Border Patrol agents fall prey to illnesses plaguing migrant holding centers
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
EAGLE PASS, Texas — Some Border Patrol agents in Texas are concerned about exposure to Ebola by a migrant fleeing the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the United States.
But more of them are worried about other illnesses frequently popping up among detainees at stations across the southern border, according to union representatives.
Border Patrol’s holding facilities in the Del Rio and El Paso sectors, or regions, are inundated with sick detainees, as well as sick agents.
Jon Anfinsen is a National Border Patrol Council vice president and based in Del Rio, which includes Eagle Pass, where most Congolese are arriving. Anfinsen represents approximately 1,000 agents who are based out of 10 regional holding stations. Anfinsen has been an agent 12 years and said the number of people in custody and subsequent illnesses among that population is “unprecedented.”
“Scabies, chickenpox — we had one case of the mumps here in Uvalde. I wanna say we had measles — plenty of the flu, plenty of colds, body lice, just assorted. And some of these things, they spread like wildfires when you get into a cramped holding cell. It happens,” Anfinsen said.
The continuous breakouts — in part caused by the overcrowded conditions in facilities and difficulty quarantining each sick person — are taking both a physical and mental toll on agents.
“It’s not so much the workload. It’s the constant illnesses. We have a lot of agents who are sick. The other day I talked to agents from four different stations. And every single one of them had a cough,” Anfinsen said.
“I’ll go and I’ll help process. There was one day I spent processing and we had like 40 Guatemalans and Hondurans, and most of them had some kind of cough. And sure enough the next day, I’m sick — for a week,” he said. “It’s become the new normal, and you gotta just keep going and do your job because you can’t just not process them.”
National Border Patrol Council vice president and agent in El Paso, Wesley Farris, said the breakouts rarely stop, they just dwindle down for a period.
“It’ll go in waves. Scabies — strep throat was the last one. Strep throat happened at the Santa Teresa station [in New Mexico]. It was everywhere,” Farris said. “Active tuberculosis comes in fairly regularly. We had an incident of H1N1, swine flu, in Clint [Texas] with a juvenile. And then the ones that are most disruptive are the simple ones: regular flu or lice.”
Union officials in El Paso have urged the sector’s 2,500 agents to wear gloves and face masks whenever possible. Neither official could provide confidential data on the amount of agent sick time used in order to see the brevity of sickness claims among Homeland Security employees.
Farris said the sector has harped on taking basic precautions to stay healthy, but said they are not enough, especially as populations from other parts of the world, including Africa and Asia, continue to arrive at the southern border at rates higher than previous years, bringing with it mild and possibly more serious types of illnesses that are not native to the U.S.
Farris said if he had his way, he would bring in physicians from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a proactive measure.
Both officials said migrants are currently screened after being taken into custody and transported from where they were found to a Border Patrol station. Some agents will ask migrants while they are in the field if they need medical help and will then acquire additional transportation if it is needed.
Once back at the station, either Border Patrol EMTs, medical personnel from the Coast Guard, or contracted doctors and nurses will take each person’s vitals and examine them for signs of illness. If a person is deemed to be in good standing, he or she will be released into a holding cell with others. All others will be sent to a hospital. Following hospital tests and possible treatment, the detainee is turned back over to Border Patrol. Quarantining is difficult because of the lack of space at stations, both men said.
Border Patrol does not do blood work as part of medical intake for incoming detainees. Anfinsen said even if they did do it, there is still a chance they or the hospital could miss something that is premature to be showing up in the blood.
The El Paso official said the contracted medical professionals and Coast Guard officials are doing their best, but deserve additional resources because of the risk posed to the general public by the release of hundreds of thousands of people this year.
“If I was running the ship, I would make medically screening people a higher priority,” he said. “At least 90% of people coming into this sector are coming in at one spot. I would get ahead of the game and set up what you call a hot zone — have medical right there.”
