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Welcome, New Citizens! Join America in Torturing Children

168 people from 41 countries went to Mount Rushmore Thursday and left as American citizens. Judge Jeffrey Viken swore them in and welcomed their contributions to America:

“It is a glorious day,” Viken said, noting the immigration ceremony coincided with Flag Day. He called the new immigrants “persons of good moral character” who support the U.S. Constitution.

He told the group they would enrich the fabric of our country by sharing their intelligence, energy and culture. “You will make the country a stronger place,” he said [Brad Johnson, “U.S. Gains Enthusiastic New Group of Citizens,” Watertown Public Opinion, 2018.06.15].

The president of the Mount Rushmore Society concurred:

“We are a nation of immigrants,” added Tim Raben, president of the Mount Rushmore Society. The monument is “a worldwide symbol of democracy and freedom.”

The joyful group crossing the stage Thursday will make our country stronger, Raben said.

“We appreciate the talents and the skills that you will use to contribute to this country,” he said [Johnson, 2018.06.15].

While we welcomed several dozen new Americans at Mount Rushmore, The United States federal government is destroying America’s reputation as a haven for all who would join our noble founding cause by torturing thousands of innocent children at our southern border:

Those who work at this shelter, whom [American Academy of Pediatrics president Colleen Kraft] declined to name for privacy reasons, were doing what they could to make sure the children’s needs are met. The children were fed; they had beds, toys, a playground and people who change their diapers. But there are limits to what workers could do. Not only could they not pick up or touch the children; they could not get their parents for them.

“The really basic, foundational needs of having trust in adults as a young child was not being met. That contradicts everything we know that the kids need to build their health,” Kraft said.

Such a situation could have long-term, devastating effects on young children, who are likely to develop what is called toxic stress in their brain once separated from caregivers or parents they trusted. It disrupts a child’s brain development and increases the levels of fight-or-flight hormones in their bodies, Kraft said. This kind of emotional trauma could eventually lead to health problems, such as heart disease and substance abuse disorders [Kristine Phillips, “‘America Is Better Than This’: What a Doctor Saw in a Texas Shelter for Migrant Children,” Washington Post, 2018.06.16].

It must be hard for those sworn in as citizens Thursday to be proud of their new country when it visits these horrors upon children in the name of law and Jesus. The damage we have done to our nation’s reputation in two years will take decades to repair.

59 Comments

  1. OldSarg 2018-06-18 10:23

    A man is arrested for child abuse. The law takes away the kids. Is that right? It is the law.

    A mom burned her kids with a cigarette. The law takes away her kids. Is that right? It is the law.

    A man comes across the border breaking the law, by crossing the river instead of the border gate two miles away. The law takes away his kids. Is that right? It is the law.

    If we had a decent wall in place the third person would have entered through the border gate, let us know who and why he was here, and the kid would have remained with him but you do not care. The first two instances none of you care about because for you it isn’t about the child at all. All you care about is making political points.

  2. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-06-18 10:34

    Turn off your prefab talking points and read the article, OldSarg. Children are separated from their parents, incarcerated, and denied caring human touch. No specious legalisms justify torturing children.

  3. mike from iowa 2018-06-18 10:47

    A man comes across the border breaking the law, by crossing the river instead of the border gate two miles away. The law takes away his kids. Is that right? It is the law.

    It is not a law and Democrats had nothing to do with Drumpf/Sessions policy of forcibly taking kids away from their parents to use as a bargaining chip for Drumpf to get his wall.

  4. mike from iowa 2018-06-18 10:49

    Drumpf’s persistent lies that this is a law Dems passed has been debunked over and over and Drumpf and OldSilicone kept repeating that lie.

  5. Loren 2018-06-18 11:00

    Cory, what happened to that OldSarg filter you promised us? ;-)

  6. owen reitzel 2018-06-18 11:05

    The sad part is the party of family values and right to live remains largely silent. Some have stood up, but not many. Where is Noem Thune and Rounds? Where in the hell is the outrage?

  7. Porter Lansing 2018-06-18 11:58

    Porter Predicts ….. wait for it. “If I get the total amount needed to “build the wall” I can reunite these children with their parents, almost immediately.” ~ President Trump soon.
    I have many Jewish friends and in respect for the Holocaust (which nothing can compare to) I don’t make Nazi references, written or out loud. What I think, however is open for your imagination.

  8. Dana P 2018-06-18 12:52

    “Crossing the border” is a non-violent offense, OS. The crimes you are describing are physical and violent assaults. Of COURSE in your scenarios, the kids would be separated from their malicious parents. Your false comparisons are ridiculous.

