I’ve been blogging (here, here, and here) on the recent revelations of abusive conditions at U.S. immigrant detention centers for families. In many cases, ICE has been treating immigrants — whom they’ve not charged and many of whom, it seems, are asylum seekers — like convicted prisoners, according to a report released by The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. The treatment of kids seems particularly problematic.
Perhaps even more shocking is the story of an Iranian couple and their 9-year-old, Canadian-born son who endured torture in Iran and escaped only to end up in one of these centers after the airplane they were on from Guyana to Canada landed in Puerto Rico because of a medical emergency. Democracy Now! radio interviewed the family. It’s fucking heartbreaking — the kid has asthma and is sleeping next to a toilet. He and the mother are sick.
ICE is acting like The Others on Lost: You crash by accident on our island, so we kidnap your children and put you in cage. And we do this to people trying to escape the country our government considers Public Enemy Number 1? People persecuted by Holocaust deniers and nuclear aggressors? Does that mean this is the high end way we treat immigrants?
At Democracy Now! you can listen to and read today’s show, which tackles the family detention centers, interviews the Iranian family, and does a piece on NYU’s "hunt the illegal" game.
Just wanted to keep y’all informed.