Photo by Naveed Pervaiz on Unsplash
Besides our country’s treatment of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, what else is there to take action about this week? A whole lot! Let’s get to it.
Please note that this issue discusses, and contains links to frank discussion of, sexual assault. If you’re not in a place to handle that, skip the 10-minute workout. There’s plenty else for you to do.
Two weeks ago we talked about family separation at the US border, and we’ve talked a lot about US immigration policy and enforcement in general. Today we are talking about it again. Like you, we are frustrated and sometimes despondent about what is being done in our names, but like you, we will keep fighting this fight for as long as it takes.
The Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant children separated from their parents in detention facilities is not a new policy, but new stories about the substandard conditions that these children have been kept in have recently broken. Children have been forced to care for each other in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with migrants even being held at Fort Sill, a site that was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. Many children in government custody do not have soap or clean clothes. In response, House Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has compared the detention facilities to concentration camps. Since September of last year, a number of children have diedin government custody (none had died for 10 years previously).
