Donald J. Trump attempts to totally dominate the media. This pursuit is reflective of his naked narcissism, his anxiety at his legal jeopardy and most significantly his need to have a megaphone for his policies in his re election campaign. His central thesis is to change America’s liberal democratic political system into an authoritarian nationalistic militaristic and racist entity. To reinforce his leadership role in this undertaking The Donald will sink to any low including enabling cruelty on children.
Trump’s “Salute to America” on Independence Day, with its “uplifting vision”, was sacrilegious and the height of cynicism. His pious “patriotic” message coincided with his callous indifference to the plight of the innocents and vulnerable in the detention centers. Their plight has been brought into focus by damning evidence from pediatricians and a recent sixteen page report from the Inspector General of his own Department of Homeland Affairs. In the latter the border situation has been likened to a “time bomb” due to the inhumane conditions the detainees and especially “the minors” are laboring under.
TRUMP’S GRAND PLAN INCLUDES CHILD ABUSE?
The POTUS has many initiatives to effect his overall game plan, including attacking the Judicial system and institutions, ostentatiously ignoring Congress, appointing an Attorney General who acts like a third world lackey in using the law to perform his boss’s bidding, and executing an array of maneuvers to keep America white. The battleground for the latter effort is the Southern Border where the growing number of desperate amnesty seekers have amassed.
Trump has exacerbated the refugee problem which has festered for decades as opposed to creating a climate for a comprehensive solution to immigration. The hazardous trip across Central America has been magnified by anarchy and crime. He has gambled that by allowing cruel and oppressive treatment of the refugees his actions will bolster his strong man image.
The crisp point is that Donald Trump must believe that cruelty is a winning strategy. In response to the oppressive and cruel conditions at the border he glibly maintains with his customary conviction, that it is the fault of the Democrats. His bland disinterest in this catastrophe forced a questioning news anchor, Chuck Todd, to scream at the President of the USA ,“DO SOMETHING!”. Todd stopped short of accusing Trump of enabling child abuse.
THE UNFOLDING OF TRUMP’S POLICIES ON IMMIGRANTS THAT ARE NOT WHITE
Immigrants who are not white have been central to the Trump initiative to “Make America Great Again”. The Donald announced his candidature for Presidency by defaming Mexicans as criminals, gang members and rapists. This racism was preceded by a years long birther smear of President Obama which was code for maintaining the President of America did not belong in America. His wholesale attack on Muslims even entering the country was a theme he returned to again and again on his road to the Presidency.
Donald Trump does not pretend to be nuanced. He believes that the forty year old chaotic lack of Immigration policy can be exploited to his advantage. While everybody agrees that America cannot let the whole of South America into the Republic, the question is whether society is prepared to abandon every value that they have ever aspired to in order to resolve this crisis. The fact that the outcome of the centerpiece of his immigration policy is in the garbage bin, namely that Mexico would pay for a beautiful wall, does not fuzz the POTUS. He now is upping the ante in outlandishness by enabling cruelty at the border.
Trump recently added three additions to his immigration policy of facilitating “cruelty and illegality” at the border. He would conduct raids on millions of “illegal immigrant families”, throw out the “illegal families” of members of the armed forces and withdraw translators from the border court hearings.
THE NARRATIVE CHANGES WITH OBJECTIVE REPORTS FROM HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION AND INDEPENDENT PEDIATRICIANS
The most crushing condemnation of conditions at the detention centers emanated from Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Their central thesis supported the allegation that cruelty and the breaking of the law was a feature of the treatment meted out to the detainees. In addition there have been the heartbreaking analyses of the mistreatment of children by independent pediatricians.
Of course there have been months of media and politicians’ reportage of children separated from their parents in detention centers which have been labelled “concentration camps”. In addition there have been deaths of children in custody. The Trump Administration in spite of being instructed by the courts to reunite families has stated that they are unable to do so. In a recent Federal Court Case the Judge impressed incredulity when those representing the Government refused to concede that soap, toothpaste and washing were basic human needs.
The narratives on the overcrowded unsanitary “cages”, where children are being detained like cattle was alleged by the Democrat Members of Congress, whose criticisms were smeared as political. They described the unsavory circumstances of all detainees including women who were forced to drink latrine water. The unhealthiness and the monotony of the meals had been a common complaint related to the legislators. The Congresspeople battled to obtain access and to this day are unable to take pictures of what they see.
As knowledge of the crowded cages leaked, then echoed by visiting pediatricians and in an official Inspector General Report from Homeland Security, the public outcry has become louder and louder.
