Chris Hedges's Blog, page 550

Poor People’s Campaign Protests the Mistreatment of Immigrants (Live Blog)

Activists and civil rights advocates gathered Thursday for the final week of action by the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to relaunch Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight against poverty, war and income inequality. A press release from the organizers explains the goals behind this week’s actions:

The protests will culminate in a massive march on the U.S. Capitol Saturday led by people from across the country who are affected by President Trump and Congress’ policy violence. Saturday’s protest will launch the next phase of the groundbreaking revival of the 1968 movement started by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

Thursday’s protest comes on the anniversary of the 1964 disappearance of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and David Goodman, whose bodies were found buried in a dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi Aug. 4 of that year. David Goodman, the brother of Andrew Goodman, will join the Poor People’s Campaign protest.

Truthdig correspondents Michael Nigro and Clara Romeo are reporting live from Thursday’s protest at the Capitol. Follow their updates below and be sure to check back Friday for Nigro’s photo essay.

2:30 p.m. EDT: Michael Nigro reports from the field with a Facebook Live:

2:45 p.m. EDT: Clara Romeo reports that delegates from across the nation have gathered on the National Mall to protest families being separated at the border:

Demonstrators have begun a march to the Capitol:

3 p.m. EDT: Clara Romeo reports that marchers shut down 3rd and Pennsylvania Avenue. The police have created a barrier in front of the Capitol.

3:30 p.m. EDT: The Rev. William Barber addresses the protesters outside the Capitol:

 

3:40 EDT: Clara Romeo reports that the Rev. William Barber, a leading figure in the campaign, has been arrested, along with other demonstrators.

Poor People’s Campaign Protests Against Mistreatment of Immigrants (Live Blog)

Activists and civil rights advocates have gathered for the final week of action by the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to relaunch Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight against poverty, war and income inequality. A press release from the organizers explains the goals behind this week’s actions:

The protests will culminate in a massive march on the U.S. Capitol Saturday led by people from across the country who are affected by President Trump and Congress’ policy violence. Saturday’s protest will launch the next phase of the groundbreaking revival of the 1968 movement started by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

Thursday’s protest comes on the anniversary of the 1964 disappearance of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and David Goodman, whose bodies were found buried in a dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi Aug. 4 of that year. David Goodman, the brother of Andrew Goodman, will join the Poor People’s Campaign protest.

Truthdig correspondents Michael Nigro and Clara Romeo are reporting live from today’s protest at the Capitol. Follow their updates below and be sure to report back tomorrow for Nigro’s photo essay.

2:30 p.m. EDT: Michael Nigro reports from the field with a Facebook Live:

2:45 p.m. EDT: Clara Romeo reports that delegates from across the nation have gathered on the National Mall to protest families being separated at the border:

Demonstrators have begun a march to the Capitol:

3 p.m. EDT: Clara Romeo reports that marchers shut down 3rd and Pennsylvania Avenue. The police have created a barrier between the Capitol.

3:30 p.m. EDT: Rev Barber addresses the protesters outside the Capitol:

 

3:40 EDT: Clara Romeo reports that the Dr. Rev. Barber, a leading figure in the campaign, as well as a group of other demonstrators, have been arrested.

Teens Kept at Virginia Center Say They Were Cuffed, Beaten

WASHINGTON — Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Va., are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.

“Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,” said a Honduran immigrant who was sent to the facility when he was 15 years old. “Strapped me down all the way, from your feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move. … They have total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the bag on.”

In addition to the children’s first-hand, translated accounts in court filings, a former child-development specialist who worked inside the facility independently told The Associated Press this week that she saw kids there with bruises and broken bones they blamed on guards. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the children’s cases.

In court filings, lawyers for the detention facility have denied all the allegations of physical abuse detailed in the lawsuit, which span from 2015 to 2018.

Many of the children were sent there after U.S. immigration authorities accused them of belonging to violent gangs, including MS-13. President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited gang activity as justification for his crackdown on illegal immigration.

Trump said Wednesday that “our Border Patrol agents and our ICE agents have done one great job” cracking down on MS-13 gang members. “We’re throwing them out by the thousands,” he said.

But a top manager at the Shenandoah center said during a recent congressional hearing that the children did not appear to be gang members and were suffering from mental health issues resulting from trauma that happened in their home countries — problems the detention facility is ill-equipped to treat.

“The youth were being screened as gang-involved individuals. And then when they came into our care, and they were assessed by our clinical and case management staff … they weren’t necessarily identified as gang-involved individuals,” said Kelsey Wong, a program director at the facility. She testified April 26 before a Senate subcommittee reviewing the treatment of immigrant children apprehended by the Homeland Security Department.

Most children held in the Shenandoah facility who were the focus of the abuse lawsuit were caught crossing the border illegally alone. They were not the children who have been separated from their families under the Trump administration’s recent policy and are now in the government’s care. But the facility there operates under the same program run by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. It was not immediately clear whether any separated children have been sent to Shenandoah Valley since the Trump administration in April announced its “zero tolerance” policy toward immigrant families, after the lawsuit was filed.

It also was not immediately clear when federal authorities first learned of the abuse claims and whether any action was taken. Spokespeople for the federal Refugee Resettlement office, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, did not respond to multiple requests for comment Wednesday and Thursday.

Robert Carey, who served as director of Refugee Resettlement under the Obama administration, said Tuesday he only heard about the complaints at the Shenandoah center after he left office in January 2017. Had he known, Carey said, he “would have been all over that trying to figure out what needed to be done, including termination of contracts.”

The Shenandoah lockup is one of only three juvenile detention facilities in the United States with federal contracts to provide “secure placement” for children who had problems at less-restrictive housing. The Yolo County Juvenile Detention Facility in California has faced litigation over immigrant children mischaracterized as gang members.  In Alexandria, Virginia, a multi-jurisdiction commission overseeing the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center has said it will end its federal contract to house young immigration detainees when it expires in September.

The Shenandoah detention center was built by a coalition of seven nearby towns and counties to lock up local kids charged with serious crimes. Since 2007, about half the 58 beds are occupied by both male and female immigrants between the ages of 12 and 17 facing deportation proceedings or awaiting rulings on asylum claims. Though incarcerated in a facility similar to a prison, the children detained on administrative immigration charges have not yet been convicted of any crime.

Virginia ranks among the worst states in the nation for wait times in federal immigration courts, with an average of 806 days before a ruling. Nationally, only about half of juveniles facing deportation are represented by a lawyer, according to Justice Department data.

On average, 92 immigrant children each year cycle through Shenandoah, most of them from Mexico and Central America.

Wong said many of the 30 or so children housed there on any given day have mental health needs that would be better served in a residential treatment unit. But such facilities are often unwilling to accept children with significant behavioral issues, she said.

Wong and other managers at the Shenandoah center, including Executive Director Timothy J. Smith, did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment this week.

Financial statements reviewed by AP shows the local government commission that operates the center received nearly $4.2 million in federal funds last year to house the immigrant children — enough to cover about two-thirds of the total operating expenses.

The lawsuit filed against Shenandoah alleges that young Latino immigrants held there “are subjected to unconstitutional conditions that shock the conscience, including violence by staff, abusive and excessive use of seclusion and restraints, and the denial of necessary mental health care.”

The complaint filed by the nonprofit Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs recounts the story of an unnamed 17-year-old Mexican citizen apprehended at the southern border. The teen fled an abusive father and violence fueled by drug cartels to seek asylum in the United States in 2015.

After stops at facilities in Texas and New York, he was transferred to Shenandoah in April 2016 and diagnosed during an initial screening by a psychologist with three mental disorders, including depression. Besides weekly sessions speaking with a counselor, the lawsuit alleges the teen has received no further mental health treatment, such as medications that might help regulate his moods and behavior.

The lawsuit recounts multiple alleged violent incidents between Latino children and staff at the Shenandoah center. It describes the guards as mostly white, non-Spanish speakers who are undertrained in dealing with individuals with mental illness. The suit alleges staff members routinely taunt the Latino youths with racially charged epithets, including “wetback,” ″onion head” and “pendejo,” which roughly translates to dumbass in Spanish.

A 16-year-old who said he had lived in Texas with his mother since he was an infant ended up at Shenandoah in September after a police officer pulled over a car he was riding in and asked for ID, which he couldn’t provide. As one of the few Latino kids who is fluent in English, the teen would translate for other detainees the taunts and names the staff members were calling them. He said that angered the guards, resulting in his losing such modest privileges as attending art classes.

“If you are behaving bad, resisting the staff when they try to remove you from the program, they will take everything in your room away — your mattress, blanket, everything,” he said. “They will also take your clothes. Then they will leave you locked in there for a while. This has happened to me, and I know it has happened to other kids, too.”