    Porter is correct, I believe. Once the knee is taken. Once the ring is kissed and the wall (that Mexico would pay for ), then trump will straddle the white horse, ride in like a king, and proclaim that thanks to him, these children are now back with their parents.

  9. Porter Lansing 2018-06-18 12:56

    From The “Pathological Lying President” File ~
    TrumpTweet… at 9:02 a.m.: “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”
    — FACT-CHECK: Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider), a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin: “Crime in Germany is at its lowest point since reunification.”
    https://blogs.psychcentral.com/caregivers/2014/09/6-subtle-characteristics-of-the-pathological-liar/

  10. bearcreekbat 2018-06-18 14:15

    Early last week I contacted Noem, Thune, and Rounds about this issue and recieved a spam-like “thanks for the e-mail” and we will get back to you later from Noem and Rounds; nothing from Thune. So far no further follow up.

    OS to the contrary, most don’t think locking children in cages is an appropriate or humane means to discourage parents from committing a crime.

    By the way, OS, didn’t Kristi Noem commit multiple misdemeanors, including one resulting in an arrest warrant? I don’t know, but must wonder if her children were ever in the same car with her as she violated SD highway laws and endangered these kids and everyone else on the highways and roads (think Bill Janklow). Under your rules OS, why weren’t Kristi’s children removed and locked in cages to teach Kristi a lesson and to deter her and others from further dangerous criminal conduct?

    An addional issue for young kids who are taken from a parent is attachment disorder, a life long condition disrupting and damaging the child’s ability to form human relationships and emphathize with others.

    As a general proposition, attachment theory asserts that the affective bonds formed in close interpersonal relationships between infants/adolescents and their primary caregivers are pivotal to understanding personality development. Taking a couple of examples from the lives of two famous serial killers, Ted Bundy and Aileen Wuornos, we see some interesting similarities between the kind of attachment they experienced as children and the paths they chose to live.

    https://ideasinpsychology.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/attachment-theory-serial-killers-and-asd/

  11. OldSarg 2018-06-18 15:11

    “Illegal immigrants are kidnapping children and bringing them across the border, hoping to appear to be families so they can take advantage of lax enforcement policies, the Obama administration told a federal appeals court this week.

    Leon Fresco, a deputy assistant attorney general who handles immigration cases, made the stunning claim as he defended the administration’s policy of detaining illegal immigrant parents and children caught traveling together as they jump the border. After a federal judge last year ordered the families quickly released, Mr. Fresco said it’s served as an enticement for kidnapping.” June 7, 2016 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/7/illegal-immigrants-kidnapping-children-to-sneak-in/

  12. OldSarg 2018-06-18 15:20

    “My name is Nancy. I am Salvadoran and I was kidnapped from April 13 to June 22, 2009.” Federal police, Nancy said, “took the money that was given to them as a bribe to keep silent. The kidnappers told us to pay attention so that we would see that they had paid for everything. One of the men began to bother us women and sexually abuse us. Then one of our male companions got angry and tried to defend us, but he couldn’t, because they raped him, too, and then they beat him to death.” April 2015, The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/where-are-the-children

  13. bearcreekbat 2018-06-18 16:27

    OS, did you even read these articles you posted? While it appears true that a deputy AG made such a claim, your linked article points out:

    He did not back up that claim in court, and did not respond to a follow-up email seeking comment. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles detention and deportation, declined to comment, citing the ongoing case, while Customs and Border Protection, which guards the border, did not respond to a request for comment.

    But Peter Schey, the lawyer who argued in court on behalf of the families, and is in touch with hundreds of families as part of the lawsuit, said there’s no evidence to back up Mr. Fresco’s claim.

    Meanwhile, your 2nd link tells a sad story but appears unrelated to this new American policy of seperating young children from their parents and locking them up in cages in an effort to send a message to people seeking help: stay away, we don’t want you and we will not help you. Instead we will do everything in our power to harm your children.

    To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there you go again OS.

    Meanwhile, someone charged with a federal crime might be arrested if it is a serious or violent crime. Even then, he or she appears before a magistrate within a day or so and will be released on conditions pursuant to the federal Bail Reform Act (just like Paul Manafort) unless the government can prove he or she is dangerous or a flight risk. I have seen no such administration claims in this case, and I doubt that the government would be worried that these asylum seekers are going to leave the country if released pending trial.

    Meanwhile, the normal process used in federal prosecutions of non-violent misdemeanors is for a federal officer to issue a citation with a court date and allow the charged party to appear without being detained.

