cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42834907

“The reason we’re here is because the government of the United States wants you to leave the United States,” Judge Ubaid ul-Haq, presiding from a courtroom on Varick Street, told a group of about a dozen children on a recent morning on Webex.

The parties included a 7-year-old boy, wearing a shirt emblazoned with a pizza cartoon, who spun a toy windmill while the judge spoke. There was an 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old sister, in a tie-dye shirt, who squeezed a pink plushy toy and stuffed it into her sleeve. None of the children were accompanied by parents or attorneys, only shelter workers who helped them log on to the hearing.

Immigrant advocates and lawyers say an increasing number of migrant children are making immigration court appearances without the assistance of attorneys, which they say will lead to more children getting deported.

“That child will be ordered deported from this country — that could all happen without that child ever speaking with an attorney and given the opportunity to obtain representation,” Shah said. “The cruelty is really apparent to all of us out here in the field.”

holy shit

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    If the parents are being deported anyway, why don’t they let their children go with them?

    Key part missing from article is what happened to their parents. Presumably, if prosecution is honest, the kids were in fact not born here, and so are not citizens by birthright. Cruelty and unfairness as a point, does not make facts relevant. Were parents abducted without opportunity to take their children? If no due process, or even DOJ intervention in cases, then its not the jack booted thug ordered to send a parent to a death camp, that will pause the order to go pick up the kids from school, not that the parents would want kids in the death camp.

    Story is horrible. Maybe the answer to what happened to parents would make it seem less horrible on US fascism angle. Maybe the fascism is so intense that no one is told what happened to the parents.

    • ulterno@programming.dev
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      3 hours ago

      Story is horrible. Maybe the answer to what happened to parents would make it seem less horrible on US fascism angle. Maybe the fascism is so intense that no one is told what happened to the parents.

      For now, I am really just going to assume that those were previously caught by ICE, due to the relevance to previous news.

      Because, normally (stuff like death) you would have some legalese to get another guardian for the kid, which would then be available for the court proceedings and not have this happening.

      The current resolutions as I see (from just the article though), seem to be more like - the children were staying with people, not very committed to keeping them and were initially hoping this to be a temporary measure until the parents “came back” (which never happened).
      And now the children are having different sponsors (that read weird). What happens when the govt. goes around picking ppl out of those sponsors?

    • ulterno@programming.dev
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      3 hours ago

      At this point, I don’t think we need to care about where those people were born.

      The government has decided to harass the people and if another government can come and say, “We will provide you ‘work that pays’ and a ‘space to live’.”, a lot of those people would be willing to go through the temporary strain of going to another country and adjusting.

      And if the US govt. is willing to say ‘NO’ to the offer and torture the people, well, Putin might be shitting too much, but is still a politician and I don’t see him letting go of the opportunity to band with UK (and the rest of the world), to go against the US this time.


      One holocaust is enough for history. At least wait for the civilisation to (inevitably) forget the previous one, before creating another.