a spokesman for the Senate appropriations committee, said in an email that it “was not alerted” to Caal’s death. Congress learned of Jakelin’s death via the media, the same way the rest of the public learned.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen blames Jakelin’s death on her parent for trying to get her out of danger and into the USA. “My heart goes out to the family, all of DHS. This is just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey,” she said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
15 December: The Office of the Inspector General will conduct an investigation into Jakelin Caal’s death which occurred after she was detained by U.S. border agents on the 6th. Initial news reports said Caal died of dehydration and exhaustion. On Friday the 14th, U.S. officials said she had suffered cardiac arrest, brain swelling, and liver failure.
There have been many deaths by “accident” and neglect at our border. That’s how it started in Nazi concentration camps. To make excuses for what is happening in concentration camps in the United States in 2018 is, well, inexcusable.
21 December: “President”/GOP shut down government saying he wants $5 billion to build a wall (that will cost more like 40 billion) on the southern border of the USA.
24-25 December: Another child is dead while in custody, this time an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy named Felipe Gómez Alonzo. He’s been in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection since the 18th of this month.
Again, this is how it started. It’s happening. Right here. Right now.
2019:
4 January: The USA is no longer cooperating with the U.N. on potential human rights violations.
6 January: NBC news analysis of government reports reveals that at least 22 people have died in ICE custody in the last two years. ICE detention is not the way to hold people for processing much less for longer periods of time.
8 January: Government shutdown is in day 18. “President” has again threatened to declare a national emergency toward gaining authoritarian powers.
Major press outlets have agreed to give 45 air time to lie and to spread some more propaganda and hate. He’s expected to declare the national emergency at that time.
8 March: In reference to his 26 June 2018 ruling, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw expanded the class to include all migrant families separated between 1 July 2017, and 25 June 2018 in that class action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. (Class was originally defined at the bottom of page six in the 26 June 2018 ruling. I am not a lawyer, but as best I can tell this ruling referred to families separated specifically because of the “zero tolerance policy” which was dated 7 May 2018. I have nobody to confirm this information, yet.)
19 March: Another person has died. The latest is a 40-year-old Mexican man who had been apprehended on Sunday. In February, a 45-year-old Mexican man died in CBP custody. That means there are four deaths just recently that we know of.
7 April: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen puts in her resignation. The news is she was forced out because Stephen Miller wants someone “tougher” and crueler in the job.
16 April: Attorney General, William Barr, has decided that a Bush era 2005 precedent was “wrongly decided.” On Tuesday, he issued guidance overruling the 2005 justice department’s decision “which enshrined asylum seekers’ right to bond.” (quote from The Guardian article also quoted below:)
“Immigration enforcement is currently holding a record number of people, over 50,000, in detention as part of the Trump administration’s broad crackdown on migrants.”
The Guardian, Oliver Laughland, 16 April 2019
The United States continues to trample civil rights and can again hold immigrants who “enter illegally” (the way that is determined appears to be vague/random/unlawful as asylum-seekers are now included among those who enter illegally) indefinitely. Taxpayers will be paying for unlimited numbers of human beings in unlawful detention in Trump concentration camps. His friends at GEO Group and CoreCivic and the rest of the private prison companies must be thrilled!
2 May: Another child has died in U.S. custody, this time a 16-year-old boy who traveled to the U.S. from Guatemala. He had arrived at the border unaccompanied by his parents or other relatives and was detained on 19 April 2019 in Texas. His identity has not been released (as of the date of that news story), and it mentions that his brother was with him when he died. This is the third such death since December (that we know about).
2 May: Attorney General Barr says ICE has power to lock up asylum-seekers without hearings. The ACLU and others are on it, thankfully.
3 May: To quote Rachel Maddow MSNBC (on Twitter), “. . . step three: Profit!” Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has joined the board of Caliburn International which operates the largest shelter for unaccompanied migrant children. Caliburn International, the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, operates the Homestead shelter in Florida and three shelters in Texas.
8 May: President Donald Trump laughed during a rally in Panama City Beach, Florida when an audience member suggested shooting migrants.
14 May: Another child has died in U.S. custody, a 2½-year-old Guatemalan boy apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border. The article linked claims the boy had been in the hospital for a couple of weeks but also claims the boy had only been in federal custody for three days.
23 May: “Six children have now died since President Trump began his ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their families.” The administration admitted to at least one more death. Have they told us everything we need to know, yet? After all, these atrocities are done by the leaders we supposedly chose, and they’re committing them in our names.