The immigrant detainees said they were largely segregated from the mostly white juveniles being held on criminal charges, but they could see that the other housing units had amenities that included plush chairs and video gaming consoles not available in the Spartan pods housing the Latinos.

In their sworn statements, the teens reported spending the bulk of their days locked alone in their cells, with a few hours set aside for classroom instruction, recreation and meals. Some said they had never been allowed outdoors, while the U.S.-born children were afforded a spacious recreation yard.

The Latino children reported being fed sparse and often cold meals that left them hungry, though meals of American fast food were occasionally provided. Records show Shenandoah receives nearly $82,000 a year from the Agriculture Department to feed the immigration detainees.

The lawsuit said the poor conditions, frequent physical searches and verbal abuse by staff often escalated into confrontations, as the frustrated children acted out. The staff regularly responded “by physically assaulting the youth, applying an excessive amount of force that goes far beyond what is needed to establish or regain control.”

In the case of the Mexican 17-year-old, the lawsuit said a staff member who suspected him of possessing contraband threw him to the ground and forcibly tore off his clothes for an impromptu strip search. Though no forbidden items were found, the teenager was transferred to “Alpha Pod,” described in the lawsuit as a unit within the facility designated for children who engage in bad behavior.

The lawsuit said Latino children were frequently punished by being restrained for hours in chairs, with handcuffs and cloth shackles on their legs. Often, the lawsuit alleged, the children were beaten by staff while bound.

As a result of such “malicious and sadistic applications of force,” the immigrant youths have “sustained significant injuries, both physical and psychological,” the lawsuit said.

After an altercation during which the lawsuit alleged the Mexican teenager bit a staff member during a beating, he was restrained in handcuffs and shackles for 10 days, resulting in bruises and cuts. Other teens interviewed as part of the court case also reported being punished for minor infractions with stints in solitary confinement, during which some of the children said they were left nude and shivering in cold concrete cells.

Academic studies of prison inmates kept in solitary confinement have found they often experience high anxiety that can cause panic attacks, paranoia and disordered thinking that may trigger angry outbursts. For those with mental health issues, the effects can be exacerbated, often worsening the very behaviors the staff is attempting to discourage.

A Guatemalan youth sent to the center when he was 14 years old said he was often locked in his tiny cell for up to 23 hours a day. After resisting the guards, he said he was also restrained for long periods.

“When they couldn’t get one of the kids to calm down, the guards would put us in a chair — a safety chair, I don’t know what they call it — but they would just put us in there all day,” the teen said in a sworn statement. “This happened to me, and I saw it happen to others, too. It was excessive.”

A 15-year-old from Mexico held at Shenandoah for nine months also recounted being restrained with a bag over his head.

“They handcuffed me and put a white bag of some kind over my head,” he said, according to his sworn statement. “They took off all of my clothes and put me into a restraint chair, where they attached my hands and feet to the chair. They also put a strap across my chest. They left me naked and attached to that chair for two and a half days, including at night.”

After being subjected to such treatment, the 17-year-old Mexican youth said he tried to kill himself in August, only to be punished with further isolation. On other occasions, he said, he has responded to feelings of desperation and hopelessness by cutting his wrists with a piece of glass and banging his head against the wall or floor.

“One time I cut myself after I had gotten into a fight with staff,” the teen recounted. “I filled the room with blood. This happened on a Friday, but it wasn’t until Monday that they gave me a bandage or medicine for the pain.”

The lawsuit alleges other immigrant youths held at Shenandoah have also engaged in cutting and other self-harming behaviors, including ingesting shampoo and attempting to choke themselves.

A hearing in the case is set for July 3 before a federal judge in the Western District of Virginia.

Lawyers on both sides in the lawsuit either did not respond to messages or declined to comment, citing strict confidentiality requirements in the case involving children.

The child development specialist who previously worked with teens at Shenandoah told AP that many there developed severe psychological problems after experiencing abuse from guards.

“The majority of the kids we worked with when we went to visit them were emotionally and verbally abused. I had a kid whose foot was broken by a guard,” she said. “They would get put in isolation for months for things like picking up a pencil when a guard had said not to move. Some of them started hearing voices that were telling them to hurt people or hurt themselves, and I knew when they had gotten to Shenandoah they were not having any violent thoughts.”

She said she never witnessed staff abuse teens first-hand, but that teens would complain to her of injuries from being tackled by guards and reveal bruises. The specialist encouraged them to file a formal complaint.

Though lawyers for Shenandoah responded with court filings denying all wrongdoing, information contained in a separate 2016 lawsuit appears to support some of the information contained in the recent abuse complaints.

In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed against the Shenandoah center, a former staff member said he worked in a unit called “Alpha Pod” where immigrant minors were held, “including those with psychological and mental issues and those who tend to fight more frequently.”

The guard, Trenton Farris, who denied claims that he punched two children, sued the justice center alleging he was wrongly targeted for firing because he is black. Farris said most staff members at the facility are white, and that two white staff members involved in the incident over which he was fired went unpunished.

Lawyers for the center denied the former guard’s claims, and the case was settled in January.

___

Pearson reported from New York and Burke reported from San Francisco.

___

Follow Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

___

Read the lawsuit: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4529878-Shenandoah-Complaint.html

___

Contact the AP’s investigative team with tips about this or other matters: https://www.ap.org/tips

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Trump Invites Pelosi, Schumer to White House

WASHINGTON — The latest on the immigration controversy (all times local):

1:05 p.m.

President Trump says he’s “officially” inviting Democratic leaders to the White House to discuss immigration legislation.

Speaking ahead of a Cabinet meeting, Trump says he was making the open invitation through the press.

Trump says: “We should be able to do a bill. I’d invite them to come to the White House any time they want. This afternoon would be good. After the Cabinet meeting would be good.”

Trump is blaming Democrats for obstructing immigration legislation, saying, “We need two to tango.” A Republican-led effort in the House to address legal status for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally and to fund Trump’s border wall is teetering on the edge of collapse.

Trump says: “I just told you I’ll invite Sen. Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They can come over. They can bring whoever they want.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Democrats had been formally invited or if they were planning to accept.

___

12:25 p.m.

President Trump is defending his Wednesday executive order to end new family separations at the border, but says Congress needs to act to permanently fix the problem.

Speaking before a Cabinet meeting, Trump says “I signed a very good executive order.”

But he says the “only real solution” is for Congress to close loopholes in the immigration system, saying “If we don’t close these loopholes there is no amount of money or personnel in the world.”

As congressional Republicans look to pass sweeping immigration bills Thursday, Trump says Democrats are obstructionists and is accusing them of not caring about the children separated from their parents.

This spring, the Trump administration put in a place a zero-tolerance policy on illegal border crossings, resulting in children separated from families at the border.

___

12:05 p.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says he was “pleased” President Donald Trump ordered an end to separating children from parents at the U.S. border.

“I was pleased the president took action yesterday to ensure families can remain together while we enforce our immigration laws,” the Wisconsin Republican said at his weekly press conference. “We do not want children taken away from their parents.”

But Ryan stopped short of predicting the House will pass legislation Thursday aimed at resolving broader immigration issues ahead of the November elections.

Trump tweeted earlier that any such legislation is all but doomed in the narrowly-divided Senate.

___

11:50 a.m.

There’s an embarrassing, $100 billion oops in a House immigration bill.

The Republican-written measure was supposed to give initial approval for $24.8 billion spread over the next five years for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico and other security measures.

Instead, the legislation says it would provide $24.8 billion “for each” of the next five years.

Republicans call it a drafting mistake.

The text will be corrected in a procedural vote the House expects to take Thursday.

The error is in a bill that offers no pathway to citizenship for many young migrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children and has stringent restrictions on legal immigration. The measure seems certain to be defeated.

The House also plans to vote on a more moderate GOP immigration bill.

___

11:40 a.m.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is deriding the Republican immigration legislation coming up for a vote as a “compromise with the devil.”

Pelosi said the legislation makes House Republicans “complicit” in President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that has resulted in more than 2,000 children being separated from their parents at the border.

She spoke as the House raced toward votes on two broad immigration bills that would, among other things, allow immigrant families detained after crossing the border to be held together. Trump suggested Thursday that any measure the chamber passes would be doomed in the Senate anyway. One bill is aimed at appealing to GOP moderates, while the other is harder-line legislation favored by conservatives.

Pelosi said the bill aimed at moderates “may be a compromise with the devil, but it’s not a compromise with Democrats.”

___

11:20 a.m.

