Trump Reverses Course on Immigrant Purge — to Blame Democrats for His Malice

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

After announcing a massive sweep of undocumented immigrants last Monday, scheduled to begin yesterday, Donald Trump reversed course at the last minute, tweeting: "At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!"

[CN: Video may autoplay] According to a CNN source, Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump late Saturday asking him to call off the raids. They reportedly "spoke at 7:20 p.m. ET Friday night for about 12 minutes, according to the source." Now Trump is using Democrats' plaintive calls for decency to blame them for his malice.

The president is an extortionist and a terrorist. https://t.co/E79rUM5QWg

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 22, 2019

Trump is demanding that House Democrats put their stamp on the cruel immigration policies Trump wants, or he'll be forced to torture undocumented immigrant families. This is sick beyond measure.

Meanwhile, following Friday's report about the Trump Regime's horrific abuse of immigrant children in their concentration camps, there have been additional first-hand accounts published about the horrors taking place in these facilities:

Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker: Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children. "We drove around afterward, and we discovered that there was a giant warehouse that they had put on the site. And it appears that that one warehouse has allegedly increased their capacity by an additional five hundred kids. When we talked to Border Patrol agents later that week, they confirmed that is the alleged expansion, and when we talked to children, one of the children described as many as three hundred children being in that room, in that warehouse, basically, at one point when he first arrived. There were no windows."

William Brangham at PBS: A Firsthand Report of 'Inhumane Conditions' at a Migrant Children's Detention Facility.

Basically, what we saw are dirty children who are malnourished, who are being severely neglected. They are being kept in inhumane conditions. They are essentially being warehoused, as many as 300 children in a cell, with almost no adult supervision.

We have children caring for other young children. For example, we saw a little boy in diapers — or he had no diapers on. He should have had a diaper on. He was 2 years old. And when I was asked why he didn't have diapers on, I was told he didn't need it.

He immediately urinated. And he was in the care of another child. Children cannot take care of children, and yet that's how they are trying to run this facility. The children are hardly being fed anything nutritious, and they are being medically neglected.

We're seeing a flu outbreak, and we're also seeing a lice infestation. It is — we have children sleeping on the floor. It's the worst conditions I have ever witnessed in several years of doing these inspections.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Serena Marshall, Lana Zak, and Jennifer Metz at ABC News: Doctor Compares Conditions for Unaccompanied Children at Immigrant Holding Centers to 'Torture Facilities'. "'The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities,' the physician, Dolly Lucio Sevier, wrote in a medical declaration obtained exclusively by ABC News. ...She described conditions for [children] at the McAllen facility as including 'extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food.' All the children who were seen showed evidence of trauma, Lucio Sevier reported, and the teens spoke of having no access to hand washing during their entire time in custody. She compared it to being 'tantamount to intentionally causing the spread of disease.'"

Asked about these reports over the weekend, Mike Pence pretended like he cares (as if the Trump Regime doesn't have control over these conditions) and made sure to introduce the regime's new talking point blaming the Democrats: "If Democrats in Congress will simply step up...we can solve the crisis."

Reminder that when Mike Pence was governor of Indiana, he went to court in order to try to legally deny access to social services to Syrian refugees resettling in the state. Do not believe for one second that he's not fully supportive of Trump's vile nativist malice. https://t.co/biuevmi6HX

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) June 23, 2019

He is a despicable scoundrel. The Trump Regime could, at any time, reverse their vile nativist policy of separating and detaining families. They could certainly reverse their policies on climate change, which is driving much of the northward migration of refugees, and they could certainly reverse their decision to eliminate foreign aid for Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, whence come many of the refugees fleeing violence and/or joblessness and/or hunger.

This is hardly the fault of Democrats. Mike Pence knows that. So does Donald Trump.

It wasn't the Democrats who established concentration camps in order to torture thousands of migrant and refugee children.

On that note, I will end by recommending this blunt and necessary editorial at the Salt Lake Tribune by their editorial board: Yes, We Do Have Concentration Camps.

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Resist.