When is a child not a child? When they are poor migrants seeking asylum in the United States. In an interview with Politico, Chief Border Patrol Agent Rodney S. Scott defended the imprisonment of migrant teens by saying that many of these kids are “hardened adults.”
I would like to remind people too, that we look at a child in the United States and say, oh, that fourteen-year-old young man or….that’s an adult in a lot of countries, in a lot of other countries. That kid’s been working for years, may or may not have been associated with a gang. A lot of times, especially if there is any kind of a use of force or a violent encounter with law enforcement and the person is under eighteen, people get their picture in their head that it’s like the kid that lives next door to you and it’s not. Some of these kids are hardened adults and I’m not going to say that that’s all of them, but look into it, peel the layers of the onion back a little bit and you’ll find out most of these stories are not true. They are exaggeration.
As you read this statement, did it jump out at you that he has to note that they “may or may not have been associated with gangs”? Some of the reason these families are making their way to the United States is specifically to escape gang violence in their home country. As of today, an estimated 11,750 children are being held in border detention facilities after being taken from their parents. That number is expected to jump to 30,000 by August. Every minute they are being held in these child prisons, they are certainly being hardened. Hear Rodney Scott in his own words below.
From day one, Donald Trump has stocked his administration with white supremacists and now we are seeing their cruel white supremacy ideas turned into real, live white supremacy policy. It’s a disgrace and wholeheartedly un-American. It has to be stopped.