3 June: As many at 37 migrant children were left in vans for between 11 and 39 hours waiting to be reunited with their parents. It seems the center holding the adults (Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas) wasn’t ready for them so the children had to wait in the parking lot.
4 June: The House of Representatives passed another DREAM Act with support from all House Democrats and seven House GOP. Meanwhile, families/migrants/asylum-seekers are STILL separated, still held in camps, and still not receiving legal representation. Will this bill to see any light in the Senate?
5 June: “Ihre papiere, bitte.”
We have more information on 2018 communications that kicked off bus checks of certain people (non-white or people with any kind of accent) in Bangor, Maine. It’s best to read the article yourself, but suffice it to say, the way this border patrol official ended an email will tell you most of what you need to know about the entire, disgusting policy.
“Happy hunting, stay safe, and have fun!”
– Border Patrol official
9 June: At least 24 immigrants have died in ICE custody just since Trump became president. This crisis didn’t start with Trump though he has taken cruelty and unlawful detention to the lowest level yet this century. ICE, formed in 2002 in the aftermath of 911, demonizing and criminalizing even people who are fleeing for their lives, is not the way to deal with immigration. ICE was intended for preventing terrorism and combating the illegal movement of people and goods, not for unlawful detention of people seeking asylum or farm work in the USA.
18 June: Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian argues in court that the federal government had not violated the 1997 Flores agreement even though the Trump administration has not been providing migrant children with appropriate food or hygienic supplies (soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc.) and is housing them in cold facilities without beds. These children are sleeping on concrete with nothing to warm them but a piece of foil. American taxpayers spend $700/day to house children in these deplorable conditions, that is, after we take them from their parents.
STEP ONE: Arrive in the U.S.
To apply for asylum in the U.S., you must be physically present in the U.S.
STEP TWO: Apply for Asylum
To apply for asylum, you should file Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, with USCIS within one year of your last arrival in the United States. . .
– U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)
The vast majority of the people in these horrid camps are not criminals. They’re desperate people, fleeing danger or violence America helped bring about, hoping to find a safer place to make a life for themselves and their families. They’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do, by law, to make that happen. In most cases, detaining these people is unlawful. And wrong.
19 June: The argument about what to call Trump’s concentration camps has been ongoing for at least a year- including in this timeline – but this week the issue is heating up after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the camps as “concentration camps.” In the news and in social media, rather than argue whether or not what the Trump regime and the GOP are doing to immigrants is wrong, they argue nomenclature. Call Trump’s camps what they are: concentration camps.
21 June: As news outlets, politicians, and citizens on social media continue to spar about what to call Trump’s concentration camps, lawyers and media pretty-up the language by calling them “border facilities” or “detention” as they describe deplorable conditions. Children are responsible for the care of even younger children. There are no diapers, no toothbrushes, no soap. They have inadequate food, water, and medical care, and the children are exhausted from having no warm or comfortable place to sleep.
It costs us $700/day per person to do this to them. We, the American People, are doing this to other human beings. That money goes into the hands of one of Trump’s rich friends. And we’re letting them while we argue about which words won’t offend our sensibilities.
13 July: Lawmakers have been touring facilities where immigrants are detained and reporting on conditions in ICE concentration camps for long enough that Mike Pence finally had to make a show of touring to get media to report everything’s fine. Meanwhile, all over the country, protesters gathered outside camps.
15 July: Trump regime effectively eliminates asylum. This will likely not last as the USA and the regime are not above the law. Still, it makes clear their racist/selfish/malicious intent.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border.
– CBS News
18 July: Trump’s hate rallies continue as the world watches.
3 August: Mass shooting at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, committed by a man parroting Trump’s rhetoric about “invasion” of migrants. It would seem Trump’s followers were listening when he laughed off the idea of shooting immigrants at a rally in May.
7 August: Leaked documents show that the Trump regime is working on an executive order that would allow them to police speech on the internet, give the power of censorship to the “ruling” party.
9 August: Donald and Melania Trump have a creepy photo taken with, Paul, an infant survivor of the El Paso shooting. Both are smiling widely; Trump’s giving a thumbs up. The baby’s parents, Andre and Jordan Anchondo, died shielding him. None of the eight survivors in the hospital would agree to meet with the Trumps.
Meanwhile, separations and genocide continue; kidnapped children are adopted out to white families (by “Bethany Christian Services,” an anti-choice adoption agency run by Brian DeVos, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos), never to see their families again.