“We’re civil servants. It’s what we’re supposed to do in that regard — make sure we at least know [a person’s background]. We do it on the criminal side — we won’t release a criminal if they have an active warrant. We’ll check that. But we’re very reluctant to quarantine them medically,” he said.
Last week, the CDC announced the activation of an emergency operations center in an effort to help with the Congo's Ebola outbreak, the second-largest in history.
Farris said if the CDC is jumping in to help with a major outbreak overseas, the U.S. agency should “absolutely” deploy some resources to the southern border.
“You’re going to have to sift through thousands before you get one [major disease],” said Farris. “That’s my nightmare — that somebody does get sick — because I’m going to have to make the funeral arrangements. And it’s not going to be an agent, it’s going to be his 3-year-old kid at home who contracts Ebola or H1N1 because they’re little.”
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“That’s my nightmare — that somebody does get sick — because I’m going to have to make the funeral arrangements. And it’s not going to be an agent, it’s going to be his 3-year-old kid at home who contracts Ebola or H1N1 because they’re little.”
Yet they STILL aren't takin even the most basic precautions against communicable diseases. Watch the video at the link, not ONE CBP Agent with cloves or masks on. The National Border Patrol Council should be screaming from the rooftops that the DHS isn't protecting their members. Instead, the VP is whining...
BTFW, if Trump wanted the CBC on the border, they'd be there.
What a wild azz azzumption - luv it.
114,000 ILLEGAL ALIENS crossed the border last month - in that batch were 850 ILLEGAL ALIENS from Africa. Absolutely wow. Sure gave the BP and CDC PLENTY of time to get all the gear they needed to handle the sickies/potential sickies.
The most basic precaution would be a medical screening before entering the country with permission.
Why are you pretending that this issue is recent 1st? YOUR article talks about scabies, H1N1, swine flu, TB and lice. Why are you trying to pretend that JUST STARTED this month or even this year?
The article says:
Which indicates that the proper equipment is available but Agents aren't mitigating their own exposure. In short, the Agents are CHOOSING to expose themselves and others, including the 3 year old that the VP is allegedly having nightmares about.
Any review of the National Border Patrol Council website will prove that there hasn't been a Health and Safety 'ALERT' and in fact, nothing has been posted under that link since 2012.
Under their 'Member Advisories', NOTHING since Feb. 2018 and NOTHING about communicable disease protocols.
Under 'Press releases', the most recent post is from 6/2018 and whines about Peter Fonda.
Under 'Special reports' the most recent is from 2/2017 and it's about Obama 'leftovers'.
So if the VP of the National Border Patrol Council is having nightmares, perhaps it's because he and his organization haven't done shit to mitigate the threat to their members beyond 'urging' them to use the equipment available to them.
Oh and BTFW, it would seem that the Texas CDC is asleep at the wheel too since there isn't anything on their website about infectious disease outbreaks originating from border crossings.
Really? Then why hasn't that been 'proclaimed' by Trump since day one?
Tens of thousands of 'trans-border' crossings, students and workers, happen every day. None of them are required to have medical screening. Multiply that by the number of people that come BACK into the US after traveling south of the border. Hundreds of vacationers visit the US on a daily basis. There are NO vaccination or 'medical screening' required for such visits.
Customs agents don't take protective precautions when reviewing passports and other entry documents from ANY of those travelers.
One would think that if this fabricated hair on fire issue was fact based, SOMETHING would have been done to mitigate exposure long ago...
No, the most basic precaution is wearing the standard blue latex gloves that are worn by every TSA agent every day.
look at any airport check in procedure. TSA agents come in contact with 2.7 million airline travelers daily.
These are adult Americans screening other adults day in and out and they always treat you like you are a medical threat to them.
They won't even handle your ID without gloves.
Why would CBP, Border Patrol agents be held to less standards given the heightened fear of disease, lice etc?
It makes ZERO sense.
Don't work for CBP - am not in their chain of command nor in any supervisory position for them, so can't make any GUESS as to why they don't wear the amount and style of clothing you wish for them to wear.
