Trump Regime Announces Expansion of "Family Residential Centers" to Detain Migrant Families

[Content Note: Nativism; abuse]

When, following weeks of criticism for family separations, Donald Trump signed an executive order to "keep the families together" without rescinding his aggressively cruel "zero tolerance" policy at the southern border, I warned it was a move that exploited our concern for undocumented immigrant families in order to lay the groundwork for family detention camps.

I fervently hoped that I was wrong, but, late last month, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ruled that "the government can now leave it up to immigrant parents: Keep your children locked up with you in an immigration detention center, or send them miles or states away to be cared for in a government-contracted shelter."

And now, Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti at the Washington Post report that the Trump Regime is "preparing to circumvent limits on the government's ability to hold minors in immigration jails by withdrawing from the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal consent decree that has shaped detention standards for underage migrants since 1997."

Further, the proposed changes "would allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand its family detention facilities in order to keep parents and children together in custody for lengthier periods. ICE currently has three such facilities, which it calls 'family residential centers,' with a combined capacity of about 3,500 beds."

To be perfectly clear, and deservedly blunt: The Trump Regime's solution to valid criticism of profoundly traumatizing children by separating them from their parents is to lock them all up together for longer periods of time.

In family detention camps, paid for with our tax dollars.

I guess we can assume that this is either one of those things that the "White House Resistance" has been unable to stop — or, more likely, that it is one of the things they are eminently willing to abet, on behalf of the conservative movement they serve.

This is almost certainly going to be challenged in court, again. If the Trump Regime gets lucky, and is allowed to move forward with this plan, there will be a public comment period before it's instituted. We will have to stand ready to make as much noise in opposition as we can, even if we'll ultimately lose.

This is one of those times when my friend Maud's words ring in my ears: "There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don't speak, they have changed you." I will raise hell, because that's who I am.