A civil rights group attorney says federal prosecutors unexpectedly dropped misdemeanor charges against 17 adult immigrants who crossed the border with children.

Efren Olivares is a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project. Speaking outside of the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, he said the 17 immigrants were supposed to have been sentenced Thursday morning for improperly entering the U.S.

Olivares said the 17 will likely be placed in immigration detention, though he didn’t know whether they would be reunited immediately with their children or released altogether. Asked if they had any reaction to the charges against them being dropped, he said, “They’re asking about their children, frankly.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project is interviewing adults to track them and their children through separate government systems.

The dropping of the charges comes a day after President Donald Trump reversed a policy of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents upon entering the U.S. without permission.

___

11:10 a.m.

The Pentagon says it is providing 21 lawyers to the Justice Department to help prosecute illegal immigration cases on the U.S.-Mexico border.

A spokesman, Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, said Thursday that the lawyers have criminal trial experience and will be appointed as full-time special assistant United States attorneys. He said the attorneys will help prosecute border immigration cases with a focus on misdemeanor improper entry and felony illegal entry cases.

Davis said the temporary assignments are to last for 179 days.

Davis said the Justice Department made the request in May, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis approved it earlier this month.

___

10:15 a.m.

House and Senate Democrats are demanding that President Donald Trump reunify the families that were separated at the U.S. border.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House sent a letter Thursday to the White House urging the president to do everything necessary to reunite more than 2,300 children with their families.

Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order that allowed families to stay together, but the Democrats say that the Health and Human Services Department didn’t take immediate steps to reunify the families.

Earlier Thursday, Trump took aim at the Democrats saying New York’s Schumer and California’s Pelosi are both weak on crime and border security.

The House is set to vote Thursday on two immigration bills. House Republican leaders are still trying to build support for one negotiated among conservative and moderate factions of the GOP.

___

9:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is fueling uncertainty about an already shaky House GOP immigration overhaul, questioning “the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need nine votes by Democrats in the Senate.”

Trump tweeted Thursday that “the Dems are only looking to Obstruct (which they feel is good for them in the Mid-Terms).” He adds: “Republicans must get rid of the stupid Filibuster Rule-it is killing you!”

Trump’s tweet comes as the House plans to vote on two immigration bills. House Republican leaders are still trying to build support for one negotiated among conservative and moderate factions of the GOP.

The president has said previously that he wants to change the Senate’s rules to eliminate the filibuster, and allow passage of all bills on a simple-majority vote.

8:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump says the U.S.-Mexico border is a “big mess,” and that at some point the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate “will be forced to do a real deal” on immigration.

Trump’s tweet Thursday comes as the House plans to vote on two immigration bills. House Republican leaders are still trying to build support for one negotiated among conservative and moderate factions of the GOP, although the measure is unlikely to pick up much, if any, Democratic support.

Trump had embraced a hardline “zero-tolerance policy” at the border, only to back down after reports that the approach resulted in 2,300 children detained separately from their families.

Tweeting on Thursday, Trump said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi are both weak on crime and border security.

He wrote: “At some point Schumer and Pelosi, who are weak on Crime and Border security, will be forced to do a real deal, so easy, that solves this long time problem. Schumer used to want Border security – now he’ll take Crime!”

___

12:30 a.m.

House Republicans are trying to approve an immigration overhaul that teetered ahead of voting Thursday.

Lawmakers are struggling to move past a debate that has become politically fraught amid the dire images of families being separated at the border.

President Donald Trump’s sudden executive action Wednesday on the border crisis stemmed some of the urgency for Congress to act. But House GOP leaders still were pulling out the stops to bring reluctant Republicans on board to resolve broader immigration issues ahead of the November midterm elections.

Passage was always a long shot. But now failure may come at a steeper price as Republicans — and Trump — raise expectations that the party in control of Congress and the White House can fix the nation’s long-standing immigration problems.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the  Poor People’s Campaign . Please help us by  making a donation .

Majority Approve of Trump’s North Korea Effort, Poll Finds

WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans now approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of U.S. relations with North Korea, a change that comes after his historic summit with that country’s leader, Kim Jong Un. But most don’t believe Kim is serious about addressing the international concerns about his country’s nuclear weapons program.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday finds that 55 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea, up from 42 percent in March and 34 percent last October. It’s the highest rating for the Republican president on any individual issue on an AP-NORC poll since his inauguration.

The survey was conducted immediately after Trump concluded a one-day meeting with Kim, the first between a U.S. and North Korean leader in six decades of hostility, at which they agreed North Korea would work toward denuclearization in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.

The positive feelings about the summit among Americans don’t appear to have made a dent in Trump’s overall approval rating, which stands at just 41 percent and has not significantly changed since March. As the poll was being conducted, Trump was embroiled in controversy over his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents after border agents catch the families crossing into the U.S. illegally.

Yet even people unhappy with Trump overall are willing to admire his efforts at detente with North Korea. Last September, Trump taunted Kim as “Rocket Man” in a speech at the United Nations, during which he vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if the U.S. was forced to defend itself or its allies. Last week, after meeting with Kim, he tweeted, “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”

“I hate to give Donald Trump any credit, but the fact is he was able to sit down with the man and possibly get the volume of that threat turned down significantly,” said Susan Leo, 66, a retired minister from Santa Cruz, California, who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton for president.

Still, she added, when she considers the big picture, Trump’s presidency is “a nightmare. There’s absolutely no integrity in his life and in his presidency overall.”

Leo isn’t alone in having such split views of the president. While only 9 percent of Democrats and 37 percent of independents approve of how Trump’s performance as president overall, 31 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of independents approve of his work with North Korea.

Americans also have mixed feelings about Trump’s announcement that he would end military exercises with South Korea while negotiations with North Korea are ongoing, with about 3 in 10 in favor and 3 in 10 opposed.

Even as they broadly give Trump solid reviews for the summit, Americans remain skeptical about what sort of deal he may ultimately reach with a country controlled by what he once called a “depraved regime.” Trump’s critics have responded to his confidence in the agreement struck with Kim at the summit with reminders that North Korea has never signed such a deal that it didn’t later break.

A majority of Americans — 52 percent — have little to no confidence that negotiations with Kim will lead to North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons, while just 12 percent are very or extremely confident. Fifty-five percent think North Korea isn’t serious about addressing international concerns about its nuclear weapons program.

Roger D’Aquin, a retired security manager from New Orleans who voted for libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in 2016, said that he thought Trump’s tactics with Kim worked, but added, “I have no confidence that Kim wants to cooperate and wants to get rid of his nukes.”

“Overall Trump handled that well,” said D’Aquin, 50, who said he was happy Trump won the election and that he gave him a “C” for the job so far.

Even among Republicans, just 25 percent say they’re very confident that North Korea will eventually agree to a deal to give up its nuclear weapons. A large majority of Democrats have little confidence the Kim regime will ever do so.

Trump’s meeting with Kim came on the heels of his combative G-7 meeting with traditional U.S. allies, including Canada and the United Kingdom. After departing that gathering in Quebec, Trump attacked Justin Trudeau as “dishonest” and “weak” after the Canadian prime minister told reporters his government would retaliate against new U.S. tariffs it viewed as unfair.

Only 43 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of relationships with U.S. allies or of his handling of trade negotiations with other countries, a figure that’s similar to his overall approval rating. Just 23 percent of Americans say they’re very or extremely confident in his ability to handle complex foreign policy situations, while 53 percent are not very or not at all confident.

Asked about Trump’s potential options at the negotiating table in future talks with North Korea, more Americans say they’d oppose than favor withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea (41 percent to 29 percent) and giving economic aid to North Korea (47 percent to 24 percent) in exchange for Kim surrendering his country’s nuclear weapons.

More Americans favor than oppose ending sanctions designed to limit North Korea’s economy (37 percent to 27 percent), and a large majority — 69 percent — say they’d favor a treaty marking an official end to the Korean War. There’s even some support for inviting Kim to the White House, with 39 percent of Americans open to an idea that 25 percent oppose.

Kim Oldfield, 67, of Culverville, California, a registered Independent who voted for Trump, said she was fine Kim coming to Washington as part of a nuclear deal.

“Sure, why not,” she said. “There’s a first time for everything.”

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,109 adults was conducted June 13-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

How Four Words Changed the Course of the Immigration Debate

Q: “And babies?”

A: “And babies.”

These four words, broadcast by CBS News in 1969, had a profound impact on the American public, the Nixon presidency and the course of the Vietnam War. Questions about babies have arisen again at the White House, this time about thousands of immigrant children, some only months old, ripped from their parents and jailed in cages on the orders of President Trump.