Your didn't answer my questions nor did you address the LACK of information from the Union about an issue that the VP is pretending is causing him nightmares.
BTFW, they could go naked for all I care. I just tire of people WHINING about shit that they have the power to DO something about but refuse to do so. The CBP and the union aren't victims in this instance, they're the village idiots.
did you address the LACK of information from the Union
I'll be sure to ask Carnac the Magnificent what he knows.
So your seed is filled with quotes from the VP of the Union but you don't care that the Union isn't informing their members or doing a thing about mitigating the problem. Got ya.
Above mine AND YOUR pay grades. You wanna know, you ask them.
When I went through boot camp, we all got sick.
Me too - but for different reasons. I was sick of two of my DI's.
It was the typhoid shot that made me sick in Basic Training. A lot of good the shot did me as I eventually contracted a strain that the shot didn't protect me from.
Lol very true.
We should bring the ideological driven officials of CA and Portland Maine down to the southern border and use them as guinea pigs. Just my suggestion.
How 'bout "maybe" we get those "Congressional" folks who say there's "no problem" to spend a month in the detention centers they have forced on us - ya think?
Better then that, have all of them have one of their own family members spend a month there. Then maybe they will understand what real life is about.
Yes'm - totally agree.
They couldn't last a month
Agree.
Wait wait wait, you mean when you keep a lot of people closed up in a confined space for a long period of time disease will spread? Who the fuck would have guessed? This is a goddamn medical revelation!
"detained for a long period of time"? You may want to google "how long the Border Patrol can detain". There you will find numerous posts from the ACLU describing in detail what the Border Patrol is allowed and not allowed to do. Google has put those posts right on top!
Maybe the medical condition of migrants has a lot more to do with the journey & where they are coming from?
starting with the fallacy of an outbreak of Ebola in the Congo/Sar
There IS an outbreak in the Congo. It's been reported on for several months!
I guess you missed the "Sar" for Sarcasm
The incubation period for Ebola is 2-21 days they would have been sick and died long before they got to the border. There is no way that they would just start to show symptoms now if they were infected when they left Africa to come to South America.
And I'm quite sure "Doc" that you do realize there are also carriers WHO WON'T GET SICK from the disease - but, I'm sure you know all that.
The people around them would be showing symptoms if they have traveled from South America. Do you really believe they would have gotten this far north and nobody has noticed?
How long before the first patient zero?
It doesn't even have to start when they arrive in the US? It could just as easily start in Mexico, Central or South America. The results would be the same- further influx of refugees/asylum seekers/and illegals at our already over strained southern border.
Congress seems content to sit around and do nothing. No immigration reform. No upgrades to border security. No new detention centers. No enhancements to medical testing procedures at border facilities. No new immigration judges to speed up processing. They seem content to let it fail for political reasons. We all know who they will blame when it does.
If it favors Trump, they will torpedo it - to hell with the U.S.Citizens.
All offered previously and Trump said he would veto $$25 Billion Republican Senate Bill unless it ended the diversity lottery and chain migration. ( Feb 2018 ) .
It's called negotiating.
It's easy for democrats to say no when they want the President to fail.
And guess what nobody in that Great August body did to get the $25B passed - gee - make corrections????
In a republican dominated House and Senate?
it should have been a slam dunk...
In the end it was the White House who refused to negotiate with the GOP.
I think trump wants to keep the issue alive. Then he can throw out red meat soundbytes to gin up his base. Which IMO is kind of backfiring as problems are getting worse.
It is always only him that can fix things. Only pandering for votes and support. trump could work with republicans and streamline the hiring process for new hires, update facilities, update systems and monitoring etc. Him only wanting a scorched earth policy that he knows will never pass is him and only him doing nothing about it.
You need 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. Dems are under tight control of their leadership
But you have the voting backwards. All of the Dem Senators voted for it along with 8 Republicans, so yes,
it failed to make the 60 threshold.
