This Is Not A Cage

at

America’s largest immigration processing centre in McAllen, Texas

The Truth Behind The Wire

Kindly disregard the attention seeking cries of the few.
They are child actors being given scripts by liberals.
Most of the young people there are delighted with
what we’re doing. There is no policy
of separation from parents. It’s just
if you’re going to process the mamas
and papas, you’ve gotta take
the bambinos away.
The wire we put around them,
for their own safety, isn’t even barbed.
In there, we help kids go to school;
even give them haircuts
with our giant – and deadly
accurate – Immigration
and Customs Enforcement scissors.

This is the exact opposite of cages.
Despite the headlines,
no one has been gassed.
There are, and never have been,
any concentration camps.
These children are in temporary custody;
playing video games
and soccer; getting two snacks
a day and lots of sleep
under their resplendent thermal blankets.
The chain-link fencing
we’ve used to divide into bedrooms
the building we’re warehousing them in
is entirely incidental.

Almost none of the adolescents in our possession
have, as of yet, been turned
into bespoke hat-stands
and raffled off to the dissatisfied wives
of Texan cattle-hands.

And we have, as of today, no plans
to use the hindquarters of the small ones
to fashion a new face for
Rupert Murdoch.

Kevin Higgins

Pic: US Customs and Border Protection

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69 thoughts on “This Is Not A Cage

    1. TheRealJane

      Yes, it really is beyond human ingenuity to imagine not separating dependant children from their parents with no means of reuniting them and storing them in cages.

      1. Termagant

        No, the opposition to separation I understand, it makes some logical sense to do it but in the end the cons outweigh the pros and it’s a good thing that they’ve brought a halt to it. But as for the cage-like conditions of the holding centres – what alternative is there? They need to be held securely and supervised, and there are very many of them.

        1. TheRealJane

          There are pros to taking infants, toddlers and small children from their parents?

          1. Termagant

            @Cian
            Funny

            @ReproBertie, @Janet
            Possibly there’s a better solution. But what is it?

            @Jane
            Yes, of course. The processing of illegal immigrants is a long, hard, tedious process, there’s no reason to make already exhausted children go through it and likely the whole process will go a lot smoother without them. Unless you’re the US and you manage to mislay the children, which would be the main con.

          2. TheRealJane

            That’s not a pro of taking vulnerable children from their known caregivers, that’s a con of having an inefficient policy.

          3. Termagant

            Leaving children in a safe secure place where they’ll be fed, watered and kept an eye on while their parents go and take care of the hard work? There’s got to be a pro to it somewhere or creches wouldn’t exist.

          4. TheRealJane

            You think forcibly removing children from their parents and depositing them in a cage for an undermined period without a prospect of reuniting them is like leaving them in a Creche for a set period during some of the days of the week?

          5. ReproBertie

            Not many crèches use cages, deny children sleep by keeping the light on 24/7, arm their staff or kidnap the children in the first place.

          6. johnny

            did you really say ‘safe secure’ its barbaric,sickening,inhumane to separate innocent children from their parents/care givers,Trump and all the scumbags involved will be defined by this horrific,callous treatment of children.how anyone can defend it is beyond me,try keep up,you as***le,they are children.

            “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.”

            https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/young-immigrants-held-years-virginia-detention-center-claim-horrific-abuse-n885276

          7. Termagant

            @Jane
            It’s the same concept, it’s not the same case. As mentioned before, I’m operating on a pros/cons paradigm here.

            @Bertie
            You’d be right there, but ultimately these are centres for holding individuals illegally crossing the border. They need the lights on because they need to supervise the kids, they’re armed because they’re law enforcement operatives.

            @Johnny
            Hey Johnny! How about you keep up, little buddy, OK? That story refers to a juvenile detention centre, juvie for teenage gang members, it has nothing to do with what we’re talking about here. “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”.

          8. TheRealJane

            It’s not the same concept at all. I wonder at your mentality that you think it could possibly be.

          9. johhny

            hey stupid where the kids then,daycare ?
            where ya think they headed or already at
            i mean seriously how f….k stupid are you.

          10. Termagant

            Well I did lay out how it’s a similar concept, if you didn’t read it that’s up to you. There’s a long boring difficult process that you don’t want to involve kids in for their own good, so you park them somewhere they’ll be safe and you go and get the job done.

          11. TheRealJane

            Yes but your explanation made no sense. Just because you have a long and boring process is not a reason to hold children in cages with no prospect of being reunited with their parents ever.

            This in no way resembles parents choosing a suitable place for a few hours some days of the week and return to their homes and the care of their parents in the evening.

          12. Termagant

            Johnny, the kids in question here are being held in holding centres. They’re not considered to be violent gang members, they’re considered to be kids waiting for their parents to get through the process. There’s no pathway from there to juvenile detention.

          13. Janet, I ate my Avatar

            you clearly don’t have or have ever had much to do with children ( I hope)

          14. ReproBertie

            “ultimately these are centres for holding individuals illegally crossing the border. They need the lights on because they need to supervise the kids, they’re armed because they’re law enforcement operatives.”

            Well when you put it like that I guess it’s perfectly reasonable to have armed goons remove children from their parents, assign them a number, lock them in cages and deprive them of sleep. Maybe if they had just explained it that way then Amnesty International wouldn’t have considered it torture at all.

          15. johnny

            im outa here,get some help man,its just morally wrong on every level.
            no one knows whats happening to them,you cant claim to as the admin wont release that info !

            “One is a former hospital. Another is a retrofitted superstore. One is a tent city with the capacity to grow.