That question, asked half a century ago, “And babies?” was posed by veteran investigative journalist Mike Wallace while interviewing a young Vietnam veteran named Paul Meadlo. “And babies,” Meadlo answered. He was an Army private who, along with scores of other U.S. soldiers, conducted a raid on March 16, 1968, attacking a Vietnamese village called My Lai.

What followed came to be known as the My Lai Massacre. U.S. soldiers slaughtered over 500 civilians over the course of the day. “They was begging and saying, ‘No, no.’ And the mothers was hugging their children and … well, we kept right on firing. They was waving their arms and begging,” Meadlo told Wallace.

Meadlo was brought to CBS by a young freelance reporter named Seymour Hersh, who was investigating the massacre. He tracked down Meadlo, got his story and convinced him to do the CBS interview. What Hersh uncovered about the My Lai Massacre haunts him to this day. Speaking on the “Democracy Now!” news hour about his new book, “Reporter: A Memoir,” Hersh said, “Instead of meeting the enemy, there were just families, women and children and old men. And so they began to murder them. They put them in ditches. And they raped. They killed. They threw babies up — this was hard for me to even, in the first year — and caught them on bayonets. Some of the stuff I kept out of the initial story, it was just so awful.”

He recalled, of Meadlo’s CBS appearance, “Mike Wallace, who’s tough as nails, asked him — he asked him five times in that interview, ‘And babies?’ Again, he kept on saying, ‘And babies?'”

Hersh later published the story, through the small anti-war Dispatch News Service, after several major U.S. media outlets turned down the story. It earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.

Hersh sees parallels with how the press is finally covering the immigrant family separation crisis now. “This could be a turning point,” he said

Today we see photos of crying toddlers next to handcuffed parents, accompanied by an audio recording released by the news outlet ProPublica in which children are heard crying, “Mama! Papi!” while a guard mocked them, saying in Spanish: “Well, we have an orchestra here. What’s missing is a conductor.” Elected officials and the media have flocked to the U.S.-Mexico border region, demanding access to detention centers. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was questioned at a White House press briefing, asked why her department had only released photos of jailed boys in cages over the age of 10, with no photos of girls or toddlers there. “Where are the girls? Where are the babies?” she was repeatedly asked. Her confusion as to their whereabouts stoked even more furor.

Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers along the U.S. southern border, announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on April 6, allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) and Border Patrol to arrest adults whom they suspected of crossing the border without proper documentation, and to separate them from their children. The number of children kidnapped by DHS and ICE is over 2,300, The Intercept estimates over 3,700 have been taken since October.

Scores of immigrants rights activists across the country have been protesting Trump’s order since the day it was issued. The movement snowballed. Congressmembers demanded to see the children. Democratic and Republican governors began issuing executive orders withdrawing or preventing their National Guard troops from going to the border to assist DHS. Airlines joined in, refusing to transport children stripped away from their parents. By Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order, reversing his own decision. Families would not be separated moving forward.

But that does not solve the crisis for those thousands already snatched from their parents. There is no mechanism in place to reunite parents, some of whom have already been deported, with their children, who are still in cages, jails and hastily erected tent cities scattered around the country in 17 states.

Fifty years ago, four words broadcast nationally changed the course of the Vietnam War. Question: “And babies?” Answer: “And babies.” Four words heard this week, “Mama, Mama. Papi, Papi,” have exposed the cruelty of the Trump administration, and have powerfully changed the course of the immigration debate.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Is a War With China on the Horizon?

On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis explained, reflects “the increasing connectivity between the Indian and Pacific Oceans,” as well as Washington’s determination to remain the dominant power in both.

What? You didn’t hear about this anywhere? And even now, you’re not exactly blown away, right? Well, such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous.  Think of it as a signal that the U.S. military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China.

If, until now, you hadn’t read about Mattis’s decision anywhere, I’m not surprised since the media gave it virtually no attention — less certainly than would have been accorded the least significant tweet Donald Trump ever dispatched.  What coverage it did receive treated the name change as no more than a passing “symbolic” gesture, a Pentagon ploy to encourage India to join Japan, Australia, and other U.S. allies in America’s Pacific alliance system. “In Symbolic Nod to India, U.S. Pacific Command Changes Name” was the  of a Reuters story on the subject and, to the extent that any attention was paid, it was typical.

That the media’s military analysts failed to notice anything more than symbolism in the deep-sixing of PACOM shouldn’t be surprising, given all the attention being paid to other major international developments — the pyrotechnics of the Korean summit in Singapore, the insults traded at and after the G7 meeting in Canada, or the ominous gathering storm over Iran.  Add to this the poor grasp so many journalists have of the nature of the U.S. military’s strategic thinking.  Still, Mattis himself has not been shy about the geopolitical significance of linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans in such planning.  In fact, it represents a fundamental shift in U.S. military thinking with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Consider the backdrop to the name change: in recent months, the U.S. has stepped up its naval patrols in waters adjacent to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea (as has China), raising the prospect of future clashes between the warships of the two countries. Such moves have been accompanied by ever more threatening language from the Department of Defense (DoD), indicating an intent to do nothing less than engage China militarily if that country’s build-up in the region continues.  “When it comes down to introducing what they have done in the South China Sea, there are consequences,” Mattis declared at the Shangri La Strategic Dialogue in Singapore on June 2nd.

As a preliminary indication of what he meant by this, Mattis promptly disinvited the Chinese from the world’s largest multinational naval exercise, the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), conducted annually under American auspices.  “But that’s a relatively small consequence,” he added ominously, “and I believe there are much larger consequences in the future.”  With that in mind, he soon announced that the Pentagon is planning to conduct “a steady drumbeat” of naval operations in waters abutting those Chinese-occupied islands, which should raise the heat between the two countries and could create the conditions for a miscalculation, a mistake, or even an accident at sea that might lead to far worse.

In addition to its plans to heighten naval tensions in seas adjacent to China, the Pentagon has been laboring to strengthen its military ties with U.S.-friendly states on China’s perimeter, all clearly part of a long-term drive to — in Cold War fashion — “contain” Chinese power in Asia.  On June 8th, for example, the DoD launched Malabar 2018, a joint Pacific Ocean naval exercise involving forces from India, Japan, and the United States.  Incorporating once neutral India into America’s anti-Chinese “Pacific” alliance system in this and other ways has, in fact, become a major twenty-first-century goal of the Pentagon, posing a significant new threat to China.

For decades, the principal objective of U.S. strategy in Asia had been to bolster key Pacific allies Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, while containing Chinese power in adjacent waters, including the East and South China Seas.  However, in recent times, China has sought to spread its influence into Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region, in part by extolling its staggeringly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for the Eurasian continent and Africa.  That vast project is clearly meant both as a unique vehicle for cooperation and a way to tie much of Eurasia into a future China-centered economic and energy system.  Threatened by visions of such a future, American strategists have moved ever more decisively to constrain Chinese outreach in those very areas.  That, then, is the context for the sudden concerted drive by U.S. military strategists to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and so encircle China with pro-American, anti-Chinese alliance systems. The name change on May 30th is a formal acknowledgement of an encirclement strategy that couldn’t, in the long run, be more dangerous.

Girding for War with China

To grasp the ramifications of such moves, some background on the former PACOM might be useful.  Originally known as the Far East Command, PACOM was established in 1947 and has been headquartered at U.S. bases near Honolulu, Hawaii, ever since.  As now constituted, its “area of responsibility” encompasses a mind-boggling expanse: all of East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans — in other words, an area covering about 50% of the Earth’s surface and incorporating more than half of the global population.  Though the Pentagon divides the whole planet like a giant pie into a set of “unified commands,” none of them is larger than the newly expansive, newly named Indo-Pacific Command, with its 375,000 military and civilian personnel.

Before the Indian Ocean was explicitly incorporated into its fold, PACOM mainly focused on maintaining control of the western Pacific, especially in waters around a number of friendly island and peninsula states like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.  Its force structure has largely been composed of air and naval squadrons, along with a large Marine Corps presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa.  Its most powerful combat unit is the U.S. Pacific Fleet — like the area it now covers, the largest in the world.  It’s made up of the 3rd and 7th Fleets, which together have approximately 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft, and more than 130,000 sailors, pilots, Marines, and civilians.

On a day-to-day basis, until recently, the biggest worry confronting the command was the possibility of a conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea.  During the late fall of 2017 and the winter of 2018, PACOM engaged in a continuing series of exercises designed to test its forces’ ability to overcome North Korean defenses and destroy its major military assets, including nuclear and missile facilities. These were undoubtedly intended, above all, as a warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un about what he could expect if he continued down the path of endless provocative missile and nuclear tests.  It seems that, at least for the time being, President Trump has suspended such drills as a result of his summit meeting with Kim.