Classic example of a political failure to compromise ( a bird in the hand, is worth more than two in a bush )
I still remember the Presidents four points. 1) Funding for the Border Wall, 2) ending the Visa lottery, 3) making the immigration priority based on merit/ ending chain migration and 4) enforcement of a nationwide e-verify system. For that you get amnesty for the DACA people.
Even if all those conditions were met, I don't think I want the DACA people voting - NO WAY!
Did you forget that just 6 hours ago you said it's called negotiating. Unlike dictating, negotiating entails give and take.
Right and Trump was willing to give amnesty. I'm not.
A federal judge changed all that. The DACA people are residing here safe and sound, and House democrats must deny Trump, so everything is off the table until Trump's second term.
Vic, we had this conversation just yesterday. The House passed a DACA bill. Why do you keep posting BS.
And the SENATE has not. Remember that.
Yes, we did.
The House passed a DACA bill.
The House passed a once sided Bill that neither the US Senate nor the President would ever vote for. It amounted to a campaign commercial for the Hispanic vote, much like Obama's use of his DACA order during the 2012 election.
Why do you keep posting BS.
Your'e conception of BS seems to be everything you don't like to hear.
Which can't be blamed on the Democrats. Remember that.
You said:
Now you ADMIT that the Democrats JUST passed a DACA bill yet WHINE about that fact. The Senate could amend and debate the House bill or write one themselves. McConnell has done neither. So STOP dumping the blame on House Democrats and STOP pretending that House Democrats are sitting on their hands and until Trump's 'second term'. It's bullshit.
I'm just charactorizing the content of your comment Vic, which is provably bullshit. Own it.
I'm gonna sponsor a bill as well - one that denies citizenship to the DACA people forever. That will be my bill. Let's see if democrats pass it.
When will you be running for the Congress Vic?
BTW, I note that you decided that owning it was out of the question.
You'll be the first to know
BTW, I note that you decided that owning it was out of the question.
Absolutely. I would never move in on your business. You've become far too good at it
Could be that that's the point - the Dems/Libs in the House don't appear to have any idea what their constituents want. All they want to do is get rid of Trump because he's busy rubbing their noses in their childish behavior.
So this starts out with whining about the Democrats not passing a DACA bill, then about them passing a bill and now you claiming that they don't know what their constituents want without an iota of evidence.
Right 1st, the House passed a DACA bill just to get rid of Trump. /s
No, they passed it to get future votes.
"iota of evidence"?????????? "HANG TRUMP" "IMPEACH TRUMP" "LOCK'M UP" "INVESTIGATE TRUMP/MELANIA/IVANKA/JARED/JR./THEIR BUTLER/HOUSEKEEPER/MAILMAN/UPS DRIVER/DOG WALKER/AMAZON CATERER" All day, every day, the idiot munckins (Pelosi/Shumer/Waters/Lee/AOC/Etc.) - "HE'S DOING SOMETHING - IT HAS TO BE ILLEGAL/IMMORAL/UNPATRIOTIC/UNAMERICAN - INVESTIGATE HIM" If that's not enough evidence, you need to start reading/listening other news sources.
On any normal news/factless reporting day, look at the front page of Drudge Report and you'll find, usually, a minimum of five "stories" of how the Dems/Libs are going to hamstring and castrate Trump. That tells me, in more than all the words needed, that the Dems/Libs are too busy looking for a kill because of the electoral loss - and their constituents aren't even in the picture.
So you admit that the GOP is incapable of winning over the hearts and minds of DACA recipients and you blame the Democrats. Hilarious.
You claimed that the Democrats don't know what their constituents want.
I stated that you don't have an iota of evidence to prove that.
So WTF was all of your capitalized bullshit about 1st?
Might I make the suggestion that you take your head out of Drudge's ass long enough to reacclimate to Earth 1?
