Isaac Chotiner/New Yorker:
Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children
Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of each other because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.
To discuss what the attorneys saw and heard, I spoke by phone with one of them, Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University and the director of its clinical-law program. She told me that, although Flores is an active court case, some of the lawyers were so disturbed by what they saw that they decided to talk to the media. We discussed the daily lives of the children in custody, the role that the guards are playing at the facility, and what should be done to unite many of these kids with their parents. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Riane Roldan/Texas Tribune:
Lawyer: Inside an immigrant detention center in South Texas, 'basic hygiene just doesn't exist'
The attorney said running water is so bad that mothers save any bottled water they can to mix with baby formula. The stories she heard from people in the shelter echo tales at other facilities, where people say conditions are substandard.
Seth Harp/Intercept:
I’M A JOURNALIST BUT I DIDN’T FULLY REALIZE THE TERRIBLE POWER OF U.S. BORDER OFFICIALS UNTIL THEY VIOLATED MY RIGHTS AND PRIVACY
Austin is where I was born and raised, and I usually get waved through immigration after one or two questions. I’m also a white man; more on that later. This time, when my turn came to show my passport, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was more aggressive than usual in his questioning. I told him I’d been in Mexico for seven days for work, that I was a journalist, and that I travel to Mexico often, as he could see from my passport. That wasn’t enough for him, though. He wanted to know the substance of the story I was currently working on, which didn’t sit right with me. I tried to skirt the question, but he came back to it, pointedly.
I was going on three hours of sleep, and I hadn’t had anything to eat in the last 12 hours besides some popcorn and peanuts and a Monster energy drink. Had my blood sugar been higher, I might have cheerfully told him. Instead, I muttered something about not having a legal obligation, under the circumstances, to disclose the contents of my reporting.
The agent, whose name was Moncivias, said we would see about that. He asked me to follow him into the secondary screening area.
“Oh, come on, man,” I said, checking the time on my phone. It was just after noon. “This is going to be a huge waste of time.”
“I’m here all day,” Moncivias said.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
Phase 2 of Trump’s American autocracy has arrived, and it’s as bad as your worst fears
Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University tasked with monitoring government compliance with a court order on how long migrant kids can be held in detention, said not only is Trump’s Border Patrol not complying, but attorneys are shocked at what they found at a Clint, Texas, facility where hundreds of youths have been sent: Children sleeping on frigid concrete floors, covered in filth, unable to shower for days, and taking care of one another because the authorities are looking the other way.
Binford told the New Yorker that some of the kids who’d been in Clint for three weeks or longer “were filthy dirty, there was mucus on their shirts, the shirts were dirty. We saw breast milk on the shirts. There was food on the shirts, and the pants as well. They told us that they were hungry. They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until the day or two days before we arrived. Many of them described that they only brushed their teeth once.”
This report was just one of several in the last week about the rapidly expanding number of young migrant children detained in conditions that aren’t just substandard but inhumane to the point where they fall short of international standards such as the 1949 Geneva Convention, which demands that detained people receive “conveniences which conform to the rules of hygiene,” such as showers equipped with soap and water.
Emily Bazelon/NYT Magazine:
Elizabeth Warren Is Completely Serious
About income inequality. About corporate power. About corrupt politics. And about being America’s next president.
But will people respond? Warren has been a politician for only seven years, since she announced her run for the Senate in 2011 at age 62. She’s still thinking through how she communicates her ideas with voters. “The only thing that worries me is I won’t describe it in a way that — ” she trailed off. “It’s like teaching class. ‘Is everybody in here getting this?’ And that’s what I just struggle with all the time. How do I get better at this? How do I do more of this in a way that lets people see it, hear it and say, ‘Oh, yeah.’”
Elizabeth Saunders on the cancellation of an Iran strike, via twitter:
Prompted by this @nytimes article, a couple thoughts on the politics of Trump's decision...tl;dr: yes, he probably had more leeway to hold off because he's a Republican. Here's some research: 1/n ...
Interestingly, they argue hawk/dove divide is independent of party, and find separate hawk/dove effect. This piece on divisions within R's over Trump's action shows there's usually a hawk/dove spectrum within both parties (also true of D's!). 5/ …
Bottom line: whatever else is going on, Trump had more leeway here, politically speaking, as a Republican. END
Max Boot/WaPo:
Marco Rubio’s humiliating transformation into a Trump fan-boy is complete
I doubt that a Democratic president would stop supporting the dissidents in Venezuela or stop cracking down on Chinese trade abuses; he or she might even implement those policies more consistently and effectively than Trump has done. (Trump is already tiring of the Venezuela policy that Rubio has advocated.) It’s true, however, that a Democrat probably would reinstate the emissions limits on power plants that Trump is repealing and that are necessary to fight global warming. A Democrat might very well undo Trump’s tax cut, which has sent the deficit soaring without having any significant impact on economic growth. And a Democrat would no doubt appoint pro-choice, rather than antiabortion, judges.
But do you know what a Democratic president probably wouldn’t do? A Democrat wouldn’t obstruct justice, ignore congressional subpoenas, break campaign finance laws, malign the FBI or invite foreign interference in our elections. A Democrat wouldn’t engage in racism or xenophobia to win votes. A Democrat wouldn’t vilify immigrants and lock children in cages. A Democrat wouldn’t call the media the “enemy of the people” and accuse the opposition of treason. A Democrat would not lie incessantly. A Democrat would not trash America’s allies — or kowtow to dictators such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman….
Rubio has decided that Trump is the future of the Republican Party. He’s probably right. That’s why I’m not a Republican anymore — and why I couldn’t imagine supporting Rubio for any office ever again. I’m sorry I supported him in 2016.