North Korea aside, the principal preoccupation of PACOM commanders has long been the rising power of China and how to contain it.  This was evident at the May 30th ceremony in Hawaii at which Mattis announced that expansive name change and presided over a change-of-command ceremony, in which outgoing commander, Admiral Harry Harris Jr., was replaced by Admiral Phil Davidson.  (Given the naval-centric nature of its mission, the command is almost invariably headed by an admiral.)

While avoiding any direct mention of China in his opening remarks, Mattis left not a smidgeon of uncertainty that the command’s new name was a challenge and a call for the future mobilization of regional opposition across a vast stretch of the planet to China’s dreams and desires.  Other nations welcome U.S. support, he insisted, as they prefer an environment of “free, fair, and reciprocal trade not bound by any nation’s predatory economics or threat of coercion, for the Indo-Pacific has many belts and many roads.”  No one could mistake the meaning of that.

Departing Admiral Harris was blunter still.  Although “North Korea remains our most immediate threat,” he declared, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge.”  He then offered a warning: without the stepped-up efforts of the U.S. and its allies to constrain Beijing, “China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.”  Yes, he admitted, it was still possible to cooperate with the Chinese on limited issues, but we should “stand ready to confront them when we must.”  (On May 18th, Admiral Harris was nominated by President Trump as the future U.S. ambassador to South Korea, which will place a former military man at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.)

Harris’s successor, Admiral Davidson, seems, if anything, even more determined to put confronting China atop the command’s agenda.  During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 17th, he repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and promised to resist them vigorously. “Once [the South China Sea islands are] occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” he warned.  “The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] will be able to use these bases to challenge U.S. presence in the region, and any forces deployed to the islands would easily overwhelm the military forces of any other South China Sea claimants. In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”

Is that, then, what Admiral Davidson sees in our future?  War with China in those waters?  His testimony made it crystal clear that his primary objective as head of the Indo-Pacific Command will be nothing less than training and equipping the forces under him for just such a future war, while enlisting the militaries of as many allies as possible in the Pentagon’s campaign to encircle that country.  “To prevent a situation where China is more likely to win a conflict,” he affirmed in his version of Pentagonese, “we must resource high-end capabilities in a timely fashion, preserve our network of allies and partners, and continue to recruit and train the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coastguardsmen in the world.”

Davidson’s first priority is to procure advanced weaponry and integrate it into the command’s force structure, ensuring that American combatants will always enjoy a technological advantage over their Chinese counterparts in any future confrontation.  Almost as important, he, like his predecessors, seeks to bolster America’s military ties with other members of the contain-China club.  This is where India comes in.  Like the United States, its leadership is deeply concerned with China’s expanding presence in the Indian Ocean region, including the opening of a future port/naval base in Gwadar, Pakistan, and another potential one on the island of Sri Lanka, both in the Indian Ocean.  Not surprisingly, given the periodic clashes between Chinese and Indian forces along their joint Himalayan borderlands and the permanent deployment of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be increasingly disposed to join Washington in military arrangements aimed at limiting China’s geopolitical reach.  “An enduring strategic partnership with India comports with U.S. goals and objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” Admiral Davidson said in his recent congressional testimony.  Once installed as commander, he continued, “I will maintain the positive momentum and trajectory of our burgeoning strategic partnership.”  His particular goal: to “increase maritime security cooperation.”

And so we arrive at the Indo-Pacific Command and a future shadowed by the potential for great power war.

The View from Beijing

The way the name change at PACOM was covered in the U.S., you would think it reflected, at most, a benign wish for greater economic connections between the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, as well, perhaps, as a nod to America’s growing relationship with India.  Nowhere was there any hint that what might lie behind it was a hostile and potentially threatening new approach to China — or that it could conceivably be perceived that way in Beijing.  But there can be no doubt that the Chinese view such moves, including recent provocative naval operations in the disputed Paracel Islands of the South China Sea, as significant perils.

When, in late May, the Pentagon dispatched two warships — the USS Higgins, a destroyer, and the USS Antietam, a cruiser — into the waters near one of those newly fortified islands, the Chinese responded by sending in some of their own warships while issuing a statement condemning the provocative American naval patrols.  The U.S. action, said a Chinese military spokesperson, “seriously violated China’s sovereignty [and] undermined strategic mutual trust.” Described by the Pentagon as “freedom of navigation operations” (FRONOPs), such patrols are set to be increased at the behest of Mattis.

Of course, the Chinese are hardly blameless in the escalating tensions in the region. They have continued to militarize South China Sea islands whose ownership is in dispute, despite a promise that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to President Obama in 2015 not to do so.  Some of those islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries in the area and have been the subject of intensifying, often bitter disagreements among them about where rightful ownership really lies.  Beijing has simply claimed sovereignty over all of them and refuses to compromise on the issue.  By fortifying them — which American military commanders see as a latent military threat to U.S. forces in the region — Beijing has provoked a particularly fierce U.S. reaction, though these are obviously waters relatively close to China, but many thousands of miles from the continental United States.

From Beijing, the strategic outlook articulated by Secretary Mattis, as well as Admirals Harris and Davidson, is clearly viewed — and not without reason — as threatening and as evidence of Washington’s master plan to surround China, confine it, and prevent it from ever achieving the regional dominance its leaders believe is its due as the rising great power on the planet.  To the Chinese leadership, changing PACOM’s name to the Indo-Pacific Command will just be another signal of Washington’s determination to extend its unprecedented military presence westward from the Pacific around Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean and so further restrain the attainment of what it sees as China’s legitimate destiny.

However Chinese leaders end up responding to such strategic moves, one thing is certain: they will not view them with indifference.  On the contrary, as challenged great powers have always done, they will undoubtedly seek ways to counter America’s containment strategy by whatever means are at hand.  These may not initially be overtly military or even obvious, but in the long run they will certainly be vigorous and persistent.  They will include efforts to compete with Washington in pursuit of Asian allies — as seen in Beijing’s fervent courtship of President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines — and to secure new basing arrangements abroad, possibly under the pretext, as in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of establishing commercial shipping terminals.  All of this will only add new tensions to an already anxiety-inducing relationship with the United States.  As ever more warships from both countries patrol the region, the likelihood that accidents will occur, mistakes will be made, and future military clashes will result can only increase.

With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: the new U.S. Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China.  Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations — by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve — will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy.  That, however, is a fantasy.  In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.

Right now, a Sino-American war sounds like the plotline of some half-baked dystopian novel.  Unfortunately, given the direction in which both countries (and their militaries) are heading, it could, in the relatively near future, become a grim reality.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Pope Punishes Cardinal in Sexual Abuse Case

NEW YORK — Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, D.C., has been removed from public ministry and faces further punishment over “credible” allegations that he sexually abused a teenager while a priest in New York more than 40 years ago, the church announced Wednesday.

Pope Francis ordered the 87-year-old cardinal’s removal pending further action that could end in his expulsion from the priesthood. A church panel determined that a former altar boy’s allegations that McCarrick fondled him during preparations for Christmas Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1971 and 1972 were “credible and substantiated.”

McCarrick, the Washington archbishop from 2000 to 2006, is one of the highest-ranking U.S. church officials accused in a sexual abuse scandal that has seen thousands of priests implicated. The church also acknowledged that it had made previously undisclosed legal settlements with adults who accused McCarrick of sexual misconduct decades ago.

McCarrick said he was shocked by the former altar boy’s allegation and denied it in a statement distributed through the church. He said he cooperated in the investigation and accepted the pope’s decision out of obedience to the church.

“While I have absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence, I am sorry for the pain the person who brought the charges has gone through, as well as for the scandal such charges cause our people,” McCarrick said.

The former altar boy, a New York-area businessman in his early 60s, went to a church compensation program in January with allegations that McCarrick fondled him when he was 16 and 17, his lawyer said, and met in April with the church panel verifying his claims. Lawyer Patrick Noaker said it was his only option because criminal and civil statutes of limitations had long kicked in.

According to the lawyer, the former altar boy said McCarrick unzipped his pants, reached inside and fondled him while taking measurements for a cassock he was to wear during the Mass. He remembers McCarrick saying to him, “Let’s not tell anybody about this.”

A year later, Noaker said, McCarrick cornered the boy in a bathroom, grabbed him and shoved his hand into his pants. The boy pushed McCarrick away and ran out, Noaker said.

The encounters shook the teenager, who had aspired to become a priest, “to his foundation,” Noaker said.