Obviously something you don't seem to realize, understand nor accept is that the DACA is an ILLEGAL EO and the fact that it is an ILLEGAL EO is what the GOP has been trying to hammer through the courts. When they do, they will win.
Caps? Following someone else's examples.
Drudge is a gathering source - they find stories, post the headlines, WITH LINKS, and allow the reader to make their minds up. Kinda like free will, eh?
I don't understand how people can say that the president and the executive branch have control of the border and immigration yet did not afford the same option when Obama was president.
What trump does is needed but what Obama did was illegal...
Obviously something YOU don't seem to realize, understand or accept is that the DACA EO has ALREADY been 'hammered through the courts'.
That doesn't explain what you were blathering about in those caps.
So does the AP, BBC, NPR and many others. Drudge is a decidedly pro-Trump and right wing. Come up for air...
IOKIYAR.
I just call it what it is, hypocrisy.
I also have to laugh at the stupidity. When trump says he only wants to bring in the best and brightest, when he says he wants to bring in only people that will be of higher skill and labour.
So in other words, he wants to bring in people that would take all the middle class jobs...
Then they are all foaming at the mouth about the border, blaming everyone in the world for the problem except the biggest problem. They praise the one man that is the one actually doing nothing about it, except maybe making it worse.
You can't make this stuff up.
Has not reached SCOTUS - that's where the courts will say that the next President can eliminate all previous EO's - something the Dems/Libs don't seem to understand.
Trump realizes that when his terms (?) of office are up, the next President can nullify as many of his EO's as needed/desired.
Right, then he creates the self fulfilling prophesy that they are here to take away jobs.
Ender - do you really believe that? No, they won't take "all the middle class jobs".
The folks, supposedly, brought into the U.S/any country are to be a benefit to the country. Look at what the Canadians have recently done. Is their "new" immigration policy going to wipe out "all the middle class jobs"?? How 'bout Australia - same question. Look at Mexico's - same question.
And, I believe you have it confused - Trump is the ONLY one who is actually doing something 'bout Immigration 'cause, apparently, Congress, both sides, have no desire to get down to the grass roots to develop workable solutions.
Sorry to burst your bubble 1st but it DID go to the SCOTUS. They released a 2 sentence ruling upholding the lower court.
So what your saying is that Trump knows that he's not making America great again, he's just creating a façade for the next guy to burn down.
Congress has tried only to be shot down by trump.
trump says no, it will only be what he wants or nothing.
Contrary to how some believe, that is not the way it works. It is not his way or the highway. We do not have a king.
Hell trump just recently went against his own brand new agreement with Mexico. The two nations taking a lead in Central America, only for trump days later to stop funding for those countries.
Odd what some people consider doing something about it.
No Dulay, they have not.
The Supreme Court signaled on Monday that it would meet behind closed doors Thursday to discuss whether to take up a case for next term concerning the phase out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program , an Obama-era program that protects young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from deportation.
Yer right - Trump is attempting to get the U.S. government to FOLLOW THE EXISTING LAWS on immigration, and why Congress doesn't have the cajones to actually do some supportive work to ASSIST him, all they are doing is throwing up blockades to stop him.
Why, just why is Congress so friggin' afraid to adhere to the laws they, themselves, wrote????
"What trump does is needed but what Obama did was illegal"
Exactly.
I imagine they don't want to touch such a thing. It could have implications on EO's as well as presidential power on immigration.
Who said they are not following the laws now? Have deportations stopped? Checkpoints, border patrol and ice seem to be chugging along. It seems the laws are being followed. Some just want them changed.
Every time they have tried any thing trump balks and says no, then makes demands.
He is unwilling to make or work for any compromise.
In the case of Obama’s action granting amnesty to illegal immigrants and allowing them to apply for work permits, states asked the federal courts to step in and halt this executive amnesty. And they did so , at least temporarily, pending future rulings on whether those actions were constitutional and should be permanently enjoined .
