General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThat's not Adoption, That's Kidnapping
Link to tweet
As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: They want to steal my daughter!
It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again.
What followed one foster familys initially successful attempt to win full custody of Alexa reveals what could happen to some of the infants, children and teens taken from their families at the border under a Trump administration policy earlier this year. The zero-tolerance crackdown ended in June, but hundreds of children remain in detention, shelters or foster care and U.S. officials say more than 200 are not eligible for reunification or release.
Federal officials insist they are reuniting families and will continue to do so. But an Associated Press investigation drawing on hundreds of court documents, immigration records and interviews in the U.S. and Central America identified holes in the system that allow state court judges to grant custody of migrant children to American families without notifying their parents.
https://apnews.com/97b06cede0c149c492bf25a48cb6c26f
tblue37
(65,487 posts)Arkansas Granny
(31,528 posts)TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)baby operation.
We ask all the time how seemingly normal people manage to allow some of the moist horrible things to happen-- and this is just one example.
kimbutgar
(21,188 posts)In June leaving Arizona by plane I saw something that still bothers me to this day. A woman had these children that were not hers (she was Asian) getting on the plane. I noticed 2 sets of girl twins and commented on it. The lady said one set were triplets and the boy was coming from LA. we were flying into Sfo The children wore brand new clothes and were holding dolls and they looked like they were distressed. They had seats in first class. I looked for them in the baggage claim center but never saw them again. But that look in their eyes really bothered me.
alwaysinasnit
(5,072 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)assisting them too many hands they were passing through and distributed across the country
But from the start I suspected it was to lose children for various purposes and perhaps planned opportunity , an additional perk of the new trump laws
How many have still not been located from that first wave ? How many since?
Perfect victim parents -Poseibly limited money ,sent back to a stressful or dangerous location they came from and no longer in this country , likely limited English, maybe no contacts in the US .
What you saw >Sometimes your gut or senses say that aint right whats wrong with this picture ?
bdamomma
(63,922 posts)suspicious, they are for sure trafficking children. I remember hearing something recently how the are trying to account the disappearance of (700) girls? I could be wrong.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)DeVoss connections. And another Religious Cult .
Johnny2X2X
(19,114 posts)Im in West Michigan, Devos has business ties with Bethany Christian Services. They are literally auctioning off migrant children.
There is true evil at play here and the media says nothing.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)And I think you could guess the Cult I mentioned. Got's ta repopulate the One and only church.
2naSalit
(86,775 posts)a full account of what happened to and where these children are!
llashram
(6,265 posts)that was the creation of Stephen Miller. One of the shadow presidents advising the child sitting in the chair in the Oval Office.
Igel
(35,356 posts)The article's from October 2018.
The mother and daughter were separated in November 2015. Call them Araceli and Alexa, their first names. Araceli was sent back to El Salvador fairly quickly. The child was then labelled (to my thinking, incorrectly) an unaccompanied minor.
In 2016 custody of Alexa was awarded to an American family.
In December 2016 the situation was investigated, custody revoked, and the child ordered deported.
In January 2017 Trump was inaugurated.
In February 2017 Alexa was deported.
There's much not to like about how things were done in 2017 and 2018, but this isn't one of them. The only thing it does is say, "You know, under President Obama families were separated and, apparently his appointees engaged in kidnapping for the purposes of selling immigrant children into the sex trade." Now, I'm sure that people here don't *mean* to be saying that, but appending this particular style of commentary and claim to this particular example entails precisely that.
Because people aren't actually reading past the headline. It's not like it's War and Peace, in the original Russian and French and in old orthography. It's word count, Word tells me, is 3,723 exclusive of headline and credits.
Now, there are cases where this kind of thing could happen and I'd say, "Sure. Could be worse." There are still true unaccompanied minors, and minors who plausibly have no legit guardian with them as they cross. They should be declared unaccompanied. If they're young enough to give sufficient information to fairly quickly ID their parents, send them home. But often they won't, and in the past (by which I mean 2014 and 2015) the parents often sent them north to be with relatives who weren't their parents, friends who weren't their relatives, because "it's better there." Still, send them home if you can ID their parents. But some would not or could not give adequate information. Those you put in foster care and then adopt out. It's their choice as runaways (with nothing to be done about the perils of aiding and abetting runaways); and in the case of some kids, they just didn't can't give enough information.
llashram
(6,265 posts)the context, yet when trump was elected and Miller got his chance this type of situation exploded in children never being reunited with their families again. Many children deemed "unaccompanied" were actually snatched from their parents thrown into those cages-holding facilities-and a many many of the younger children were never sent back to their native countries and parents, just put into foster homes to await adoption. One reason for this happening was the Customs and Border Patrol paperwork was shoddy or altogether missing. While people may not read past the headlines, noted, I also have a long memory because I don't depend on the news cycle(s) of MSM for all my information.
People have been coming over the border for generations now and President Obama had to deal with this particular situation also, no doubts on my part. The one thing I can bet on is that immigrants under his administration were treated with compassion and children were not thrown into cages like animals. Unlike those thousands who have been caged in just the last 3 years. With a little research, it is easily found out who the author of this current administration immigration policy concerning brown people(s) on our southwest border has been. That is Stephen Miller, one of this current administrations shadow presidents.
c-rational
(2,595 posts)Marthe48
(17,018 posts)Even, so, I doubt that the people behind the policy and the separation of families stopped their policies.
