Link to original article: https://medium.com/@mikesjohnston/illegal-immigrants-and-donald-trump-the-truth-b124241b9f11
For the past week the biggest story in the media in the United States was regarding President Donald Trump’s policies about how Illegal Immigrants are treated after they cross our borer. The amount of controversy and outright hostility evidenced in some of the stories I saw online was unsettling. Yes, Illegal Immigrants are breaking the law by sneaking across the border into this country but many have good reason for doing it.
What we really need is an honest public discussion about the issue of Illegal Immigration, one that takes into account all of the many nuances it entails. This has not been done in the media. Instead, everyone seems to rush to print the most scandalized version of every story that comes out of Washington. The blatant disregard for the truth when making charges gives new meaning to the term “Trumped up”.
The US Mexico Border — from PixaBay
This habit, pretty much what President Trump has been calling “Fake News” for some time now, was very plainly seen last week across social media and on the pages of real world and online news media. The case in point is several heart rending photos of small children who were seemingly in cages and crying. The media said these photos were examples of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy to illegal immigration. Time magazine showed a stylized cover on it’s magazine for the week that depicted a photoshop created image President Trump looking down on the crying girl from one one of the photos referenced in the previous paragraph.
It turned out (according to Snopes.com) that the girl in the photo had not been separated from her mother and that the photo had been misrepresented by Time and other major media who used it to illustrate the point they were trying to convey. Snopes includes this debunking statement from the website The Daily Wire:
BOMBSHELL: Girl Never Separated At Border; Mom Paid Smuggler And Abandoned Family, Father Says
The father of the 2-year-old Honduran girl that became the face of the media’s recent attack on the Trump administration for its “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration says that she was never separated from her mother at the border and that the mother abandoned her three other children and paid a human smuggler thousands of dollars to illegally enter the United States, all against his wishes.
… Major national news publications ran with the image, noting that it was now the face of the campaign against the Trump administration’s immigration policy of separating families at the border even though this has been going on for years and is not new to his administration.
This photo and others served to galvanized the nation (or at least the liberal/progressive/moderate factions) into outrage against the President and his hard line immigration policy. In short order President Trump responded to the public/media outcry by signing an order to keep illegal immigrant families together.
This revelation as to the authenticity of the information associated with these images could not remove the news as it was reported for the previous several days. That perception will live on in the minds of many people. The rest of the world sees America through the lens of our media outlets and their own. They have to rely on these outlets for honesty and accuracy in their reporting just as we do. When the media seemingly deliberately mis-reports or outright fabricates evidence our society cannot endure as it is.
I want to get into the claims and counterclaims of the past week into some detail and to at least offer you, the reader, the tools to verify the facts associated with each point. This is the job of a news reporter.
The next image to add fuel to the fire was one of a little boy of around 4 years old behind a wire fence. He is crying and seems heartbroken. According to this story on USA Today the photo seems to have appeared first on twitter on the account of a self described filmmaker and journalist who did not provide a source. The image was soon being shared all over social media as a representation of the horrible conditions at the Trump child concentration camps.
The story at this link is to a story in which the publication found the original photo. According to their findings the photo was taken at a staged protest outside the courthouse in Dallas Texas. This article on Snopes.com has a second photo that shows the fence set up with sign holding kids behind it and the boy in the other photo running around outside the fence.
The last type of photo I want to mention was one of several that showed illegal immigrant children inside chain link fences. The kids are sometimes lying on thin, “jailhouse” style mattresses and covered with what look like army blankets or even silver, “space blankets”. The conditions seem bleak at best and not at all suitable for innocent children in America.
According to Snopes.com (link in above paragraph) this series of photographs too have nothing to do with current conditions. Instead they date from a surge in the number of illegal aliens entering the US that started in 2014 under President Obama and the temporary, chain link enclosures in processing facilities were implemented then.
Before diving into the policies of the Obama administration I would like to point out that there are, for all intents and purposes, two types of illegal children coming across the border; those that come with parents or relatives and those that come alone or with smugglers or other border crossers. The solo kids tend to be older, 10–18 while the smaller children like those in the much publicized photos tend to come with family.
In this story a detention center is described along with life in it. From the description it seems that the center was used to house both solo children and children who came with family (mothers). It goes back to the Obama era and describes his efforts to fast track deportation of kids and families back to Central America where the story said they faced dangers from a variety of sources. The site associated with the above page has a lot of resource links on the subject of illegal immigrant children.