Conservatives argued that Obama used executive orders to achieve results he failed to get through Congress, not only on immigration but on issues such as health care, gun control, cybersecurity, energy, the environment, education, and gender identity, among others.
As the 45th president, Republican Donald Trump will have the opportunity to review, revise, or revoke Obama’s executive orders – just as the younger Bush did in regard to Clinton’s directives, and Obama did in regard to Bush’s.
The lower courts are not allowing Trump to revoke the DACA EO - that is his and the administration's key point. The lower courts do not have authority, under the Constitution, if get involved with "Constitutional" issues - only SCOTUS does - or so I've been told. When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court - the Supreme Court, not a lower court.
They are playing games. If they rule against the Obama EO, it basically makes all EO's worthless. If they vote for the Obama EO, it gives more power to the president.
Like I said, I don't think the court wants to change much or give much power.
Still what must be looked at is these are real people and not some political pawn. These are people that have been here from birth or very young and have known no other home.
They may vote as an exemption rather than a rule.
That doesn't mean that ANOTHER case can't be brought or litigated but there HAS been a ruling by SCOTUS and that is why Trump hasn't been able to shit can DACA.
The Supreme Court is infringing on the President's EO power by stating that Trump can undo DACA- which was an Obama EO. EO's are not laws. The Supreme Court, or any other court, gets no say on whether Trump can undo the DACA EO by Obama. They are over stepping their power.
But we know, we know, anything that is Anti Trump is OK with the left. So long as that ruling is not used to infringe on any future Democratic Presidents use of EO's.
no?
no new applicants accepted. the first step in killing any program.
the court only ruled against expediting an opinion while cases go thru the courts.
this is actually very normal for the court. and not indicative of any final rulings for or against.
the "states" will deal the final legal blows to daca... have patience. in progress...
Moving the goalposts again???
You stated " it DID go to the SCOTUS. They released a 2 sentence ruling upholding the lower court .
SCOTUS DID NOT rule on the legality of DACA - they haven't even been presented the case for decision. They ruled on EXPEDITING the presentation to SCOTUS in a two sentence statement, in which they said "no go".
Legally, since DACA is nothing more than an EO/EM, Trump, as President, can null and void Obama's EO/EM. The lower courts need to learn how the government and Constitution work before they start bombarding with "decisions" they don't have the power to make.
The policy, an executive branch memorandum , was announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. The Memorandum was written by Morton and later revised by Jeh Johnson, head of Homeland Security. The Memo WAS NOT written by Obama.
What is hilarious to me is that NONE of the Dream/DACA Act proposals have been approved by Congress and signed into law by the President. Yet, the Dems are carrying on as though all those "laws" are, indeed, laws.
The DREAM bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, S. 1291 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times but has failed to pass .
In November 2014, President Obama announced his intention to expand DACA to cover additional illegal immigrants. Multiple states immediately sued to prevent the expansion which was ultimately blocked by an evenly divided Supreme Court. Under President Trump the United States Department of Homeland Security rescinded the expansion on June 16, 2017, while continuing to review the existence of the DACA program as a whole. Plans to phase out DACA were announced by the Trump Administration on September 5, 2017; implementation was put on hold for six months to allow Congress time to pass the Dream Act or some other legislative protection for Dreamers. Congress failed to act and the time extension expired on March 5, 2018, but the phase-out of DACA has been put on hold by several courts.
On August 31, 2018, District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA is likely unconstitutional . However, he let the program remain in place as litigation proceeds.
False. The Judiciary is a co-equal branch of government.
That's fucking hilarious. At least 26 states took the Obama Administration to court over DACA or DAPA. So it sure as hell looks like GOP governors beleive that the Judiciary, including the SCOTUS, is within it's 'power' to make rulings on Executive Orders.
No, it seems that you are. You said:
Then you state that:
Yet you admit that the SCOTUS did rule on the GOP trying to hammer it through the courts.
Not according to every court ruling to date. In FACT, if the SCOTUS thought that they didn't have jurisdiction, they would have said so.
