Tom Jawetz Profile picture
Jun 26, 2018 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
I have been digging around to try to better explain what the Flores Settlement is all about.

Yesterday I stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks.

#FamiliesBelongTogether /1
Jenny Lisette Flores, 15, fled civil war in El Salvador In 1985. When she was apprehended at the US-Mexico border she was held for months in an #immigration detention facility together with unrelated adults. /2

nbcnews.com/storyline/immi…
During litigation the government conceded that conditions were "deplorable." Kids were jailed together with unrelated adults in facilities ringed with barbed-wire. They had little to no education, recreation, or visitation. This lasted months or longer. /3 supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/…
Like other detained kids, Jenny Flores was also routinely strip searched.

In 1988, a federal judge ruled in favor of the kids and ordered the INS to stop doing that.

This 30-year-old passage from the opinion is stunning. /4

clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/…
Read that language again. The INS's position was that the 4th Amendment rights of these children weren't violated by regular strip searches and body cavity searches because their lives in Central America were so rough they couldn't have expected to be treated better here. /5
The court rejected that argument.

Instead the court accepted that these kids may not have expected better treatment back home, in the countries they fled.

But they came to #America precisely because they hoped for better.

They expected better.

They deserved better. /6
We want the world to expect more from us. To be Reagan's shining city on a hill.

But what message are we sending the world right now? With the #MuslimBan? #FamilySeparation?

When will #ThisIsAmerica be trending because we are standing by positive values that make us proud? /7

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More from @TomJawetz

Jun 25, 2018
THREAD: I've been going hard at @RepCurbelo and @RepJeffDenham for working with Trump and Stephen Miller to write a bill that eviscerates our asylum laws and would detain kids for months or years. #FamiliesBelongTogether

I want to walk you through what this bill does. /1
This is the bill they wrote behind closed doors. Curbelo and Denham got to be original cosponsors of this bill in exchange for turning their backs on #Dreamers and abandoning an effort that would have brought bipartisan immigration bills to the Floor today. /2
See how they strike clause (iii)? This is the part of their bill that says Border Patrol can remove unaccompanied children from the country--without ever seeing a judge, lawyer, etc.--even if the kids do not have the capacity to understand that they are agreeing to be removed. /3
Read 17 tweets
Jun 21, 2018
As always, @DLind's analysis is spot-on.

The EO is a vision statement: a view into the mass incarceration world the Trump administration wants to set up for families requesting asylum.

The thing is, it's got big problems. /1 #KeepFamiliesTogether vox.com/2018/6/20/1748…
First, it's a horrible, cruel vision. Detaining children causes lasting physical, mental and emotional harm. It fundamentally disrupts the parent-child relationship. It's just more state-sanctioned child abuse. /2
Second, the EO caveats the policy of jailing families together for the duration of proceedings (months? years?) in a way that it doesn't caveat the continued "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting parents. So by its terms it doesn't even claim to end separation. /3
Read 19 tweets
May 10, 2018
Over the past 6 months we've read several stories about people within the administration who pushed to extend Temporary Protected Status for about 300,000 immigrants who have lived and worked her lawfully for years, most nearly 2 decades. /1
In November, Breitbart reported that Jim Nealon--who worked with John Kelly at US Southern Command, served as the US Ambassador to Honduras, and was later appointed by Kelly to a DHS position--explained how ending TPS wouldn't be in the best interests of Honduras or the US. /2
It was surprising that Breitbart ran the piece, because while they intended for it to be a hit piece it really just highlighted that a person with incredible substantive expertise in the region knew what a spectacularly bad idea it would be to end TPS. /3 breitbart.com/big-government…
Read 15 tweets
Apr 7, 2018
BREAKING: Another Friday evening special, this time apparently calling for mass, prolonged detention of asylum seekers in military facilities. /1 thehill.com/homenews/admin…
Let's recap the president's #tantrump over the past few days to getting completely rolled by Congress in his amateurish request for money to build a "big, beautiful wall." /2
First: Trump is now calling up the National Guard, without any plan whatever, so he can look super tough even though there's--literally--nothing for them to do on the southwest border. /3
Read 13 tweets

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