            These are the places where most infants and children are held after they cross the US-Mexico border without prior authorization.
            Children are sent to different facilities across the country depending on their age, gender, history of behavioral issues or criminal activity, or medical needs. These centers are overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, who said the average stay is 56 days.”
            https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/20/politics/unaccompanied-children-centers/index.html

  1. Sheik Yahbouti

    Jaysus, Kevin, a stone would weep. I note that there are no plans to reunite the estimated 2,300 young children (held hostage) with their parents any time soon – or at all. I had cherished the hope that the little female toddler, featured widely on Twitter, might be reunited with her mother, and her shoelaces. :-/

    1. TheRealJane

      Yes, they’re so careless that they don’t even know how to do it. Some of the children separated from their families are too young to be able to identify themselves.

  2. Murtles

    Like most Trump initiatives it’s act first write policy for it later. Unfortunately since enacting one of his beloved executive orders (he loves the cameras, using his marker for his massive signature, tweeting about it) on immigration, the scale of detainment overloaded the authorities. Some kids were sent with relations to reunite with parents on the US side or in the hope that they’ll find a better life (the American dream and all). However their relations were separated, some gave false names as they were caught before or don’t want to be associated with legal or illegal relations already in the USA, some were hastily deported, some move elsewhere with little or no paperwork.. As a result, per a former ICE Director, there will be thousands of children orphaned by the system as no one knows where to send them back or forward to. Illegal or not, in the end, they’re just kids.

  3. Emily Dickinson

    It’s terrible. But every time someone in the Irish media goes on about Trump, I wonder whether there aren’t problems closer to home more worthy of our attention.

    Just to take one example. We can’t trust the people leading our police service – not even to tell the truth about each other. Yet watching the news and reading the papers, you’d hardly know there was a tribunal taking place.

    Perhaps we should leave the Mexican border to those who live along it and focus on sorting out our own problems.

  4. Sheik Yahbouti

    Dja know what, lads – we’re approaching this from the wrong perspective. Who will compensate the hundreds of paedophiles who have spent money and time getting to Texas and Michigan in the hopes of employment at a “Tender Years Shelter”? Won’t someone please think of the perverts?

    1. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

      Jaysus, Sheik. Let’s hope their background checks are effective if that’s what’s happening.

      1. TheRealJane

        Yeah, but these paedos would work for free and these children are animals in cages so it makes good fiscal sense.

        Also a great deterrent to others – don’t go if you don’t want your baby nonced up in a cage. If you do go, we can only assume that you want your child nonced up in a cage.

      2. Sheik Yahbouti

        A few will always get through, darling – particularly if they are “not known to the police”.

        1. TheRealJane

          I was agreeing with you – these places are clearly set up with the intention of using as little money as possible to run and are for sure a paedo magnet.

          And I certainly have seen Trump supporters opine that if you don’t want your child in a cage, don’t go to that border. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine them justifying child abuse in the same terms.

  5. Brother Barnabas

    “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”

    he’s well and truly pi $$ed on that anyway

    1. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

      I think he prefers being wee-weed upon, but I get where you’re coming from, needlenits.

      I’ve looked up needlenits. I don’t know where it comes from. Term of endearment, obvs.

  6. Sheik Yahbouti

    I’m sure you’ll forgive me for the hyperbole, lads. However, the serious point remains – these children are in REAL danger in ‘For Profit’ facilities. I genuinely dread to think what evils may befall these blameless nippers.

    1. Listrade

      I think the absence of conspiracy theories on this is telling. You have a napkin and a pizza restaurant and we get a conspiracy theory involving deep state child trafficking, murder, baby eating, satanic ritual and sexual abuse. Yet no reports of missing children from any patron of the restaurant.

      Thousands of children without any documentation are separated from their parents, shipped around the whole US without any record of who they are or traceability as to their parents by contracted private companies without any accountability and…nothing. Not a single theory.

      Parents weren’t even given a receipt for the children taken from them. They will have no way of proving how many kids were taken. They’ve already admitted they probably won’t be able to account for all children. We have court documents with allegations of drugging children.

      But no. Only pizza restaurants referring to a napkin.

      Probably time to admit you were duped, or stupid, or racist, or sexist, or all of them.

  7. kellma

    I mean Trump will say that Mexico is doing nothing to stem the flow of illegal immigration and that the US of A is busting at the seams from all these lawless immigrants. He (and a lot of his supporters) are saying this is a necessary hard line that has to be taken to force Mexico to step up to the plate. Whatever. Look at what the output is. The output is that this process is putting little humans in their tender years at great risk. How on earth anyone can sleep at night whilst facilitating this, is beyond me. Are there not enough children born into sh*t and misery and subjected to sh*tty parents and situations thanks to the cruelties of nature/the luck of the universe, without being responsible for actively engineering such a mass child abuse process. The trauma these children are being subjected to is nothing short of child abuse, nevermind the idea that this awards those with predilections to children a potential avenue.

  8. Sentient Won

    Weird how the loudest voices here concern trolling for “The Children” have no problem separating kids from their mothers when it involves ripping those children piece by piece from the womb.

    Irony much?

    1. kellma

      and he’s back…. And the pro lifers have no interest in children that are actually born.
      Who is the bigger BOO BOO. I know where my money is.

    2. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

      You mean when it’s the woman’s choice to do so? I don’t get your point.

        1. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

          WOMP WOMP!
          I didn’t know how to articulate that until I saw that toe-rag Corey Lewandowski using it on Fox.

          1. Brother Barnabas

            i had to google that

            usage example: “Get a womp womp on with your Facebook friend Günter”

            have to admit to being none the wiser

          2. Andyourpointiswhatexactly?

            Nope. It’s that comedy sad noise they make with a trombone. WOMP WOMP!

  9. Huey Luas on the News

    Time to send those American students and tourists back home with a message that we don’t want them here as long as their Commander-in-Chief tortures kids. Every time you meet one of these Septic Tanks, let them know.

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