After months of report after report detailing the inhumane and dangerous circumstances of the detainees, the POTUS tweeted that “…. many of the immigrants are living in far better circumstances than where they came form and in far safer conditions…”
VISITS BY PEDIATRICIANS TO THE “CAGES” WHERE CHILDREN ARE HELD
The incoming President of the American Academy of Pediatricians claimed that as she walked into the overcapacity cages what immediately struck her was the stench of feces, urine and sweat emanating from the hordes of children lying on concrete floors. They were covered with crinkled aluminum paper. She noted that a baby was being fed from an unwashed bottle. The children were fearful and withdrawn obviously suffering from psychological trauma.
A local pediatrician, Dr. Dolly Servier who visited a detention center which like all others was filled with distrusting humanity and numbers way above the limit deemed to be safe. She tersely proclaimed that the thousands of children are legally only allowed to be detained for seventy - two hours but that this law was being flagrantly disobeyed.
Dr. Servier observed a seventeen year old who had to fashion clothes for a four month old baby with two diapers. Her task was made all the more challenging by the babies’s persistent diarrhea. She recorded that a fifteen month old was drinking out of the same dirty bottle that he had been using for days. She attempted to involve the children by giving them Mickey Mouse toys to play with. When she took them away there was no resistance which sign is an indication of trauma of one or other sort. She summed up the situation by diagnosing malnutrition, illness and trauma. Signs of illness in children are sometimes difficult to detect necessitating the need for trained medical care, Dr. Servier warned.
Another group of pediatricians who were managing young children who had been finally released assessed their drawings of their experiences. Almost every impression was of children peering through wired cages.
A Trump statement - “Border officials are not hospital workers, doctors or nurses”.
INSPECTOR GENERAL OF HOMELAND SECURITY’S REPORT ON OVERCROWDING AND LONGTERM DETENTION AT BORDER FACILITIES.
As a result of the Administrative abuses in the Watergate era an Act was passed for independent overseers to be appointed to certain Departments. Amendments to this provision were unanimously updated in Congress in 2002.
The current Acting Head of the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security is Ms. Jennifer Costello. The latter previously had investigated on behalf of the taxpayers a host of matters involving fraud and deception of the public. She is a certified fraud examiner. It was under her aegis that a damning sixteen page report was released on conditions in the Government detention centers in Texas.
The “Family Section” of the report indicates that thirty - seven thousand families were apprehended between October 2017 and May 2018. That number increased by two hundred and seventy percent in the same period a year later. Ms Costello relates, while there was no evidence that the untenable situation was as a direct result of intentional actions, very little if anything had been done to ameliorate the subhuman environment.
The Inspector General communique contained a slew of photographs that illustrated the conditions as they have been described by all and sundry. Ms. Costello warned that the situation was “a time bomb… the overcrowding and prolonged detention represent an immediate risk to the health and safety of DHS officers and agents and to those detained”.
Illustrative of the Inspector General's narrative were statements such as that there was squalid conditions, minors going without hot meals for days and detainees begging not to be returned to their cells. Three of the five facilities had no showers for the children. Most of those detained had been given only cleaning wipes. Migrants reported that they were force fed on bologna sandwiches which caused constipation severe enough to require medical intervention.
In addition there were more than two thousand five hundred unaccompanied minors who had been held, against the law, for more than seventy - two hours. Adults were not supposed to be held in custody for more than twenty days, which law was ignored.
There are sixteen pages of this nauseating shameful report which is on line for those who require more details of the inhumane conditions under which these asylum seekers are suffering.
Another Trump statement that followed the report is indicative of his purposeful neglect of the situation and is again probative of his desire to exploit this situation for political purposes - “If illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built detention centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved”.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
While Trump highjacked the normally apolitical Independence Day Celebrations, with his tanks and talk of Make America Great Again, juxtaposed was a violation of human rights being perpetuated by the United States which ranks worse than the detention of Japanese Americans during World War Two.
The “Immigration Problem” has been festering for decades and no one can sanction the current laws. The uncertainty of the eleven million undocumented persons in America as well as what should be enacted with regard to future immigration needs to be urgently addressed. Trump’s response to this existential problem is to cruelly exacerbate a humanity crisis on the border in the belief that it will bolster his re election.
All those contemplating to reelect Trump should be mindful of the fact that they he is someone who sanctions cruelty to children. As for the Republican Congresspeople they are not only complicit they are enabling this infamy. They will have to answer to history.
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