16 August: Children continue to be separated from their families, taken from the people who care for them, who protect them, and placed in concentration camps or foster care in the USA where they can be abused. The law suits for the abuses, human rights violations, and for unlawful imprisonment are going to cost this country for a very long time – in money and in trust.
20 August: Migrants in US border detention centers won’t receive flu vaccine even though disease is one of the arguments for not letting people seek asylum in the USA. Let them pick up their diseases here instead?
4 September: Children suffer physical symptoms due to terrible trauma as they’re separated from their loving families in U.S. concentration camps, trauma they may suffer from for the rest of their lives.
27 September: Women are being denied lifesaving medical and psychiatric treatment at U.S. concentration camps.
29 October: The disclosed numbers of children separated and families torn apart keep rising, and it’s confirmed the Trump regime never had any intention of reuniting these people. “. . . volunteers working under the coordination of the ACLU are going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras, seeking to ascertain whether families have recovered their children.”
2020:
15 July: Americans are being plucked off the streets of Portland, Oregon and tossed into unmarked vehicles by anonymous “law enforcement.” It turns out the culprits are Department of Homeland Security, and not the agents of ICE he was using to terrorize before. It’s official. Trump’s using all of DHS as his personal SS. We’ve seen it coming since Bush formed DHS, but Trump has taken it to new heights in an effort to establish his authoritarian state.
7 August: Trump’s obvious attacks on our democratic election include slowing or preventing voting by mail, questioning the legitimacy of the system, and preventing votes being counted.
13 August: Trump admits he is undermining USPS in an effort to make it harder to vote by mail even though he votes by mail.
21 August: Trump appointee, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy finally faces some scrutiny after his work to destroy the Postal Service. There are obvious conflicts of interest with this guy, and it’s long been known that besides slowing votes by mail, the GOP also hopes to privatize the Postal Service.
4 September: Trump again suggests his voters should vote for him twice (which is illegal).
23 September: Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses the 2020 election.
21 October: About two-thirds of the more than 1,000 migrant parents separated from their kids under a 2017 pilot program were deported before a federal judge ordered that they be found. According to lawyers, 545 children have still not been reunited with their families.
27 October: In his error-riddled opinion of a 5-3 ruling against extending vote counting deadline in Wisconsin due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Justice Kavanaugh falsely claimed there are “big problems” with votes that are mailed in postmarked on or before election day but that arrive in the days after the cutoff. Many Americans vote by mail including soldiers at posts overseas. Kavanaugh also argued the lie that states have an interest in finalizing the results on election day.
“The Supreme Court justice’s suggestion that ballots arriving after Election Day could ‘flip the results’ left voting rights activists concerned about how the court might rule in postelection fights.”
New York Times
Of course, votes don’t “flip results” of an election; they are the results of an election.
28 October: “The Trump Administration sets new all-time low number for refugee admissions at 15,000 for fiscal year 2021.”
29 October: Vermont asks Justice Kavanaugh to correct his lies about voting in his earlier sloppy opinion after the ruling on whether or not to extend the counting deadline in Wisconsin. Kavanaugh issued a correction.
29 October: The House Judiciary Committee released its investigation into the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Within weeks of his inauguration, Trump began planning family separation. In their report, the House Judiciary Committee describes Trump’s family separation policy as ‘reckless incompetence and intentional cruelty.’
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Link: “Prison Quotas Push Lawmakers To Fill Beds, Derail Reform” – by Chris Kirkham at Huffington Post (19, 20 September 2013)
Link: “How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about: Sen. Marco Rubio is one of the biggest beneficiaries.” – by Michael Cohen in The Washington Post (28 April 2015) Who else – besides Rubio – is benefiting from filling private prisons with hostages?
