The real-life court experiences of immigrant children separated from their parents

[lapucelle]

A new film by the nonprofit Immigration Counseling Service and filmmaker Linda Freedman shows the real-life court experiences of immigrant children separated from their parents, using actual court transcripts.

Unaccompanied: Alone in America shows former Oregon Judge William C. Snouffer portraying the stern-faced immigration trial judge who asks several Latino children if they are even aware who or what a lawyer is or does. Several respond to the U.S. government's charges, in Spanish, that they don't know the definition of a lawyer and are clearly not represented by one. The court proceedings in the four-minute film take quotations directly from transcripts from immigration trials in which migrant toddlers often appear alone and frightened.

ww.newsweek.com/unaccompanied-minors-immigration-court-children-william-snouffer-judge-1008472

vimeo.com/268812608

From the 2016 Democratic Party Platform:

We should ensure due process for those fleeing violence in Central America and work with our regional partners to address the root causes of violence. We must take particular care with children, which is why we should guarantee government-funded counsel for unaccompanied children in immigration courts.

https://www.democrats.org/party-platform#broken-immigration

For more information:

https://www.unaccompaniedchildren.org/unaccompanied

[SummerSnow]

1. Sigh, what have we become ?

[The Blue Flower]

2. Of course it's absurd and cruel: drumpf is testing the boundaries

If he can get away with this, he can start doing it to other populations in the country.

[RandomAccess]

4. You're exactly right, except

I think it's less testing the boundaries than getting things ready -- NORMALIZING the practices.

[RandomAccess]

3. The Trump administration

* is actively preventing asylum seekers from being legally able to make their case
by limiting to zero or nearly zero the number of people it will allow into the "legal" ports of entry on the border for asylum seekers

* is arresting ALL who cross at other than those few legal entry points
even tho most are asylum seekers who have the legal RIGHT to seek asylum by both US and international law

* and calling the children that were separated from legal asylum seekers who were arrested "unaccompanied minors"
which puts them in a different category for treatment than if they'd been allowed to stay with their LEGAL asylum-seeking parents, and makes it a lot easier for the parents to lose custody

* has not kept adequate records and are hard-pressed to re-unite parents and children,
as a Federal court has ordered, because while they MAY know where the adults are, and they MAY know where all the children are, they DON'T know which children go with which parents, AND many of these children are too young to be able to tell them

* Is clearly committing crimes against humanity and atrocities.