Kids are still in cages
More than 4,200 unaccompanied minors were being held by U.S. Border Patrol as of Sunday morning, according to CBS News--an increase of about 1,000 children on the previous week. Some of these kids were held in facilities “unfit to house minors,” and almost 3,000 children had been held by immigration officials for longer than 72 hours, which is the maximum amount of time allowed by law before migrant children are supposed to be transferred to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
In an apparent bid to get kids out of detention more quickly, the Biden administration announced on Sunday that it was ordering FEMA to help immigration officials process detained children. The administration is also planning on opening a temporary HHS facility in Texas “to put children in a safer environment while officials work to get them to a family member or other sponsor, or a long-term shelter,” according to BuzzFeed.
It's unclear to what extent these policies will promote child welfare. “Medical and mental health experts unilaterally agree that there is no safe way to detain a child,” Andrea Meza, lawyer for the immigrant advocacy group RAICES told the New York Times earlier this month, in a story about time limits on family detention. Assuming that the new policies do help, they will be of scant comfort to the children who have already been traumatized by detention under the Biden Administration. As CBS noted:
Children interviewed on Thursday by lawyers conducting oversight as part of a federal court case reported sleeping on the floor; being hungry; only showering once in as many as seven days; and not being able to call family members.
Different rules for U.S. allies (part 1,000,000)
Another federal court case underscores why the U.S. must treat unaccompanied children from Central America with the utmost care and respect. Many of these kids have been coming from failing Central American states run by U.S. allies. Many are coming from Honduras, whose president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was accused last week of conspiring to export cocaine to the United States.
An assistant U.S. attorney in New York said that Hernandez vowed to order Honduran security forces to protect coke dealers so that they could “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.” The allegation was made in a trial of Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, a Honduran man accused of conspiring to sell cocaine in the United States. Ramirez has denied the allegations. So has Hernandez, who has been tied to the narcotics trade in prior legal proceedings, including the prosecution of his brother in 2019, which led to a conviction on charges of coke dealing, as the New York Times noted.
Hernandez was also accused last Thursday of accepting bribes from a convicted drug dealer who turned government witness. Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga said, during proceedings against Ramirez, that the Honduran president accepted $250,000 nine years ago in exchange for government contracts and promises to help protect Maradiaga's operations.
Hernandez was a legislative leader at the time of the alleged payments. Federal prosecutors said that Hernandez went from lawmaker to president by accepting money from “drug traffickers who paid to be allowed to move drugs through Honduras without interference,” according to The Guardian. He also rose to power on the back of a coup supported by the Obama administration.
Republicans, naturally, were also big boosters of the the coup regime, which in 2009, ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya, an associate of the late Hugo Chavez. Republicans have also been gushing admirers of Hernandez. The Trump administration forged close ties with the Honduran ruler over a crackdown on northward migration (fueled by Hernandez himself). Hernandez rewarded Trump for the support by being one of the few countries to pledge to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Self-appointed human rights warrior Marco Rubio, who regularly calls Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a “criminal,” has also been a big fan of President Hernandez. “Just met with President @JuanOrlandoH and Foreign Minister Lara of Honduras,” Rubio tweeted in April 2018. “Thanked them for their support of the US and Israel at the UN and targeting drug traffickers.” What Hernandez was “targeting drug traffickers” with, Rubio did not specify.
OSHA reacts
Federal workplace safety regulators have responded to a watchdog report criticizing them for failing to prioritize COVID-19 complaints from the healthcare industry. OSHA said on Friday that it will hone its resources on “companies that put the largest number of workers at serious risk of contracting the coronavirus.”
The agency also said that it will prioritize enforcement actions against firms that retaliate against workers who complain “about unsafe or unhealthy conditions, or for exercising other rights protected by federal law.”
Concurrently, OSHA stated that it will conduct some inspections of businesses examined by the agency in 2020. It also announced that it will “prioritize the use of on-site workplace inspections where practical.”
Want to send us tips? Get in touch with Sam Knight
Email: samueledwardsknight@gmail.com
Signal: (202)-527-1205