Link: “Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons” – by Matt Zapotosky and Chico Harlan at The Washington Post (18 August 2016)
Link: “U.S. reverses Obama-era move to phase out private prisons” – Reuters (23 February 2017)
Link: “Private Prison Company GEO Group Gave Generously to Trump and Now Has Lucrative Contract” – by Mirren Gidda at Newsweek (11 May 2017)
Link: “Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Is Convicted of Criminal Contempt” – by Richard Pérez-Peña at New York Times (31 July 2017)
Link: “Private prison industry sees boon under Trump administration” – by Eli Watkins and Sophie Tatum at CNN (18 August 2017)
Link: “Why the Arpaio Pardon Matters: The president chose to pardon a public official using state power for racist ends.” – by James Fallows at The Atlantic (27 August 2017)
Link: “Birth tourism brings Russian baby boom to Miami” – by Cynthia McFadden, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Tracy Connor and Anna R. Schecter at NBC News (9 January 2018)
Link: “‘So What? Maybe It Is a Concentration Camp’: Joe Arpaio made his name by building a harsh jail in the desert. Now, Trump is promising to take his punitive approach to immigration national.” – by Jeremy Raff at The Atlantic (23 February 2018)
Link: “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant” – by Julie Hirschfeld Davis at New York Times (16 May 2018)
Link: “During Roundtable, Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals‘” – by Scott Neuman at NPR (17, 18 May 2018)
Link: “Did the Trump Administration Separate Immigrant Children From Parents and Lose Them?” – by Amy Harmon at New York Times (28 May 2018)
Link: “Hundreds of migrant kids separated from parents are stuck at border stations” – by Julia Ainsley and Courtney Kube at NBC News (5 June 2018)
Link: “Sessions Says Domestic and Gang Violence Are Not Grounds for Asylum” – by Katie Benner and Caitlin Dickerson at New York Times (11 June 2018)
Link: “Doctors Concerned About ‘Irreparable Harm’ To Separated Migrant Children” – by Joel Rose at NPR (15 June 2018)
Link: “‘Fox & Friends’ Defends Trump’s Family Separation Policy” – by Maxwell Tani at The Daily Beast (17 June 2018). Strange that I found many references to this segment but no video footage.
Link: “Trump admin discussed separating moms, kids to deter asylum-seekers in Feb. 2017” – by Julia Ainsley at NBC News (18 June 2018, regarding town-hall meeting on 2 February 2017)
Link: “Hundreds of children wait in Border Patrol facility in Texas” – by Nomaan Merchant at AP (18 June 2018)
Link: “Laura Ingraham: Migrant child detention centers ‘essentially summer camps‘” – by Avery Anapol at The Hill (18 June 2018)
Link: “13 GOP senators ask administration to pause separation of immigrant families” – by Jordain Carney at The Hill (19 June 2018)
Link: “Trump admin’s ‘tent cities’ cost more than keeping migrant kids with parents” – by Julia Ainsley at NBC News (20 June 2018)
Link: “Tent city for migrant children puts Texas border town in limelight” – by Jon Herskovitz at Reuters (20 June 2018)
Link: “At least 3 tender age shelters set up for child migrants” – by Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza at AP (20 June 2018)
Link: “Immigrant children forcibly injected with drugs at Texas shelter, lawsuit claims” – by Matt Smith and Aura Bogado at Texas Tribune (20 Junes 2018)
Link: “The most shocking abuse allegations against shelters for immigrant children” – by Annabelle Timsit at Quartz (20 Junes 2018)
Link: “Donald Trump reverses course, signs an executive order to stop separating families” – by Emma Platoff and Claire Parker at Texas Tribune (20 June 2018)
Link: “10 states to sue over child separations and Trump executive order” – by Phil Helsel at NBC News (21 June 2018)
Link: “Company that runs immigration detention centers is top donor for three Texas congressmen” – by Rachel Cohrs at Dallas at Dallas News (20, 21 June 2018)
Link: “Kids in exchange for deportation: Detained migrants say they were told they could get kids back on way out of U.S.” – by Jay Root and Shannon Najmabadi at Texas Tribune (24 June 2018)
Link: “Federal judge enjoins separation of migrant children, orders family reunification” – by Isaac Stanley-Becker at The Washington Post (27 June 2018)
Link: “Some Contractors Housing Migrant Children Are Familiar to Trump’s Inner Circle” – by Ben Protess, Manny Fernandez, and Kitty Bennett at New York Times (4 July 2018)
Link: “How Trump’s inner circle profits from jailing babies” – by Joan McCarter at Daily Kos (5 July 2018)
Link: Episode of Nightly News when children under five years old were all to be reunited with their parents – by Lester Holt and Gabe Gutierrez at NBC Nightly News. (Video clip is one minute, 55 seconds, dated 10 July 2018)
Link: “The billion-dollar industry of detaining immigrant kids” – CBS News (13 July 2018)
Link: “Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody, though most separated families are reunited at court deadline” – by Nick Miroff and Samantha Schmidt at The Washington Post (26 July 2018)