Here is a link,also from 2018, about bethany childrens services, which has links to betsy devos, :
https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/26/bethany-christian-services-family-separation-betsy-devos/
EleanorR
(2,395 posts)Nothing has changed.
flying_wahini
(6,646 posts)Ive seen it several times when this comes up.
Also I have seen that this location of the home office is where the server that was connected to the Russian hacks and Betsys name keeps coming up.
[link:https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/06/26/bethany-christian-services-family-separation-betsy-devos/|
Marthe48
(17,018 posts)and added the same link to my post.
Why does she remind me of Delores Umbrage in the Harry Potter books?
Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,906 posts)More republican human trafficking.
tiptonic
(765 posts)Lets be clear there is , lots of money in human trafficking. Pretty simple when u male all the rules..
dawnie51
(959 posts)from the beginning. The very young, the adaptable, being adopted for big bucks. Older, more troublesome kids, God only knows. This is some sick, evil shit. Follow the money, people. Someone (ones) are getting rich off this.
avebury
(10,952 posts)Takket
(21,625 posts)ET Awful
(24,753 posts)Pepsidog
(6,254 posts)wnylib
(21,606 posts)with great concern and horror at the family separations and conditions.
DUers might like to know that there are some legitimate, liberal religious groups that have been involved for many decades in immigration programs and issues. They began long ago by offering assistance to members of their denominations abroad who wanted to come to the US.
As needs grew, they expanded to helping people beyond their own faiths who were refugees from wars, human trafficking, and human rights abuses. They've developed teams of lawyers, social workers, resettlement agencies, etc. They are advocating now for the southern border migrants with letters to local and national politicians to stop separations (they still occur),to reunite families, and to improve conditions for detainees.
They also provide legal aid for migrants and for people arrested in roundups. They provide for social, educational, and material needs of migrants and refugees. They are overwhelmed now due to the current policies.
I don't have links to their sites at hand at the moment. I'll look them up. Meantime you can find them in a search using the denomination name and the following words: immigration services, migrants, or related terms.
The 3 denominations that I know about are the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church, and the branch of Presbyterians known as PCUSA. The Lutheran immigration program is called LIRS. The Presbyterian immigration website has info links on what the border situation is and what people can do to help.
Of course all of these groups take donations to keep their work going.
BTW, Don't let the word "evangelical" in the Lutheran Church's name scare you off. It's related to Lutheran Church history in Europe. The ELCA is the liberal main group of Lutherans in the US. They are not fundamentalists.
The Catholic Church also has immigration programs but I don't know anything about them.
wnylib
(21,606 posts)programs to aid migrants and refugees.
Presbyterian
https://pda.pcusa.org/situation/refugee-ministry
https://pda.pcusa.org/pda/resource/video-
My phone doesn't display the entire url for this second site. It's a video called "Locked in a Box" that traces migrants' experiences getting to the US only to be locked up on arrival.
Episcopal
https://episcopalmigrationministries.org
Lutheran
Just enter LIRS in a search.
I'm NOTadvocating for any of these religions. My concern is for the migrants and refugees. Many years ago I used ro teach English and US customs to newcomers to the US. Most of my students were native Spanish speakers from Puerto Rico and Latin Americsn countries. The Puerto Ricans were citizens of couse. My other former students are now naturaluzed citizens so they should be safe. They were all here legally AFAIK.
But if they had tried to come today instead of years earlier they might well have been.locked up because I know that some of them came as refugees.
So I'm glad to see that there are US organizations willing to do more than just complain about the border situation today. They are actually doing something about it.
LakeArenal
(28,845 posts)Nothing else is as shocking, reprehensible,
Unforgivable by any deity, cruel, inhumane, inhuman than this.
The scars on this generation of Latino children will mar their whole life.
The heartlessness for parents that have walked a thousand miles to save their children from this kind of horror. And now the horror is reality.
Ill never ever understand or forgive this Senate and this Administration. Or any appointee to the SC or any ambassador that continues to work with and under this regime.
uponit7771
(90,364 posts)lostnfound
(16,189 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,289 posts)Ask any Native American or Australian how it works. They have a long, sad history of being subjected to this.
whopis01
(3,523 posts)saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)thinly veiled criminal adoption scheme. Have they no shame, no concept of criminal behaviour, above the law?
world wide wally
(21,754 posts)the guise of adoption.
Maybe that IS what they discussed at Trump Tower.
whopis01
(3,523 posts)From the 1948 "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", Article II, Section (e):
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:"
...
" e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
bdamomma
(63,922 posts)inhumane action will sooner or later surface when many of those migrants will appear and tell their horrid stories of how they were trafficked to other countries.
EleanorR
(2,395 posts)This article is from just a few days ago. Where are these children?
SNIP
Herzog said a group of nearly 100 attorneys have made more than 4,200 phone calls to parents and sponsors in their reunification efforts for the 868 children of possible new class members that have so far been identified.
About 436 sponsors and 225 parents have been reached.
Only 23 parents have been located in their countries of origin so far, Herzog said.
https://www.courthousenews.com/feds-admit-1250-more-immigrant-children-were-separated-from-parents/