You're kidding right? If the lower courts don't have jurisdiction, WTF gives you the idea that the SCOTUS does?
Where the hell do you think that the case that the SCOTUS reviews comes from if not from the record created in the lower courts. Sheesh, talk about not knowing how the government or the Constitution works...
Why is that hilarious to you 1st? That's how our laws are written. The Congress gives that heads of Agencies the responsibility of coming up with regulations to enact the mandates in legislation. The POTUS has the authority to direct the heads of Agencies.
Deferred deportation has been a part of immigration policy for many decades. How that policy is enacted has been tweaked by POTUS for just as long. How and why it's tweaked is rightly under scrutiny by the Congress and the Court.
Very recently, the Democrat-controlled House voted down a bill that included humanitarian aid that would not be used for barriers/fences/etc for the southern border. This is living proof that Pelosi and her Komrades don't care about border agents, US citizens/legal immigrants, AND the illegal aliens.
All these disgusting "statesmen/women" care about is stopping every possible "win" Trump could have to keep his promises to the American people.
Link to the bill?
I really wish you'd learn how to do your own research and leave me alone. Here's your starting point. You can look for anything else yourself.
How did you reach the conclusion that you can just make any statement you want and not be called out about it? You made the assertion and you have the burden of proof.
If you want to be left alone, stop posting bullshit.
Judging from the 'starting point' you posted, there was NO BILL and your post was fabricated bullshit.
Really? From The Hill's article:
Now, kindly find someone else to rag on. I'm not interested.
Quite possible, but not the Disaster Relief Bill...
You are confusing two separate actions.
The June 7th Hill article reflects the Senate's efforts to include additional funding for HHS in the disaster relief Bill. (There was no vote by the Dems or anyone else on the HHS issues, it was withdrawn due to multiple objections )
The House passed the Bill ( 354-58 ) on June 3, 2019 .
The Senate passed the Bill on May 23, 2019 .
One wonders if the Hill realized thatthe Bill has been sent to the President already.
One wonders if the President realizes that either.
Well gee Jasper, you said:
Now you insist that I accept as proof of your bullshit comment, a bill that DID NOT include "humanitarian aid", merely because a paragraph in an article has the word bill in it.
The Democrat-controlled House NEVER voted down a bill that included humanitarian aid for the southern border because NO SUCH bill came to the House floor.
Oh and BTFW, since the GOP had their hair on fire, how about you link the bill they filed to supplement the HHS budget that they claim is in desperate need?
Like I said, if you want to be left alone, stop posting bullshit.
Or---maybe these 'folk' should've ignored the anti-vaxxer crowd?
Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that there currently no vaccines for scabies, lice, and the common cold? Perhaps you're also unaware that the TB vaccine has a very low efficiency rate.
Call immigrant detention centers what they really are: concentration camps
If you were paying close attention last week, you might have spotted a pattern in the news. Peeking out from behind the breathless coverage of the Trump family’s tuxedoed trip to London was a spate of deaths of immigrants in U.S. custody: Johana Medina Léon, a 25-year-old transgender asylum seeker; an unnamed 33-year-old Salvadoran man; and a 40-year-old woman from Honduras.
Photos from a Border Patrol processing center in El Paso showed people herded so tightly into cells that they had to stand on toilets to breathe. Memos surfaced by journalist Ken Klippenstein revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s failure to provide medical care was responsible for suicides and other deaths of detainees. These followed another report that showed that thousands of detainees are being brutally held in isolation cells just for being transgender or mentally ill.
Also last week, the Trump administration cut funding for classes, recreation and legal aid at detention centers holding minors — which were likened to “summer camps” by a senior ICE official last year. And there was the revelation that months after being torn from their parents’ arms, 37 children were locked in vans for up to 39 hours in the parking lot of a detention center outside Port Isabel, Texas. In the last year, at least seven migrant children have died in federal custody.