Link: “The Government Is Moving Migrant Children to a Texas Tent City. Here’s What’s Behind It.” – by Caitlin Dickerson at New York Times (1 October 2018)
Link: “The Five-Year-Old Who Was Detained at the Border and Persuaded to Sign Away Her Rights” – by Sarah Stillman at The New Yorker (11 October 2018)
Link: “More than 14,000 immigrant children are in U.S. custody, an all-time high” – by Kal Topan at The San Francisco Chronicle. Tent city photo is from this article. (16 November 2018)
Link: “Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After ‘Zero Tolerance’ Was Reversed” – by Ginger Thompson at ProPublica (17 November 2018)
Link: “Border Patrol Facilities Put Detainees With Medical Conditions at Risk” – by Sheri Fink and Caitlin Dickerson at New York Times (5 March 2019)
Link: “Judge: Immigration Must Account For Thousands More Migrant Kids Split Up From Parents” – by Julie Small at KQED, published by Associated Press (9 March 2019)
Link: “One boy’s tale of family separation heads to court” – by Nomaan Merchant at Associated Press (12 July 2019)
Link: “Before Trump’s purge at DHS, top officials challenged plan for mass family arrests” – by Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post (13 May 2019)
Link: “Guards At A Family Detention Center Refused To Take Her Son To The Doctor. Then He Started Convulsing.” – by Carolina Moreno and Anna Almendrala at HuffPost
Link: Some court documents describing what is really going on
Link: CNN Transcript of Corey Lewandowski’s “wah wah” comment about the ten-year-old child with Down’s Sydrome being taken from her mother.
Link: “Two charts demolish the notion that immigrants here illegally commit more crime” – by Christopher Ingraham at The Washington Post (19 June 2018)
Link: “Illegal Immigration Does Not Increase Violent Crime, 4 Studies Show” – by John Burnett at NPR (2 May 2018)
Link: “Portland mayor demands Trump remove federal agents from city” – by Associated Press (18 July 2018)
Link: “Facts on U.S. Immigrants, 2015” – by Gustavo López and Jynnah Radford, Pew Research
Link: “ICE Deportations Hit 10-Year Low” – by Jessica M. Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies (an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization founded in 1985. According to them, they are “the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States.” I have, so far, found this to be true.)
Link: The Economics of Private Prisons – by Megan Mumford, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and Ryan Nunn, The Hamilton Project, Brookings Institute (21 October, 2016)
Link: Can Trump suspend the writ of habeas corpus? on Quora.com
Link: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948
Link to original ransom Tweet from DJT.
Link to start of original Tweet/thread from John Roberts.
Link to original Tweet (with video, two minutes, 13 seconds) from Senator Kamala Harris on pay for inmates, costs of phone calls.
Link to original Tweet on Hitler’s immigrants-as-criminals propaganda from Mikel Jollett.
Link to original Tweet on skipping due process from DJT.
Link: Welfare vs Rights – by E. Brooks of Gray Matters
Link: Good People – by E. Brooks of Gray Matters
Link: Cross the Line? – by E. Brooks of Gray Matters – DJT calls his government closure a “strike” when, in fact, it’s the opposite of a strike. The line is drawn. We cannot take any more steps backward as a nation. No wall.
Link: Six – by E. Brooks of Gray Matters
I have been unable to find information to credit the photographer for the featured image of the entrance at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the words “Arbeit macht frei” in the gate. The earliest version I found of this photo was dated 2016 but included no ownership/photographer information. If you know who to credit, please let me know.
A “concentration camp” is a place where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution.
Two terms described by Wikipedia (posted almost word-for-word):
“Arbeit macht frei” (German pronunciation: [ˈaɐ̯baɪt ˈmaxt ˈfʁaɪ]) is a German phrase meaning “work sets you free.” The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi concentration camps.
“Jedem das Seine” (German pronunciation: [ˈjeːdm̩ das ˈzaɪ̯nə]) is the literal German translation of Latin suum cuique, a fundamental juridical concept meaning “to each his own” or “to each what he deserves.” During World War II the phrase was cynically used by the Nazis as a motto displayed over the entrance of Buchenwald concentration camp. This has resulted in use of the phrase being considered controversial in modern Germany.
(I know this is hard to read, but we mustn’t ignore any of it. It’s happening again right here in America. Thanks so much for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you. *hugs*)
This post will be edited and added-to as pertinent information becomes available.
Last edit/updated 30 October 2020. Original date of publication is 24 June 2018. This version has been going on for more than a year. THE ATROCITIES MUST END.
#ReleaseTheHostages #AbolishICE #CloseTheCamps
#GMSummerCamp #TrumpConcentrationCamps