Also Wednesday, the Newark, New Jersey archdiocese, where McCarrick was a bishop and archbishop, said it was aware of three decades-old allegations against him involving sexual misconduct with adults — no cases there involving minors — and that two of them resulted in legal settlements.

The Newark Archdiocese declined to provide additional details, citing confidentiality concerns.

Richard Sipe, a former priest turned clergy abuse expert, said seminarians and young priests complained to him about McCarrick in the 1970s and early 1980s and that he has since interviewed 12 men who alleged that McCarrick propositioned, harassed or had sex with them.

Sipe said he also reviewed settlement documents that detailed some alleged encounters, including one where a man said he “felt paralyzed” as McCarrick wrapped his legs around him and started to kiss and rub him.

McCarrick’s statement did not address the allegations involving adults. The Washington Archdiocese did not immediately return a message seeking additional comment from him.

The church said it notified the authorities and hired outside investigators after learning of the allegation. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office said Wednesday that it investigated and determined a prosecution was barred by New York’s statute of limitations.

The results of the church’s investigation were forwarded to a review board of church figures and lay professionals that deemed the allegation credible and substantiated, the church said.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the New York archdiocese knew of no other such allegations against McCarrick, who was a priest in the city from 1958, when he was ordained, until 1981, when he became Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey.

McCarrick, known to be fluent in seven languages, was archbishop of Newark from 1986 until 2000 and was elevated to cardinal in 2001.

He participated in the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, presided over the graveside service for U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery in 2009, and celebrated Mass with Pope Francis during his 2015 visit to Washington.

Advocates for abuse victims said McCarrick also undermined efforts to expose abuse and hold perpetrators accountable by opposing an extended statute of limitations for such crimes and vowing not to comply if a law were passed requiring priests to report suspected child abuse.

McCarrick remains in Washington and is in frail health, the church said.

“The abuse of anyone who is vulnerable is both shameful and horrific,” current Metuchen Bishop James Checchio said. “The abuse of a minor by a priest — as is being reported in this case from New York — is an abomination and sickens and saddens us all.”

___

Follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak

Trump’s Cowardly War on Immigrant Children

Editor’s note: After this article was filed, President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday ending the practice of separating children from families detained crossing the U.S. border illegally. Author Scott Ritter comments: “Trump’s executive order is an empty shell. The language is loose and kids will still be separated and imprisoned apart from their parents.”

Like clockwork, every Sunday night I talk to my parents (by way of explanation, I live in New York, they reside in Rancho Mirage, California—a distance that makes in-person discussions somewhat difficult to manage). After catching up on family news, inevitably our conversation devolves into politics. I had (infamously, in my mom’s view) predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shortly after the Democratic National Convention in July of that year, citing Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings as a candidate more than Trump’s positives. My mom, a Clinton supporter, was aghast that I could side with such a fundamentally flawed character as Trump. In the time Trump has held office, Mom has unfailingly sought to remind me of the president’s obvious (in her mind) failings as a leader and a human being. Our last conversation was pretty much along the same lines—wishing my dad a happy Father’s Day, talking about my niece’s graduation from high school and her future college prospects, the U.S. Open, and—inevitably—Trump.

Normally, I laugh my way through this part of the conversation. This time, however, we were discussing the ongoing policy of separating children from the parents of immigrants who illegally cross into U.S. territory. While I am far more liberal on immigration policy than President Trump, I respect the fact that he was elected as the chief executive and as such is responsible for setting policy. I was perturbed at Congress for failing to jump at the president’s offer to clear the way for more than a million immigrants to legalize their status in exchange for providing him with the funds needed to build a border wall, which was the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. However, like my mom, I was (and am) aghast at what is happening along the U.S.-Mexico border today—between mid-April and the end of May of this year, 1,995 children have been physically separated from their parents at the border. Hundreds more have been taken away since then.

Domestic politics is not my comfort zone—I’ll take weapons of mass destruction and arms control issues over health care and tax policy any day of the week. After I articulated my disdain for the current policy, however, my mom challenged me. “You write about all these other issues,” she said. “Why don’t you write about this one?” I threw out the standard excuse—not my area of expertise. Mom did not relent, pressing me harder. I finally came up with the weakest answer I could possibly give—it wouldn’t make any difference, and worse, it could lead to a backlash that might hurt my chances at getting picked up by conservative publishers in the age of Trump. The bottom line, I said, mattered. Mom relented.

After we hung up I reflected on my answer, and found it wanting. I tuned in to the Sunday news shows, listening to commentators from both sides of the political aisle address the issue. I looked at the imagery of children sitting in cages, put there by sworn American law enforcement officers. And I listened to the sounds of children crying as they were taken away from their parents, begging the officers involved to let them stay. I’m a rule-of-law kind of person, and I believe that all nations—not just the United States—have a sovereign duty and responsibility to their citizens when it comes to securing their borders. In my view, America’s immigration policy—which directly impacts the issue of border security—is fundamentally broken, and I support the efforts of those, Democrat and Republican alike, who are working to resolve this issue.

I’m also a parent, and someone who supports the right of all human beings to live a life free of oppression. In my opinion, what America was—and is—doing to the children of immigrants detained at the border represented the most vile, base form of oppression, if for no other reason than it targets the most innocent and defenseless for the sole purpose of making a political point (i.e., funding for Trump’s vaunted border wall.) Moreover, it awoke within me memories of an experience from my past involving incarcerated children, one in which I had been called upon to weigh the horrors of the images and sounds of their suffering with what I deemed to be a “larger purpose” of stopping a war. My mom’s insistence that I write something that addressed the human tragedy transpiring on America’s border with Mexico prompted me to reflect on that decision, and the larger question of whether the suffering of children can be condoned under any circumstance.

In March 2002, the on-line magazine Salon ran an interview with me conducted by Asla Aydintasbas. Midway through the interview, Aydintasbas asked about defining Iraq beyond simply Saddam Hussein, its former ruler. In my answer, I spoke about what I had seen during my seven years as a United Nations inspector—the institutions that made Iraq and the people who ran them. The point I tried to make was that Iraq was more than just one man, both in terms of the good, the bad, and the ugly. In underscoring the “ugly” aspect of what I had witnessed, I told Aydintasbas that “I’ve been to the children’s prison at Amn al-Amm [the Directorate for General Security headquarters in downtown Baghdad]. It was horrific; these are kids in jail under horrific conditions, sweltering because of the political crimes of their parents. Dad speaks out about Saddam, Mom goes to the women’s prison, the kids go to the children’s prison. And do you know what they do to those kids? I don’t even want to get to that.”

To me, it was a throwaway moment in one of a long series of interviews I was giving at the time to draw attention to what I believed to be the real threat of an American invasion of Iraq. Aydintasbas pushed me several times to consider the horrific nature of Saddam’s rule as justification for regime change. I wouldn’t buy it: “I just cannot accept the argument that we have to intervene to remove Saddam Hussein on moral grounds.” I pointed out that an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis had died due to economic sanctions imposed on Iraq linked to its disarmament obligation. “We have killed almost six times as many Iraqis trying to eliminate weapons of mass destruction programs than weapons of mass destruction have killed in the entire 20th century—that’s a moral issue to me.”

The issue at hand was an incident that occurred during an inspection I led in Iraq on Jan. 11, 1998, as a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM. We were investigating a sensitive piece of U.S.-sourced intelligence which claimed Iraq had conducted experiments using biological agents on live human subjects in the summer of 1995. The information was dated but contained enough specifics to investigate—the prisoners were taken from specific prisons by agents of the Amn al-Amm to remote locations in the desert where the experiments were conducted. UNSCOM was under a lot of pressure from the United States to come up with a smoking gun that proved Iraq was in violation of its obligation to disarm, and the American intelligence was infused with enough troubling data to make it appear credible and give inspectors something to search for during an inspection. After consulting with the White House, UNSCOM ordered me to carry out an inspection. I organized the inspection team into two elements—one would inspect the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the other would visit the Amn al-Amm.

Given the sensitivity of entering the Amn al-Amm, which served as the headquarters of Saddam’s secret police, I put myself in charge of the group inspecting that site. Our presence at the main gate created near panic on the part of the Iraqis—they had not expected us to attempt such a brazen inspection of one of their most sensitive facilities. Per existing inspection protocols, I was eventually allowed to enter along with a team of three inspectors. Our goal was the office of the director, where I would lead a detailed and focused search for any documents that might be related to the human experiments alleged to have been conducted in 1995. I split the team in half to facilitate our survey of the site. My element proceeded to inspect parking garages, residential complexes for the officers and families of the Amn al-Amm, armories and, in the basement of an office building, what could only be described as a children’s prison.

