The shame of America’s family detention camps
By Wil S. Hylton, New York Times
Christina Brown pulled into the refugee camp after an eight-hour drive across the desert. It was late July of last year, and Brown was a 30-year-old immigration lawyer. She had spent a few years after college working on political campaigns, but her law degree was barely a year old, and she had only two clients in her private practice in Denver. When other lawyers told her that the federal government was opening a massive detention center for immigrants in southeastern New Mexico, where hundreds of women and children would be housed in metal trailers surrounded by barbed wire, Brown decided to volunteer legal services to the detainees. She wasn’t sure exactly what rights they might have, but she wanted to make sure they got them. She packed enough clothes to last a week, stopped by Target to pick up coloring books and toys and started driving south.
As she pulled into the dusty town of Artesia, she realized that she still had no idea what to expect. The new detention center was just north of town, behind a guard station in a sprawling complex with restricted access. Two other volunteers had been in town for about a week and had permission from federal officials to access the compound the following day.
Brown spent the night at a motel, then drove to the detention camp in the morning. She stood in the wind-swept parking lot with the other lawyers, overlooking the barren plains of the eastern plateau. After a few minutes, a transport van emerged from the facility to pick them up. It swung to a stop in the parking lot, and the attorneys filed on. They sat on the cold metal benches and stared through the caged windows as the bus rolled back into the compound and across the bleak brown landscape. It came to a stop by a small trailer, and the lawyers shuffled out.
As they opened the door to the trailer, Brown felt a blast of cold air. The front room was empty except for two small desks arranged near the center. A door in the back opened to reveal dozens of young women and children huddled together. Many were gaunt and malnourished, with dark circles under their eyes. “The kids were really sick,” Brown told me later. “A lot of the moms were holding them in their arms, even the older kids — holding them like babies, and they’re screaming and crying, and some of them are lying there listlessly.”
Brown took a seat at a desk, and a guard brought a woman to meet her. Brown asked the woman in Spanish how she ended up in detention. The woman explained that she had to escape from her home in El Salvador when gangs targeted her family. “Her husband had just been murdered, and she and her kids found his body,” Brown recalls. “After he was murdered, the gang started coming after her and threatening to kill her.” Brown agreed to help the woman apply for political asylum in the United States, explaining that it might be possible to pay a small bond and then live with friends or relatives while she waited for an asylum hearing. When the woman returned to the back room, Brown met with another, who was fleeing gangs in Guatemala. Then she met another young woman, who fled violence in Honduras. “They were all just breaking down,” Brown said. “They were telling us that they were afraid to go home. They were crying, saying they were scared for themselves and their children. It was a constant refrain: ‘I’ll die if I go back.’ ”
As Brown emerged from the trailer that evening, she already knew it would be difficult to leave at the end of the week. The women she met were just a fraction of those inside the camp, and the government was making plans to open a second facility of nearly the same size in Karnes County, Tex., near San Antonio. “I remember thinking to myself that this was an impossible situation,” she said. “I was overwhelmed and sad and angry. I think the anger is what kept me going.”
Over the past six years, President Obama has tried to make children the centerpiece of his efforts to put a gentler face on U.S. immigration policy. Even as his administration has deported a record number of unauthorized immigrants, surpassing two million deportations last year, it has pushed for greater leniency toward undocumented children. After trying and failing to pass the Dream Act legislation, which would offer a path to permanent residency for immigrants who arrived before the age of 16, the president announced an executive action in 2012 to block their deportation. Last November, Obama added an executive order to extend those protections to their parents. “We’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security,” he said in a speech on Nov. 20. “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.” But the president’s new policies apply only to immigrants who have been in the United States for more than five years; they do nothing to address the emerging crisis on the border today.
Since the economic collapse of 2008, the number of undocumented immigrants coming from Mexico has plunged, while a surge of violence in Central America has brought a wave of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. According to recent statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, the number of refugees fleeing Central America has doubled in the past year alone — with more than 61,000 “family units” crossing the U.S. border, as well as 51,000 unaccompanied children. For the first time, more people are coming to the United States from those countries than from Mexico, and they are coming not just for opportunity but for survival.
Manzanar redux. When are Americans, supposed lovers of the freedom and rights of humans above all other considerations, going to realize that our country, for all its specialness, is gradually (or some might say, rapidly) moving away from our own principles?
This is just sad. We allow all these people to come here thinking that they’ll have a great life then lock them up in detention camps. It would be better for everyone if we would just turn them back at the border and not allow them come here in the first place.
Internment camps for Asians at the beginning of WW II, Why?, because they looked like the enemy. Now Detention Camps for Hispanics coming to look for a safe place to live and work and raise a family.An evergrowing prison population filled with blacks for the crime of being black.
