I didn’t think you could stoop lower than ripping toddlers and breast-feeding infants from their mother’s arms and putting them in cages for the “crime” of fleeing murderous armed drug gangs. Yet each week we learn of a new Trump administration atrocity against these refugees.
150 Democratic lawmakers—(not one republican)—signed a letter demanding ICE acting director Ronald Vitiello end ICE’s practice of charging “exorbitant” prices for parents being held in detention camps just to talk on the phone with their children.
We can also thank Ajit Pai, Trump’s
embattled FCC Chairman, for his fierce support of the price-gouging from the two companies that dominate telecommunication across all of America’s detention and correctional facilities. These companies are raking in profits due to Trump treating thousands of refugees as criminals and detaining the separated families in cramped detention facilities.
The letter states that forcing anxious parents, “many of whom have no idea where their children are and have not seen them for weeks, to pay the steep rates exploits a vulnerable population” and "is clearly against agency standards”.
According to NPR and the Texas Tribune, cash-strapped migrants are being forced to pay up to $8 a minute just to talk with their children.
"I am only to call when I have money, but when I do not have money, I am not able to communicate with my children," [the migrant mother] declared, adding that the calls are sporadic and often the phones do not work.
A spokesperson for DHS provided Buzzfeed a statement denying that parents of children are being gouged, stating “calls between detained parents in ICE custody and their children are facilitated at no charge to detainees.” This, however, does not jibe with multiple accounts provided lawmakers and several court filings from grieving parents. Like Trump, ICE has a bit of a credibility problem: this is the same agency that put out a statement that screaming migrant mothers were moved to a distant soccer field during the DHS chief’s visit for recreational reasons.
Only a depraved soul would see parents trying to talk to their kidnapped, caged children as a profit opportunity. The only thing more depraved is the silence from certain lawmakers who can never again be referred to as either “religious” or “right”.