    The reality seems to be that the Trump administration has been working for some time on a plan to discourage families in distress from seeking asylum in the US and have concluded that if America is known as a country that will take children from their mother’s arms and lock them up in cages, perhaps fewer people will look to the USA as a refuge from violence and extreme poverty.

    OS can post all the anecdotes he can find on Google of crime victims, in his effort to paint mothers and fathers seeking asylum as evil people who should have their kids taken away and locked in cages like animals. But there is no claim by our government that these people have committed any serious crime whatsoever, hence, these anecdotes are simply irrelevant to what has been started by Sessions and Trump. We should not be punishing children for the minor non-violent misdemeanors of a parent seeking help, nor punish these families and children for serious crimes committed by other people.

  14. mike from iowa 2018-06-18 16:45

    Blogger mike from iowa said…

    From the ACLU on Border Patrol misbehavior- President Trump was endorsed by the Border Patrol union, which had never previously endorsed a presidential candidate. If the abuses were this bad under Obama when the Border Patrol described itself as constrained, imagine how it must be now under Trump, who vowed to unleash the agents to do their job.

    Stand up and eg….cheer them on, OS.

  15. mike from iowa 2018-06-18 16:51

    But, but Obama took kids from families, too, wah,wah.

    ere is Lawandcrime.com’s last sentence: To be clear: the Obama administration’s use of ATEP wasn’t intended to break-up families–that was an expected side effect–while Trump’s recently-confirmed policy is expressly directed toward that end in the name of “deterrence.”

    In fact lateral repatriastion was geared towards male immigrants aged 20 to sixty and was intended to make border crossing distatsteful to immigrants without having the same harsh division of families of Drumpf’s policies.

  16. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-06-18 17:10

    OldSarg accepts and justifies the fact that the United States government is torturing children. Shame.

  17. jerry 2018-06-18 18:02

    Governors are now refusing to send National Guard troops to the border, not just Democratic ones either. When you read the history books, you can see how Nazi Germany got started. I don’t think we want to follow trump down that road.

  18. bearcreekbat 2018-06-18 18:18

    Ther Nazi comparison is often misplaced and inappropriate. Here, however, reports that ICE is telling migrants that they taking the kids for “bathing” or “showers” is awfully close to the Nazi’s telling Jews they were going to the “showers.” In the first case the kids end up in cages away from their parents while in the second case they end up in gas chambers. What has our country become under Donald J. Trump? I guess it is easy to “win” when your enemy is helpless kids and their parents. What a bunch of heartless cowards we Americans have become.

  19. jerry 2018-06-18 18:53

    There are those among us like Mrs. George W. Bush, Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Clinton that have stood up. There are the governors that have now refused to send requests to the border for helicopters and the like because they know that what our federal government is doing is against code of conduct for a western power and more like the Russians that have taken our government under their wing. These public figures are saying no to this crime against humanity perpetuated by our American government.

  20. T 2018-06-18 19:28

    Oldsarge and all the rest of you
    “Build the wall so it’s legal”
    I live along the wall more times than you every year
    There is no physical way or economical way to get a wall along the border across some of that terrain Visit Ajo AZ
    The countryside looks like a graveyard with memorials that people a lot braver than you or I sacrificed to enter the country and the elements got them first To have a life so miserable you sell your daughters and sons to slave farms here that can never pay off there debts for a better life, and the pain and suffrage goes on and on. To try and do it legal?
    You go there and follow these families to try and do it legal then come back to me and we will talk. To separate people in desperate times is the cruelest and unusual punishment one can imagine.
    Talk to border patrols! The only ones making money or will benefit from dumps Wall is HIS contractors, taking tax papers money
    You are all sheep and fools to buy into Build the wall
    You sit up north here and drink the kook aid (yes I meant kook aid)

  21. jerry 2018-06-18 19:45

    trump will not say where the girls are, we only know the boys are in concentration camps. The young girls though may well be marketed into human trafficking, the kind that NOem was supposedly against.

  22. mike from iowa 2018-06-18 19:51

    Just what we needed. Ann Coulter warns that crying children on the border are actors reading from a script.

    Tucker Carlson at Fake Noize warns viewers to discount every news bit from mainstream media as fake.

    BCB’s last sentence says it best.

  23. Roger Cornelius 2018-06-18 20:38

    bear
    The first sentence of your last comment caught my attention, “The Nazi comparison is often misplaced and inappropriate”.
    There are plenty of comparisons between Trump and Hitler, but they are not exact. Hitler seemed to be very precise and orderly to accomplish his goals while Trump is haphazard and random.
    I do think we are setting ourselves up for a civil revolt of some nature, especially with all the weaponry out there. Is this what Trump wants?