Bombing the hell out of countries based on false information.Killing untold millions of innocent people.
What’s next? Start killing each other? Oh wait, we’re already doing that! If we don’t kill you we put you behind bars, or razor wire, or dank and filthy buildings with armed guards.
What a great country! No wonder an ever growing number of people hate America.
Peace(I wish) Old Long Skiis
If you swallow this c**p you deserve the taste.
Goebbels is alive and well holed up at the Democratic Hq.
Suspect anything coming from the NYT. It is a propaganda outlet for the far left and their desire to bring the USA down, way down.
Beagle is correct all liberals should go to the border and see the crime first hand and then report back, and it should be added that the Democrats during WWII locked up people from several countries and also had prisoner of war camps and all were treated far better than the prisoner of war camps and the murders of our troops at the hands of the enemies. In this case if people weren’t trying to ILLEGALLY enter this country in VIOLATION of our laws, they wouldn’t need to be detained for deportation on the taxpayers dime, these are acts in violation of the law, the law we have had for a century or more requiring legal entries to be screened and which liberals don’t like because of their misguided and dangerous “feelings” and because of this we have the most lawless administration in history encouraging illegal immigration into this country with huge promises of all the free stuff they can have which is bankrupting the country and is an insult to legal immigrants that have waited years to legally enter and see that by following the law they are bypassed for potential new liberal voters and this is encouraged by an illegal executive order in clear violation of the law on top of it. In their own countries illegally entering could be a life sentence or firing squad, yet this country won’t even enforce the law or secure the border knowing a vast majority of legal citizens demand it and knowing that allowing the border to be unsecure a huge amount of crimes, murders, and drug smuggling will continue.
Justice and Beagle, Because there are so many Americans who hate people different than themselves maybe you guys are onto something.
Look how well we treated the native indians or anyone from a foreign country?
Lock them up in “camps”?, “reservations”? or taken back to their home country so they can live a poor life trying to survive?
So let only blue eyed, blond aryans live in the country we invaded and stole from the original inhabitants.
There was a guy that lived in Germany that would be REAL proud of you!
That’s the “American Way”! OLS
“…we have the most lawless administration in history…”
What the !$#%^^ are you talking about?!?! Buddy you are SERIOUSLY unhinged.
OLS: Great job introducing racism into this thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VBAEJlR4pk
Maybe we should let all Mexicans come here, then we can go take over Mexico, and live peacefully there, at least until they start coming back again…
?!?: I see OLS just pointed out the usual musings of Justice and Legal Beagle. It’s nice you found a video on you tube to contradict reality, gotta love the internet.
Let the racism B.S. begin! Thanks OLS. No one is suggesting that we should prevent hardworking Mexican families LEGALLY entering this country for any reason. Some of them have excellent work ethics, much better than all of us. The problem is that the vast majority of Mexican immigrants are villains and drug addicts, who enter this country ILLEGALLY, and mooch off the system while committing crimes and harming our country. Wanting to keep these guys out is not racism, it is saving ourselves from destruction.
Bigfishy: If you can’t prove what you say, just shut up. “Musings of Justice and Legal Beagle?” Seems like they’re the only ones facing reality here!
At least OLS knows the definition of racism.
Everyone knows Just@ss is a bigoted racist.
Beagle still brings up Nazi’s; must have a fetish.
Of course Humm has no actual evidence to support his rant of “lawless.”
?!?: I have better things to do then put up with your nonsense. My Aunt was in a concentration camp for being italian during the 2nd world war. My college professors parents were in one also, for being Japaneese. It’s plain wrong, just like you saying most Mexican immigrants are villains and drug addicts. I guess you just assert your nasty views here. BTW, I’ll say whatever I want, you can tell me to “shut up” but you’re still wrong and a huge racist yourself. Nice debate, NOT!
Here’s a fact, this statement is your opinion ” the vast majority of Mexican immigrants are villains and drug addicts,” That’s a racist opinion.
Okay everyone, I didn’t meen to roil the pot as it were, in reference to our terrible history of racism. I was just callin’ it like I see it. You all are welcome to do the same and comment on my observations as well.
Should I get out my big ladle and stir the pot a little more?
Equal pay for equal work for women. How about paying a living wage for entry level positions? How about cutting back on our military budget and use that money to rebuild infra structure, crumbling roads, dams and bridges.
How about getting big money out of politics so the politicians actually listen to the majority that voted them into office and not the large corporations and the 1% of the wealthiest people in the world?
How about really taking a serious look at our enviournment and human caused climate change?
Rather than bombs and drone strikes, lets try diplomacy.
