Flight attendant: I won't work flights that separate immigrant kids from families

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2. Flight attendant: I won't work flights that separate immigrant kids from families

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ThisIsNotNormalHat Retweeted:

ICE lied, told flight attendants the kids were a soccer team. They weren't. Now this flight attendant won't work when the US transports children away from their parents. "I might as well have been a collaborator on their transport." https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Flight-attendant-I-won-t-work-flights-that-13008372.php … #EndFamilySeparation

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Flight attendant: I won't work flights that separate immigrant kids from families

'I will no longer be complicit'

Hunt Palmquist, for the Houston ChronicleJune 19, 2018 Updated: June 20, 2018 12:34 pm

For the past 29 years I have been a flight attendant for a major U.S. airline. Several weeks ago, I worked two flights (one to San Antonio and the other to McAllen) which proved to be two of the most disturbing flights I've ever experienced in my career. ... On board these particular flights were ICE agents and migrant children (approximately four to eleven years old) who had been separated from their families and were being flown to a "relocation" site.

Since working the two flights, the images of those helpless children have burned into my psyche. The little children whose faces were full of fear, confusion, sadness and exhaustion left me somewhat traumatized as it occurred to me a few weeks later that I might as well have been a collaborator in their transport.
....

I can't help but think about their journey to their makeshift "homes" which, historically speaking reminds one of another group of people who were forced out of their homes and relocated to ghettos. ... As a result of what I witnessed, I have made a decision that if I'm ever assigned to a flight with children who've been separated from their families, I will immediately remove myself from the trip due to the nature of this unconscionable act by my government and my employer's complicity.

I have told my story to many of my flight attendant colleagues and they have pledged to do the same. ... Since sharing my story, I learned from a fellow flight attendant that he was lied to by an ICE agent who said the children on the flight were part of a soccer team. When pressed, the agent finally admitted that they were, indeed children who were being relocated to assigned camps.
....

Hunt Palmquist is a flight attendant based in Dallas. This is a lightly edited version of his Facebook post.

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