The inspector accompanying me had called me over to a series of ground-level windows looking in on the basement of the structure. Through the barred windows I could see dozens of children, boys and girls of varying ages. The stench was awful—it was obvious the rooms they were crammed into had open latrines and no access to water. When the children saw our faces, a cry went up inside the room, with the ones closest to the windows making gestures at their mouths as if they were hungry and wanted to eat. The Iraqi official accompanying me hurried up to my side. “This has nothing to do with your mandate, Mr. Ritter. Move on.”

My teammate and I headed back to our parked vehicle, but instead of getting inside and driving off, I opened the back of the white U.N. Nissan Patrol SUV and grabbed as many two-liter water bottles and Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) packets from our contingency supply as I could carry, instructing my teammate to do the same. I pushed past the Iraqi official, and made my way back to the windows, where we handed the water and food into the children inside. Within seconds there were armed Amn al-Amm agents standing next to us, pushing themselves between us and the children in the basement, whose arms extended through the window. “That’s enough, Mr. Ritter,” the Iraqi official said. “It’s time to go.”

The look in his eyes, and in those of the armed agents, left little doubt he was deadly serious. I threw the remaining bottles and packets at the window, hoping the kids inside would be able to catch them, but watched in frustration as the Amn al-Amm agents kicked them away. As we left, the agents made their way into the building, where there was no doubt in my mind that they would confiscate the water and food we had handed to the kids. There was nothing either my teammate or I could do except hope the kids would drink and eat as much as they could in the little time they had.

We eventually found the office we were searching for and, given the sensitivity of the location, agreed to meet with the senior Iraqi leadership, including the deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, later that evening to discuss how best to proceed with a document search. As soon as we exited the facility, the Iraqis ceased all cooperation with the team, labeling me a CIA spy and agent provocateur. UNSCOM found itself in a fight for its survival, and I was at the center of the storm. My every move was being tracked by foreign governments and the press, none of whom were looking out for either my or UNSCOM’s best interests. I was muzzled by my leadership, prohibited from saying anything to anybody while negotiations took place to get inspections back on track. Moreover, even if I had been allowed to speak, the children’s prison would have been the last thing I would have brought up. I had been accused by Iraq of being a spy. My only defense against such a charge was to adhere to the four corners of my mandate as an inspector and exclusively focus on the mandate of disarmament we had been given by the U.N. Security Council.

In August of 1998 I resigned from UNSCOM, protesting the failure of the U.S. to support the work of the inspectors. In September 1998 I testified before Congress about weapons inspections in Iraq, and in early 1999 I wrote a book, “Endgame,” which focused on the Iraq crisis from the perspective of its disarmament obligation. I made scores of public appearances, speaking on the topic of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and wrote numerous articles and opinion pieces on the subject. I never once raised the topic of the Amn al-Amm children’s prison, as it simply was outside the scope of my primary focus, which was at the time trying to prevent a war with Iraq being fought over the false pretense of a retained Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capability. In fact, my interview with Aydintasbas was the first time I had publicly discussed the incident of the children’s prison.

In September 2002, to head off what I deemed to be a rush to war by the George W. Bush administration, I returned to Iraq, where I addressed the Iraqi Parliament and met with senior Iraqi government officials in an effort to convince them to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to work and, in doing so, undercut the case America was making for an invasion. In the aftermath of this visit (which proved successful—shortly after I departed Iraq, Saddam announced that he would allow U.N. weapons inspections to resume), I was interviewed by several media outlets about what I was trying to accomplish. One of these interviews, conducted by Massimo Calabresi, appeared in Time magazine. In it, Calabresi asked me to describe what I had seen at the children’s prison in Iraq.

“The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in January 1998,” I replied. “It appeared to be a prison for children—toddlers up to pre-adolescents—whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene.” I then reverted to inspector mode, trying to get the discussion back on topic, which for me was the issue of Iraq’s disarmament obligation. “Actually,” I said, “I’m not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.”

As I had explained early in the interview, “waging peace” was about facilitating “a debate here in the United States on America’s policy toward Iraq, a debate that’s been sadly lacking. We’re facing a critical moment in American history and I believe this is something that has to be more thoroughly looked at.” I argued that “no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact.” Moreover, as I pointed out to Calabresi, the U.S. had “tremendous capabilities to detect any effort by Iraq to obtain prohibited capability. The fact that no one has shown that he has acquired that capability doesn’t necessarily translate into incompetence on the part of the intelligence community. It may mean that he hasn’t done anything.” The Bush administration was arguing that Iraq had a WMD capability; I was challenging that assertion. Children’s prison’s, in my opinion, weren’t part of that debate.

Some people took umbrage at the notion. This included Bill Keller, the former managing editor of The New York Times, who, on December 14, 2002, while serving as a senior writer and op-ed columnist for the Gray Lady, wrote an editorial titled “The Selective Conscience,” in which he called me out by name for my stance. He articulated it as representing the “apotheosis” of the “high-minded quandary” confronting human rights proponents when dealing with the issue of a possible war with Iraq.

To his credit, Keller fairly articulated my position: “Officially, formally, Saddam’s depravity is not relevant to the question of whether America will lead a military effort to oust him. The question of invasion—officially, formally—is all about ridding Iraq of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the means to deliver them.”

However, according to Keller, “the barbarity of the regime is subtext to everything,” noting that “Saddam’s cruelties also touch a little on two central questions about any exercise against Iraq: What’s the evidence that Saddam is a real threat? (Any leader who encourages the torture of children as a mechanism of control is probably never going to become a good neighbor.) How will Iraqis react to an invasion? (Many of them with an outpouring of relief, wouldn’t you think?)”

In the end Keller took a position on Iraq that supported the notion that the issue of weapons of mass destruction trumped the issue of human rights when it came to a decision on whether to go to war.“The view I’ve expressed in this space,” he wrote,“is that Saddam’s appetite for a nuclear weapon makes him a grave danger, that containment is ultimately a sucker’s game, and that Mr. Bush is right to prepare for war—purposefully but patiently, hoping it will be unnecessary, and aiming to act as part of an aggrieved world rather than a posse of one. To my mind the sadistic practices of the Iraqi police state, and the more genocidal impulses—now successfully held in check by American and British air patrols—may be ample cause to indict Saddam as a war criminal, but they are not in themselves enough to launch an invasion.”

While inspectors did, in fact, return to Iraq, their work was not enough to forestall President Bush’s desire for war—in March 2003 a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power. America’s subsequent 15-year experiment in trying to fashion a stable replacement for Saddam’s regime has shown Keller’s morality-derived analysis to have been wrong—in terms of containing both Iran and the forces of Islamic fundamentalism, Saddam’s regime was not only not a threat, but a force of stability that no post-invasion Iraqi government has been able to replicate. Moreover, the incessant anti-American fighting that has shaken Iraq virtually nonstop since 2003 makes a mockery of Keller’s fanciful “outpouring of relief” the American invasion was supposed to presage.

Having been proved right by events, however, doesn’t resolve the “high-minded quandary” raised by Keller regarding troubling human rights issues such as the existence of the children’s prison in Baghdad, and my decision to suppress that horrific reality in favor of what I deemed a higher purpose—preventing an unnecessary war. On April 8, 2003, U.S. Marines moved into Baghdad and liberated a prison containing 100 to 150 children. I was unable to ascertain from the news article reporting this event whether the prison liberated was the one I had seen, or another—the children were said to have been imprisoned for the crime of refusing to join a pro-Saddam children’s militia, making their offense the kind of political “crime” the Amn al-Amm would be responsible for policing, so it’s possible it was.

The Marines’ action set off a firestorm among the chattering class that populates the comments section of web-based publications. Accuracy in Media (AIM) got the ball rolling, reporting on the liberation of a children’s prison on April 24, 2003, along with commentary that noted “the existence of children’s prisons in Iraq was reported last September by Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector.” Although factually incorrect (I had first mentioned the children’s prison in my March 2002 interview with Salon), the AIM article went on to speculate that “the liberal media” was following my lead when it came to its failure to widely report on the existence of the children’s prison. In the comments section, a reader posted what appeared to be an original poem commemorating the action of the Marines, commemorating the moment when the Marines “opened wide those prison gates and cast aside that tyrant’s hate.”

The AIM article was picked up by numerous conservative websites, including a Baptist-affiliated online community, Baptist Board, where one commenter noted that the story of the Marines liberating the children’s prison was “not widely reported by the media,” adding that “this alone would be enough for me to want to wage war on Iraq. Forget all the other reasons. A man who would do this had to be deposed.” This was followed by, “Scott Ritter has known about the prison since ’98 and kept it quiet. I wonder how many children were incarcerated, tortured or killed because Ritter decided not to tell the world.”