Lot’s more I could add but that will do it for now. OLS
Rocks4brains is at it again, He forgot the Dems locked up people in camps during WWII who were US citizens and were innocent and the usual senseless empty brainless babbling trying to find a liberal talking point when there is nothing but failure, scandal, and law breaking and two massive election defeats for his dethroned hero Hussein who is inviting people to break the law and invade the country in violation of our laws which is as smart as telling ISIS the US will not use troops to stop them or telling Iran we trust them not to build a bomb.
Bigfishy: We’re talking about now, not WWII. How am I a racist? Calling most illegal Mexicans villains and drug addicts is not racism. It is calling them what they are. To say otherwise would be dishonest. Anyone with common sense can figure that out. You really do have the brains of a fishy. If you had such “better things to do,” you wouldn’t be commenting on this forum.
Equal pay for women??? That’s just a made-up story by selfish women who want to outdo men. If women really made less money for the same work, wouldn’t employers immediately lay off all male employees?
?!?, Unequal pay for women is real! Unfair treatment of women is real in the home, relationships and in the workplace! Sexual harrassment is real! There are alot of abusive men, businesses and large corporations who treat women as second class citizens!
I”ve seen the abuse of women in the workplace and in relationships for along time. IT AINT MADE UP!!! OLS
OLS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc
Admin: It looks like I can’t comment on this article anymore. What’s up?
Ignore the last post. Damn computer!
OLS, how long have you been a racist? You protest way, way too much and probably dislike yourself. Sorry.
As far as equal pay, check out the great differences in pay for men and women for equal work at STPUD, City of SLT, and LTUSD. This should be easy for you.
Your lefty liberal play book of nonsense must be getting pretty thread worn as it is your only source of info except maybe for Brian Williams.
Bigfishy1, your relatives were in detention camps or if you will prison.
There they were shot, gassed, worked to death, starved, froze, medically experimented on, and generally brutalized. NOT. Don’t ever soil yourself again comparing concentration camps to detention centers. You are pathetic but maybe there is hope if only you will learn history.
Maybe a trip to Auschwitz or Bergan-Belsen or Dachau will open your eyes and brain to the truth.
Ahhh, the bigoted, racist trolls think they will get the last word on this. Good luck with that….
Legal Beagle, I’m not a racist. Far from it! I was making fun of you and Justice for your comments.. Oh well, I know sarcasm does’nt work well on the internet.
You see, I was making fun of you…not agreeing with you and your hatered of others.
Put on the white hooded sheet or neo nazi uniform and move to where like minded people congregrate. OLS
Ols, I saw your sarcasm and knew the real r&b club would take the bait. What humans we have that reply on these sites…
my bulbs are peaking up, too soon…
Nature I have something for your mental prowess to process.
“I am rubber you are glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.”
Goes for you also OLS.
About the bouncing off? ,That made my day ,lol
Hey Beagle,
I never compared the internment camps to concentration camps. You’re right though, there is a huge difference, and I should have called them something else than concentration camp. These people lost their homes, their lively hoods and friends.
However, it’s still unacceptable to imprison someone because of their race. I know the history, I don’t need some two bit blow hards opinion to try and sway me or act like they are right because they have a little bit of limited information. Just like I am not going to convince you and others here to have compassion for other people who don’t look or talk like you.
Bottom line is we should be helping these poor people improve their lives, which in turn would make the world a better place.
We are not imprisoning them because of their race. They are being imprisoned because they tried to come here illegally. If these people would only enter this country LEGALLY there would be no problem. I agree with Bigfishy that we should try to help these people improve their lives, but we can’t just let this country fall apart while we fish the rest of the world out of the toilet. Plus, a lot of these people’s problems are self imposed. If only they would stop getting involved in gang and drug activity…
bigfishy1,
Thanks for admitting you are wrong.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt thought for many reasons it would be better for all concerned that the 30,000 non-citizen Japanese and the 30,000 Americans of Japanese descent (approximate numbers) to be locked up for most of WW11. After Pearl Harbor a heck of lot of Americans were looking to do physical harm to people that reminded them of the Japanese war machine. Too many Americans of German descent (over 25% of the population, about 30 million) to lock them up.
BTW, did you know many German prisoners of war were treated better than Americans of African heritage during WW11. (Learned that one in my high school English literature book.)
Injustices are never right by definition, but knowing history helps explain why some are more acceptable than others.
Just@ss. Yes, everyone knows that President Roosevelt started the Japanese Internment Camps after Pearl Harbor. However, it was President Carter that started the investigation of the Internment Camps and it was President Reagan that apologized for the race based prejudice and authorized payment of $20,000 to Camp survivors.
President Obama WON two elections as well with a combined 135.4 million votes.