The worst part is, many of these people and their children are seeking asylum. Texas Monthly interviewed volunteer Anne Chandler of the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, about their work helping these families at the border. She described how families seeking asylum come to the U.S. and try to cross at a bridge that is a legal entry point. U.S. officials have essentially closed the bridge and families spend nearly two weeks sleeping on the bridge, waiting to speak with U.S. authorities to apply for asylum. Eventually they give up and wanting to get off the bridge, they try to cross in a craft. Boom! Now they are criminals and they U.S. government takes their children and imprisons them in separate facilities.
AC: Very few people come to the bridge. The border patrol are saying the bridge is closed. When I was last out in McAllen, people were stacked on the bridge, sleeping there for three, four, ten nights. They’ve now cleared those individuals from sleeping on the bridge, but there are hundreds of accounts of asylum seekers, when they go to the bridge, who are told, “I’m sorry, we’re full today. We can’t process your case.” So the families go illegally on a raft—I don’t want to say illegally; they cross without a visa on a raft. Many of them then look for Border Patrol to turn themselves in, because they know they’re going to ask for asylum. And under this government theory—you know, in the past, we’ve had international treaties, right? Statutes which codified the right of asylum seekers to ask for asylum. Right? Article 31 of the Refugee Convention clearly says that it is improper for any state to use criminal laws that could deter asylum seekers as long as that asylum seeker is asking for asylum within a reasonable amount of time. But our administration is kind of ignoring this longstanding international and national jurisprudence of basic beliefs to make this distinction that, if you come to a bridge, we’re not going to prosecute you, but if you come over the river and then find immigration or are caught by immigration, we’re prosecuting you.
It wasn’t simply the three main Fox News hosts defending this vile policy. The whole team got the memo. Here’s Pete Hegseth comparing deployment to having your kids forcefully taken from you and kept in a children’s prison.
And when CBS reported from outside a detention center in Texas, the Border Patrol public relations representative told CBS they were uncomfortable with the use of the term “cages”, but then admitted they are technically cages, they just don’t want CBS and/or other outlets to use the term.
We have to fight like hell this week to reunite these families. This cannot be allowed to happen in our name.
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