  24. jerry 2018-06-18 20:45

    Even Ted Cruz has had enough of this Nazism from trump and company. He is introducing legislation to end this cruelty. Will our Thune and Rounds step up? Maybe. They should listen to the children, those torn from their parents arms by the thugs of a heartless government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoncXfYBAVI

  25. Bucko Bear 2018-06-18 21:05

    Can’t “oldsarge” get his/her own blog ??

  26. Debbo 2018-06-18 23:33

    Regardless of what any child’s parents have done, it is abhorrently monstrous to put children in cages. I will say it– It is Hitlerian –to put children in cages.

  27. Ed 2018-06-19 10:00

    The “pro-life and family values” party has shown its true colors. Since they like to quote the Bible so often, then lets do it. Jesus said, “suffer the little children unto me.” He didn’t say, let the children suffer. Trump supporters should get on their knees and beg forgiveness. Senator Gillibrand is correct when she says this policy of separating children from their parents is the work of the devil and this is a fight of good versus evil. The silence of Noem, Thune, and Rounds is appalling.

  28. mike from iowa 2018-06-19 13:13

    South Dakota’s wingnuts in congress will address the situation as soon as some right wing economist can tie in immigration reform with more taxcuts for the koch bros.

    They’ll do it, too, because….

  29. Porter Lansing 2018-06-19 13:20

    This is where ISIS, TALIBAN, Bin Laden and HAMAS came from!! These kids are going to grow up with a blood debt owed to them from Trump’s USA. Save us, someone.
    “Exclusive: Former ICE Director: Some migrant family separations are permanent,” by NBC News’ Julia Ainsley: “The former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that migrant parents separated from their children at the border are sometimes unable to relocate their child and remain permanently separated. ‘Permanent separation. It happens,’ said John Sandweg, who served as acting director of ICE under the Obama administration from 2013-2014. Sandweg’s warning contradicts White House messaging that the separation of women and children migrants under the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy is only temporary.” https://nbcnews.to/2JSW1VC

  30. Debbo 2018-06-19 14:05

    “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

  31. Dicta 2018-06-19 14:16

    The latest episode of this Stephen Miller fever dream has conservative news outlets comparing children being forcibly separated from their parents to summer camp. My ability to stomach this brazenly stupid apologia is getting stretched to the breaking point.

  32. Donald Pay 2018-06-19 14:28

    In occupied WWII Europe, one of the ways Jewish families took to evade family extermination, was to voluntarily split families up, farm out children to an underground network of religious and other folks who opposed the Nazis and would “adopt” children to keep them alive. Even though this was a voluntary “relocation” effort by the Jewish families, it had devastating and lasting impacts on children. I was moved by this account:
    https://www.theguardian.com/profile/yoka-verdoner

    What Trump is doing to these children is far, far worse than what is described in this article. Trump is a monster, a Hitler. and he needs to go.

  33. Debbo 2018-06-19 15:14

    “Even so, there will be no full-throated condemnation of the Trump administration’s immigration policy from Gentzel, who voted for the president, as did the vast majority of his congregants. For many conservative Christians, the brutal headlines of children torn from hysterical parents are weighed against other concerns, chief among them what social conservatives call religious liberty regarding issues of marriage and abortion.”
    https://goo.gl/6hsnGD

    Yeah, if those bereft, terrified children were fetuses, white evangelicals would be losing their minds over this.

  34. Debbo 2018-06-19 15:20

    What separating a child from parents does to child’s brain.

    “The effect is catastrophic,” said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School.

    Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Those stress hormones can start killing off dendrites — the little branches in brain cells that transmit mes­sages. In time, the stress can start killing off neurons and — especially in young children — wreaking dramatic and long-term damage, both psychologically and to the physical structure of the brain.

    https://goo.gl/4jwPg9

  35. Jenny 2018-06-19 21:17

    Absolutely it’s a no brainer these children will have PTSD. There is not much more of a traumatic life event than being taken away from your parents at such a young age. The late effects will be devastating for these babies.
    Lord have mercy, how much meaner can this Adminstration get?

  36. jerry 2018-06-19 21:50

    NOem, Thune and Rounds have all agreed, it would seem, to use this same name for the concentration camps for children in Texas and other areas. These three have hit new lows, but they are only half way through the Reich, so I am quite sure, they will hit even lower… or they can change…What do you think?

    Kinder-KZ Litzmannstadt (German: Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt, Polish: Prewencyjny Obóz Policji Bezpieczeństwa dla Młodzieży Polskiej w Łodzi) was a Nazi German concentration camp for Polish Christian children in occupied Łodź during World War II, established in December 1942 adjacent to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto where Polish Jews were imprisoned before the Holocaust.”

