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What Kind of Country Does This to Children? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-06
Punk.
That’s a word that’s fitting to use when describing Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar.
Why is he a punk? The way I see it anybody who bullies someone who can’t defend themselves is a punk – as well as a coward, -- and the tough-talking Homan doesn’t seem to have any trouble with using his authority to terrorize and intimidate migrant children.
Journalist Caitlin Dickerson has described Homan as the “intellectual father” of family separation. Now that’s a title no human with an ounce of empathy would want.
You see, if Homan was a real man he’d be doing what he could to protect these children. To shelter them as much as possible from any trauma that would be inflicted on them during the administration’s hate-filled crusade to rid our country of as many immigrants as possible.
What started out as cleansing our land of dangerous and undocumented criminals has steamrolled to getting rid of any immigrant that they can get their hands on, including legal ones, including children who are United States citizens.
It’s been said that with the administration of four-time indicted, twice-impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, wannabe fascist dictator, convicted felon, Russian puppet, mob boss, President Donald Trump the cruelty is the point.
It’s never more the point than with the moral bankruptcy with which it treats immigrants.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” I like animals but hell, look at the way these children are treated.
Let’s look at what they’re trying to do to the brown and black kids they despise so much.
Back in March, the Trump administration cut $200 million in funding for a program that provides legal representation to tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. A federal judge subsequently ordered the funding to be temporarily reinstated as the case makes its way through the court system.
Think about that. Taking legal representation away from immigrant children. What are they supposed to do, represent themselves?
Here’s what guys like Trump and Homan want them to do: Get the hell out of our country and go back to the hellhole you came from. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?
What does this look like? A story in April from The Gothamist, a New York City-focused blog owned and operated by New York Public Radio, described children younger than 10 years old sitting in front of computer screens in various shelters that allow them to virtually appear in court, where a judge explains to them about the legal proceeding they’re about to go through.
They have no parents or attorneys to support them, only shelter workers who helped them log on to the hearing, the story said. Unlike criminal court, people in immigration court aren’t guaranteed free legal counsel if their income is below the eligibility level. And even before Trump’s cuts not all children were represented by counsel.
“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,” the story said.
“How is a child supposed to navigate this?” asked Beth Krause, supervising attorney of the Immigrant Youth Project at the Legal Aid Society.
“The cruelty is really apparent to all of us out here in the field,” said Meena Shah, co-managing director of the Legal Services Center at the Door, a New York City-based nonprofit
Yes, it’s very apparent.
You can read the Gothamist story here.
***
Last month, the government deported three children who are United States citizens and their mothers to Honduras, including a 4-year-old cancer patient., the New York Times reported.
United States citizens cannot be deported. Children who are citizens can travel with a parent who is being deported if the parent wishes.
Lawyers for the families said the mothers wanted the children to remain in the United States and were not given that option before they were deported. Homan said the mothers requested that their children be removed with them. Sure, he’s a believable guy.
The three children are from two different families who were living in Louisiana prior to their deportations. They include the 4-year-old and a 7-year-old with one mother and a 2-year-old with another. Both women had outstanding deportation orders, the Times said.
“What we saw from ICE over the last several days is horrifying and baffling,” Gracie Willis from the National Immigration Project said in a statement. “Families have been ripped apart unnecessarily.
“These mothers had no opportunity to speak with their co-parents to make the kinds of choices that parents are entitled to make for their children, the kinds of decisions that millions of parents make every day: ‘What is best for our child?’”
Homan said that if they had not sent the children with the mothers, the administration would have been criticized for separating families.
This seems really simple. Let’s see the papers these women signed to have their children deported with them. If they can’t be produced, then it comes down to do you believe the Trump administration, and no one who has witnessed and understands the torrent of lies that have come from the president and his allies would ever believe a word they said.
You can read the Times story here.
***
Last month, Department of Homeland Security agents went to two elementary schools in Los Angeles seeking access to a total of five students. Principals at both schools denied them entry.
DHS officials said the agents were there to conduct welfare checks on undocumented students, but, as the Times reported, that work is usually done by phone by the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Turns out the agents lied to school officials. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said they claimed that the students’ families had given them permission to contact the children, but their parents and caretakers denied this.
The four agents said they were with the Homeland Security Investigations unit, an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – a unit that typically conducts criminal probes into smuggling operations, drug trafficking, and other major transnational crimes.
So, what are they doing conducting alleged welfare checks?
“This is the investigative arm of ICE,” Karen Ramos, a managing attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said. “They have not been sent out to knock on doors and look for children before, not in my experience. Truly the way they’re going about it makes no sense.”
The agents didn’t present school officials with court orders authorizing the visits. Carvalho said the district would continue to keep its campuses closed to federal agents who arrive without a judicial warrant.
“I’m still mystified as to how a first-, second-, third-, fourth-, or sixth-grader would pose any type of risk to the national security of our nation that would require Homeland Security to deploy its agents to elementary schools,” Carvalho said.
You’re not alone on that, Alberto.
You can read the Times story here.
***
What the hell are we doing? There was a time when this country wouldn’t stand for children to be treated like this. Now it’s just a blip in the news cycle.
Why do we allow this to be done to children. Is it because they’re not white? Is it because they don’t fit in the right-wing wet dream of a white nationalist/Christian nationalist country?
Remember, this president who wants to throw away birthright citizenship enshrined in the Constitution because it leads to too many non-white babies being considered citizens. Can’t have that, I guess.
Look what the “Make America Great” crowd is doing to children. We endanger them with exposure to deadly diseases because our health agencies are run by an anti-vax, worm-hole-abetted, dead-animal-collecting, lunatic in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
We attack transgender kids, demonize them, and try to take away the right of their parents to make medical decisions for them. We sanitize their education to satisfy the GOP’s racist instincts, leaving them dumber for it.
You call this great? Do you think that in a great country a pathetic clown like Homan would even smell a government position, let alone be handed one of such importance? That an entire Republican Party would watch the evil oozing from this guy and be okay with it?
I’ve given up hope of this corrupt administration and the cowardly, enabling GOP to stand for anything. Only beating them at the ballot box will stop our slide into the darkness.
Come to think of it, it’s already pretty dark right now.
That’s why it’s so important to shine a light on a scumbag like Homan -- the face of immigrant hate in a country built by immigrants.
***
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