In something of a counterstrike against the Trump oriented stories of the past week those on the Right circulated videos of both former President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocating the practice of returning illegal immigrant children to where they came from. I think we need to remember though that President Obama had implemented Deferred Action Programs like DACA that would let more immigrant children stay in the United States.
President Trump on the other hand is openly much more against allowing illegal immigrants of any age to stay in the US and is much more actively trying to stem the tide of illegal immigration by blocking new entries and deporting long time residents of the country. Here is a really good story on the difference between the Obama and Trump immigration policies which does not pull punches on the Obama administration for what amounted to laying the groundwork for what Trump is doing now.
What it comes down to is that the Trump administration has decided to more aggressively enforce the existing laws which make attempted entry into the United States a misdemeanor crime. This is as opposed to the Obama administration trying to treat them as civil cases and thereby not break up families. Now that we are treating illegal crossers as criminals we can no longer legally send any children they have with them to jail with the parents. This small, legal fact is the basis of all this media insanity and something that would be very easy to fix.
Does this mean that Trump’s Executive Order (you can read it at the link immediately preceding) to no longer separate families will result in a more seemingly humane way to handle the situation? The Order says that illegal immigrant families shall now be detained together unless doing so would seem to present a danger to the child/children in question.
It also directs Homeland Security to create the appropriate housing/detention facilities for family housing when none are already available. The order does not seem to make any provision for reuniting the reported 2,000 children that have already been separated from their families and this should be included as well. Is this any kind of solution to the illegal immigration problem? NO, but it brings the current administration more into line with what the majority of Americans would consider to be at least acceptable.
I think that this is a great opportunity for alternative news people and everyday citizens to add their voice and their observations via video. The immigrant children and families that are currently detained are said to be all over the country. Here is a map from The Washington Post which shows many of the locations along with describing them.
I looked up the one that lies within my home state of Pennsylvania. It is called the “Holy Family Institute” and seems to do more than just act as a holding facility for illegal immigrant children. In an article on their website they talk about what you can do to help them help the immigrant kids. Here they summarize their philosophy in dealing with illegal immigrant kids that have been separated from their parents;
In addition to the unaccompanied minors we recently welcomed the children separated from their parents at the border. We believe it is better for the children to be in a supportive, welcoming, loving environment until they can be reunited with their parents. We recognize that this is a complicated issue, however we cannot stand by and let these children live in less than optimal arrangements when we have beds, a trained, loving staff and a nurturing environment. We are helping the children in our care contact their family members.
At or near all of the locations that house illegal kids are average Americans like you and I who can take the time to drive by or stop at these facilities and get some video so all of the world can see the truth of how we treat illegal immigrants (good or bad). Maybe even lend a hand financially or otherwise. I figure that if enough people add their voices and images the truth will inevitably emerge.
What we need to do is look beyond the present for once. To see above the swirling mire of one “sky is falling” crisis after another and start to work toward a real, positive plan for the future. I think that we need to be more proactive in our North and South American neighborhood to try and work together with our neighbors to make sure that, in the future, life is good at home for all potential immigrants. Good enough so that they will not have to flee persecution, violence or seek a life they cannot have at home.
Right now China is doing a great deal to expand overland connectedness with the Belt and Road system of rail lines from China to Europe, the Middle East and even Africa. Here is how China envisions the future in their hemisphere with the One Belt, One Road system, shouldn’t we at least consider it as a model to strive for in ours?
The BRI is an umbrella initiative which covers a multitude of investment projects designed to promote the flow of goods, investment and people. The new connections fostered by the BRI could reconfigure relationships, reroute economic activity, and shift power within and between states. In March 2015, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs disseminated an action plan (issued by the National Development and Reform Commission) that fleshed out specific policy goals of the BRI. These included:
Improving intergovernmental communication to better align high-level government policies like economic development strategies and plans for regional cooperation.
Strengthening the coordination of infrastructure plans to better connect hard infrastructure networks like transportation systems and power grids.
Encouraging the development of soft infrastructure such as the signing of trade deals, aligning of regulatory standards, and improving financial integration.
Bolstering people-to-people connections by cultivating student, expert, and cultural exchanges and tourism.
END