    It just seems so fitting, these three are condoning concentration camps for children. Family values?

  37. Porter Lansing 2018-06-19 22:16

    Right, Jerry. Republicans are so guilty they’re making up names to hide their shame. e.g. These children aren’t in cages. They’re in chain link enclosures … with chain link canopies for personal protection.

  38. T 2018-06-19 22:34

    Debbi
    Interesting hit
    Couldn’t help but notice one of the commenters saying
    “Come in the right way” and this wouldn’t happen, something to that affect
    Dear come in the right way people;
    These people cannot go to their government like you or I to apply for something like a trip to America, we get a passport, if people if Mexico are lucky to have money (a lot of it, or have a connection they can ge5 a passport. Your average broke despair citizen cannot. if the family can escape gangs, authoritarians (mafia) or not have to sell their daughters, or woman made to work such as having sex with animals
    For the american tourists, they pay mules or better yet try to cross the terrain such like the one at Ajos.
    You tell me what the “right way is for these people” there isn’t one
    This is why they flee to US
    They clean the toilets and pick the vegetables and mow your yards

    And one more thing american tourists
    Stop paying to see the woman and the donkey in Mexico
    You are part of the problem…………….

  39. jerry 2018-06-19 22:46

    NOem, Thune and Rounds support the Christian children’s concentration camps. Their silence is aiding and abetting this crime against humanity. Their silence is no different than the silence from the communities where the concentration camp at Auschwitz happened. Now, we, the United States has withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council, we have fallen a long long way. Thanks to our three amigos, they should be proud of the way they have stood and watched and applauded from the sidelines.

  40. Porter Lansing 2018-06-19 22:54

    Daily Conclusion … The detainees and their children are asylum seekers and are breaking no law.

  41. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2018-06-20 07:59

    American Nazis are looking for an excuse to torture children of color. Horrifying.

  42. mike from iowa 2018-06-20 08:24

    rump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.

    Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

    Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside U.S. Border Patrol processing stations.

    Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is starting up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents.

  43. jerry 2018-06-20 08:48

    Look around South Dakota, they are here as they are all over this country. As we now know a 3 month old has been sent to Michigan! Oh the dangers of a 3 month old child seeking asylum in the land of “Give me your poor”. we disgrace ourselves each day we live under the authoritarian rule of trump and his henchmen and ghouls that separate Christian children from their parents. https://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/0,4613,7-138–471110–,00.html

    Sessions said that with the Jews, they were not allowed to leave Nazi Germany, more or less. With these asylum seekers, neither will they.

  44. T 2018-06-20 11:18

    Jerry
    Thanks for
    Michigan info
    So that’s a BS answer if I ever read one
    What’s the skinny as to their state collecting from feds per kid
    Or any housing unit for that matter
    What do
    They get financially?

  45. jerry 2018-06-20 11:46

    They get paid handsomely on all of these emergency funding thingy’s. All the funds are scattered so it is hard to account for the graft. After Hurricane Katrina, there was a gent in Rapid City, Mike Derby, who got right at $100,000.00 to maybe feed some refugees with boxed lunches for those that never came to Rapid City, good work if you can get it. Whenever there is chaos in a republican regime, there is plenty of money to be made to cover up that chaos.

  46. T 2018-06-20 21:14

    Thanks Jerry

  47. T 2018-06-20 21:26

    Jerry
    Side note
    So a facility is awarded 458 million
    Advertises for help couldn’t help but notice the online requisites for most of them were
    “High school or equivalent degree”
    There are some specialist highly qualified for some traumatized kids……. said no one ever……….

  48. jerry 2018-06-20 21:35

    T, now you know what Devos as the Education guru, thinks of professionalism in public schools. 458 million bucks means that if they hire some GED folks, they can pay them minimum and then make them work overtime and stiff them. trump world is a world of complete and absolute corruption. Ya gotta be a evil to play with this bunch of gangsters.

  49. Debbo 2018-06-20 23:02

    Gawd I hate that bunch and what they are doing to children. Absolutely Hitlerian, without question. They are depraved, evil, psychopathic.

  50. mike from iowa 2018-07-01 16:34

    Update on Boise stabbing- The victims included the 3-year-old birthday girl, two 4-year-olds and children ages 6, 8 and 12. Three adults also were injured in the attack. Four of the victims have life-threatening injuries and one child has been flown to Salt Lake City for medical treatment.

    Read more here: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/state/article214149584.html#storylink=cpy

    The stabbee has a long violent past and was staying at apt for a short time until he was asked to leave because of his behavior. He attacked the kids as revenge.

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