When a leader puts people in camps to stay in power, history shows that he doesn’t usually stop with the first group he detains.
Preventing mass outrage at a system like this takes work. Certainly it helps that the news media covers these horrors intermittently rather than as snowballing proof of a racist, lawless administration. But most of all, authorities prevail when the places where people are being tortured and left to die stay hidden, misleadingly named and far from prying eyes.
The goal of concentration camps has always been to be ignored. The German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt, who was imprisoned by the Gestapo and interned in a French camp, wrote a few years afterward about the different levels of concentration camps. Extermination camps were the most extreme; others were just about getting “undesirable elements … out of the way.” All had one thing in common: “The human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead.”
Euphemisms play a big role in that forgetting. The term “concentration camp” is itself a euphemism. It was invented by a Spanish official to paper over his relocation of millions of rural families into squalid garrison towns where they would starve during Cuba’s 1895 independence war. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans into prisons during World War II, he initially called them concentration camps. Americans ended up using more benign names, like “Manzanar Relocation Center.”
Even the Nazis’ camps started out small, housing criminals, Communists and opponents of the regime. It took five years to begin the mass detention of Jews. It took eight, and the outbreak of a world war, for the first extermination camps to open. Even then, the Nazis had to keep lying to distract attention, claiming Jews were merely being resettled to remote work sites. That’s what the famous signs — Arbeit Macht Frei , or “Work Sets You Free” — were about.
Subterfuge doesn’t always work. A year ago, Americans accidentally became aware that the Trump administration had adopted (and lied about) a policy of ripping families apart at the border. The flurry of attention was thanks to the viral conflation of two separate but related stories: the family-separation order and bureaucrats’ admission that they’d been unable to locate thousands of migrant children who’d been placed with sponsors after crossing the border alone.
Trump shoved that easily down the memory hole. He dragged his heels a bit, then agreed to a new policy: throwing whole families into camps together. Political reporters posed irrelevant questions, like whether President Obama had been just as bad, and what it meant for the midterms. Then they moved on.
It is important to note that Trump’s aides have built this system of racist terror on something that has existed for a long time. Several camps opened under Obama, and as president he deported millions of people .
But Trump’s game is different. It certainly isn’t about negotiating immigration reform with Congress. Trump has made it clear that he wants to stifle all non-white immigration, period . His mass arrests, iceboxes and dog cages are part of an explicitly nationalist project to put the country under the control of the right kind of white people.
As a Republican National Committee report noted in 2013: “The nation’s demographic changes add to the urgency of recognizing how precarious our position has become.” The Trump administration’s attempt to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census was also just revealed to have been a plot to disadvantage political opponents and boost “Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites” all along.
That’s why this isn’t just a crisis facing immigrants. When a leader puts people in camps to stay in power, history shows that he doesn’t usually stop with the first group he detains.
There are now at least 48,000 people detained in ICE facilities, which a former official told BuzzFeed News “ could swell indefinitely .” Customs and Border Protection officials apprehended more than 144,000 people on the Southwest border last month. (The New York Times dutifully reported this as evidence of a “dramatic surge in border crossings,” rather than what it was: The administration using its own surge of arrests to justify the rest of its policies.)
Maybe Trump’s concentration camps will be the first thing we think of when we see him scowling on TV.
The only other option is to leave it up to those in power to decide what’s next. That’s a calculated risk. As Andrea Pitzer, author of “One Long Night,” one of the most comprehensive books on the history of concentration camps, recently noted: “Every country has said their camps are humane and will be different. Trump is instinctively an authoritarian. He'll take them as far as he’s allowed to.”
Jonathan M. Katz is a journalist and national fellow at New America. This column was adapted from his newsletter, The Long Version , available at katz.substack.com
Try talking the topic Tessy - any more comments comparing what's occurring right now with the wartime Gestapo will be blocked and possibly deleted.
Think we've gone far enough with this thread. Thanks to all of you who actually discussed it and added new perspective to a very serious situation.