I take umbrage at the notion that I somehow opted out of telling the world about the Amn al-Amm children’s prison—the only reason Bill Keller, Time, AIM and the others could comment of the prison’s existence is because I opted to reveal what I saw during my interview with Salon. The notion that my somehow not highlighting the children’s prison prior to this interview led to additional Iraqi children being incarcerated, tortured or killed is on its face absurd. Given the context of the Iraq discussion at the time, any deviation away from my area of expertise would have detracted, not added, to the debate. I know this from personal experience—whenever I tried to shift the debate to include the issue of economic sanctions and the resultant suffering of the Iraqi people (including the deaths of some 500,000 children then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously dismissed as worth the price when it came to containing Saddam Hussein), I was unceremoniously reminded to stay in my lane.

What does resonate with me from this experience, however, is the legitimacy of outrage that existed regarding the existence of the children’s prison, and the callousness of a world, including myself, willing to turn a blind eye to such depravity in the cause of an erstwhile “greater good.” Today a variation of this argument is being used by the Trump administration, seeking as it does to justify the policy of separating children from parents at the border as a necessary evil in service of the greater good that comes from a strong immigration policy and strict border controls. I’m sure Saddam Hussein and his henchmen had similarly constructed arguments as to why they needed to separate children from their parents as well—national security can be used to conceal many sins.

There is a risk in conflating the Trump policy of child separation with whatever policies the Saddam regime used to justify their children’s prisons; most Americans will agree that there is simply no moral equivalency between the United States and Saddam’s Iraq. I, too, share this believe, which is why I raise the issue to begin with—if the U.S. is morally superior to Saddam’s Iraq, then why engage in a policy of forcibly removing children from their parents and imprisoning these children under conditions child psychologists and legal experts have deemed amount to child abuse that are akin to the past practices of that regime?

Of particular concern is the tendency on the part of many conservatives to defend this practice, including Robert Jeffress, a pastor of the First Dallas Baptist Church, who noted, “Any American who commits a crime is going to be separated from his or her child. You don’t send children to jail with their parents in America, so I’m not sure why the only criminals who would get a pass on that policy would be illegal immigrants.” The “crime” Jeffress alludes to is the act of illegal entry into the United States, which last month the Trump administration announced would be charged as a misdemeanor offense requiring the arrest of the perpetrators and the forcible separation of any accompanying children. “If you are smuggling a child,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared when announcing the policy, “then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.” The problem is, there is no law that requires children to be separated from their parents—this is an invention of the Trump administration.

In the end, the forced imprisonment of children by the United States is not about national security, or any other “higher cause.” It is a purely political move designed to compel Congress to do President Trump’s bidding on the issue of border security. That this cynical mindset has led to the forcible separation and cruel imprisonment of children by the government of the United States is an affront to all Americans. These children are not “child actors”, as Anne Coulter has so callously suggested, any more so than the wretched kids locked up in the Amn al-Amm prison were. What is transpiring on the U.S.-Mexico border today is a testament to the soul of our nation, and how low we have collectively sunk in the name of partisan politics.

I’ll do my part to amend for these shortcomings—Mom was right, I did need to write about this issue. There is no ignoring evil when you see it, especially when that evil is being perpetrated by those who act in your name. But until a judge deems what is happening along the border to in fact constitute child abuse chargeable under the law, and properly mandated law enforcement officials move to cease this practice and arrest those responsible for perpetrating this abuse, or Congress acts and rewrites the laws in question and defunds Trump’s criminal border security enterprise, then my words will have little or no impact.

Unlike what happened in Iraq, there is no Marine invasion force coming to liberate these children from America’s prisons—that can only happen when the people who elected Donald Trump turn on him, something polls suggest has not yet happened. The conservative voices that once claimed that the existence of a children’s prison in Baghdad was justification alone for regime change in Iraq, and condemned Saddam Hussein as a dark force who tried to own the minds of the children he imprisoned, are largely silent on the issue of forcible separation and imprisonment of children by the Trump administration, their hypocrisy and moral cowardice on display for the entire world to see.

Fifteen years ago, these alleged pillars of American society took it upon themselves to call me out by name on my stance vis-a-vis children’s prisons in Iraq. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t reflect on what I heard and saw in Baghdad that day and wrestled with what I could have done about it. Today I am returning the favor, calling out those who either actively support the president’s policies concerning the separation and imprisonment of immigrant children, or have turned a convenient blind eye to these policies, citing “national security.” Look at the pictures of the children crying as they are taken away from their parents, and the images of children locked in cages like animals. Listen to their cries for help. And then either change your position and join the chorus of Americans who are rising in opposition to these policies, or rot in hell, along with Saddam Hussein and all those whom you similarly condemned then for perpetrating the same acts you so callously condone today.

And thanks, Mom, for pushing me to write this.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Trump Backs Down, Ends Family Separation Policy

WASHINGTON—Bowing to pressure from anxious allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed himself Wednesday and signed an executive order halting his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents when they are detained illegally crossing the U.S. border.

It was a dramatic turnaround for Trump, who has been insisting, wrongly, that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision.

The news in recent days has been dominated by searing images of children held in cages at border facilities, as well as audio recordings of young children crying for their parents — images that have sparked fury, question of morality and concern from Republicans about a negative impact on their races in November’s midterm elections.

Until Wednesday, the president, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other officials had repeatedly argued the only way to end the practice was for Congress to pass new legislation, while Democrats said Trump could do it with his signature alone. That’s just what he did.

“We’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together,” said Trump who added that he didn’t like the “sight” or “feeling” of children separated from their parents.

The order does not end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught crossing the border illegally. It would keep families together while they are in custody, expedite their cases and ask the Department of Defense to help house them.

But under a previous class-action settlement that set policies for the treatment and release of minors caught at the border, families can only be detained for 20 days. A senior Justice Department official said that hasn’t changed.

“This is a stopgap measure,” said Gene Hamilton, counsel to the attorney general. Justice lawyers were planning to file a challenge to the agreement, known as the Flores settlement, asking that a judge allow for the detention of families until criminal and removal proceedings are completed.

So Trump’s order is likely to create a fresh set of problems and may well spark a new court fight. It’s unclear what happens if no changes to law or the settlement take place by the time families reach the detainment deadline. The language also leaves room to separate children from parents if it’s best for the child’s welfare.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said his department will start reuniting detained immigrant children with their parents — but he’s making no specific commitment on how quickly that can be accomplished.

Assessments for possible detention facilities at military bases have already been done in Texas and another is expected in Arkansas on Thursday.

Trump’s family apparently played a role in his turnaround.

A White House official said first lady Melania Trump had been making her opinion known to the president for some time that she felt he needed to do all he could to help families stay together, whether by working with Congress or acting on his own.

And daughter Ivanka Trump tweeted, “Thank you @POTUS for taking critical action ending family separation at our border.”

Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday, and those on the fence over pending immigration legislation headed to the White House to meet with Trump.

Two people close to Nielsen said she was the driving force behind the turnabout that led to the new order keeping families together. Those people were not authorized to speak publicly and commented only on condition of anonymity.

One of them said Nielsen, who had become the face of the administration’s policy, had little faith that Congress would act to fix the separation issue and felt compelled to act. She was heckled at a restaurant Tuesday evening and has faced protesters at her home.

Trump had tweeted early Wednesday, before issuing his order, “It’s the Democrats fault, they won’t give us the votes needed to pass good immigration legislation. They want open borders, which breeds horrible crime. Republicans want security. But I am working on something – it never ends!”

The “zero tolerance” policy put into place last month moves adults to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and sends many children to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

The policy had led to a spike in family separations in recent weeks, with more than 2,300 minors separated from their families at the border from May 5 through June 9, according to Homeland Security.

The Flores settlement, named for a teenage girl who brought the case in the 1980s, requires the government to release children from custody and to their parents, adult relatives or other caretakers, in order of preference. If those options are exhausted, authorities must find the “least restrictive” setting for a child who arrived without parents.

In 2015, a federal judge in Los Angeles expanded the terms of the settlement, ruling that it applies to children who are caught with their parents as well as to those who come to the U.S. alone. Other recent rulings, upheld on appeal, affirm the children’s rights to a bond hearing and require better conditions at the Border Patrol’s short-term holding facilities.

In 2016, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that child migrants who came to the border with parents and were held in custody must be released. The decision did not state parents must be released. Neither, though, did it require parents to be kept in detention, apart from their children.

Under the Obama administration, such families were usually referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation. There currently are three family detention centers with a total 2,700-bed capacity.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Eric Tucker, Ken Thomas and Alan Fram contributed to this report.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.