By Mark L. Taylor
The Commoner Call (7/19/18)
Ryan Grim, of the investigative news site The Intercept, sends out a weekly newsletter update of stories. Recently he was looking back through the newsletter archives when he found a 2014 HuffPost story on the tens of thousands of immigrant families broken apart the year before by Obama administration policies of detention and deportation.
In that year, 2013, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department deported over 72,000 immigrants who had one or more American-born children. In 2012 the number deported between July 1, 2010, to Sept. 31, 2012 was 200,000.
In fact, Obama was so aggressive toward immigrants he was known as the Deporter In Chief because of his draconian policies, done mostly to placate the right.
The problems with immigration law have been longstanding and crippled by truly bipartisan congressional cowardice and cynical hypocrisy, yet it is the immigrant families — thus the children — who wind up being punished.
While many deported were accused of crimes that fact is deceptive because the of highly elastic definition of “crime” by ICE, which can range from felony to non-violent misdemeanor
The problems with immigration law have been longstanding and crippled by truly bipartisan congressional cowardice and cynical hypocrisy, yet it is the immigrant families — thus the children — who wind up being punished. While the recent Trump program of kidnapping children from immigrants and jailing them in privately run, for-profit concentration camps often hundreds of miles away from parents is a whole new level of crazy cruelty, let us not let the Obama administration off the hook. Their policies also victimized innocent children and laid the foundation for Trump’s escalation and undermines current democratic and liberal outrage over the recent travesty.
Crisis made in the USA
Another aspect of the story that gets too little attention is the long, pernicious and bloody history of United States involvement in systematically undermining and corrupting the governments and twisting the economies of Latin America, where many of the current refugees are coming from. From Wall Street corruption and funding of right wing tyrants to the CIA involvement of overthrowing democratically elected leaders and funding murderous death squads, the never-ending crisis in Central America is an American export that has triggered a massive human rights crisis. Hell, even the loathed MS13 street gang originated in Los Angeles among Salvadoran refugees who fled the American-made violence in their home countries in the 1980s.
This ongoing crisis and systemic cruelty to immigrant families and children done in our name and on our dime is a truly bipartisan program and both parties need to be held to account. It is a moral blot on our nation and soul. The crisis was created by American malfeasance and the cruelty by our government continues today on this side of the border. The ultimate victims of our actions are the children and the groundwork is being laid for another generation of needless tragedy and pain.
Below is the original 2014 HuffPost article on the role of the Obama administration in the current crisis.
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2014 HuffPost Exclusive: Deportation Separated More Than 72,000 Parents And U.S.-Born Children In 2013
By Elsie Foley
The Huffngton Post (6/25/14)
WASHINGTON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year carried out more than 72,000 deportations of parents who said they had U.S.-born children, according to reports to Congress obtained Wednesday by The Huffington Post.
The reports were sent by ICE in April to the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Judiciary Committee, as required by law. ICE confirmed the authenticity of the two reports, which lay out 72,410 removals of immigrants who said they had one or more U.S.-born children in 2013.
The reports show that even parents of U.S. citizens are among the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants being expelled from the United States each year. They hold particular significance as President Barack Obama faces pressure to change his deportation policies to keep families together. Obama’s deportation policies are under increased scrutiny by those in both political parties as the House stalls on immigration reform and the government scrambles to deal with an influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border illegally. While opponents of immigration reform have argued that Obama’s lax enforcement is attracting new unauthorized immigrants, reform advocates are turning to the White House to slow deportations.
Children born in the U.S. are given automatic citizenship, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, and a 2013 report by Human Impact Partners estimated that 4.5 million U.S. citizen children have at least one parent who is undocumented. When a parent is deported, their U.S.-born children sometimes leave with them. But some stay in the U.S. with another parent or family member. Some children end up in U.S. foster care. …
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Ten Of The Most Lethal CIA Interventions In Latin America
Telesur (9/18/16)
Since July 26, 1947, the CIA has played a role in hundreds of assassinations, military coups, and rebellions around the globe, from Argentina to Zaire.
Despite it’s championing of freedom, the CIA’s true objective has always been imperialist in nature. Whether oil in Iran or bananas in Guatemala, the U.S. has a material interest in every country in whose affairs it has meddled.
In order to meet its goals, the CIA recruits influential, intellectual and charismatic personalities. The agency also resorts to threats, kidnapping, torture, enforced disappearances and assassinations. The organization incites violence, uprisings and military rebellion, and causes economic chaos and misery to the people through scarcity of basic foods and so on.
The CIA has been exposed on a number of occasions through documented evidence, leaks of information and whistleblowing by active and former agents. …