The Washington Post reports that according to “Defense Department communications,” the Trump administration is floating plans to “shelter” migrant children on military bases. What a humane-sounding connotation for something that sounds an awful lot like an internment camp for brown kids:
According to an email notification sent to Pentagon staffers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will make site visits at four military installations in Texas and Arkansas during the next two weeks to evaluate their suitability for child shelters.
The bases would be used to hold minors under age 18 who arrive at the border without an adult relative or after the government has separated them from their parents. HHS is the government agency responsible for providing minors with foster care until another adult relative can assume custody.
The email characterized the site visits as a preliminary assessment. “No decisions have been made at this time,” it states.
As the Washington Post reports, this isn’t the first time this has happened. “At the peak of the 2014 child migration crisis, the Obama administration used bases in Oklahoma, Texas and California to shelter more than 7,000 children over a period of several months.” It was horrific then, and making it worse now is that this administration is escalating a brutal war on migrants kids, also proposing to make it harder to place them with relatives, which will only increase how many are detained. This is sheer brutality:
Critics of the family separation practices denounce the practice as heartless and cruel, saying it inflicts additional trauma on families fleeing for their lives from Central America’s bloody gang wars.
It’s appears we might be going with the “or whatever” option from White House chief of staff John Kelly. What a shameful stain on our nation. And, of course, complete silence so far from those “be best,’ “pro-family,” “pro-kids” Republicans. What a disgrace. “Mass cruelty is not acceptable public policy,” tweeted Rep. Nydia Valazquez (D-NY). “Deploying military forces, separating children from their families and threatening to throw parents in jail is heartless and inhumane. America is better than this!”