By Leah Litman/Take Care

This post is the second part of a series on the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border. You can read part one here.
In part one, I gave some historical context to the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from families. Today I want to debunk the administration’s position that it is required, by law, to separate children from their families once ICE detains their parents.
To understand the issue in Ms. L v. ICE, it’s helpful to underscore that children might enter the United States under different circumstances. One circumstance is where a minor enters the United States alone, in which case the Office of Refugee Resettlement would assume custody of the minor. ORR was formally created in 1980, and its responsibilities, as its name suggests, include assisting refugees with settling into the United States.
The Homeland Security Act, which restructured the Immigration and Nationality Services, expanded ORR’s authority to encompass minors who enter the United States alone. That decision ensured that minors who entered the United States alone would not be left to the mercy of the Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in particular.
ORR offers a more humane and holistic means of dealing with minors who are alone, in part because ORR has a sponsor system, under which it can release minors to approved sponsors, including a child’s parents, who may already be in the United States. By way of comparison: ICE is the enforcement arm of DHS that polices violations of immigration laws, whereas ORR is designed to help certain vulnerable populations with their lives in the United States. Giving ORR custody over minors who entered the United States alone was a way of recognizing that children who enter the United States alone encounter even more difficulties and face even more challenges in the U.S. immigration system than adults do.
Alternatively, however, an entire family might enter the United States together, either claiming asylum or perhaps without any grounds for entry at all. The question in Ms. L. v. ICE is what should happen to children in those families, including when the government chooses to put the parents in a very unforgiving ICE detention facility that is not set up for “family” detention.

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Posted on June 7, 2018

By Leah Litman/Take Care

This post is the first in a series on the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border.
After more than a year of suggestions that it would do so, the Trump administration is forcibly separating children from their parents at the border.
Last fall, then-DHS Secretary John Kelly said that DHS was considering separating children from their parents at the border, only to walk back the idea after being pressed by some Senate Democrats.
By the end the year, however, the administration was again purportedly weighing a plan to separate children from their parents.
At the start of this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the threat explicit: “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children.”
Kelly, now Trump’s chief of staff, backed up Sessions, suggesting that family separation would deter unlawful border crossings.
There was also a story about the president personally insisting on separating children from their families, as well as reports that the administration considering a proposal to keep children on military bases after yanking them away from their families.
The news that the administration is actually pursuing a policy of taking children away from their parents nonetheless still took some people by surprise. Two weeks ago, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes documented the policy in a heart-wrenching, bone-chilling, and gut-punching segment.
In this post, I want to point out how immigration policies and laws that preceded the Trump administration made the separation of families possible, and previously resulted in the separation of families.

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Posted on June 5, 2018

By Raise Your Hand Action And The Beachwood Lyrics Desk

She’s just a bill.
Yes, she’s only a bill.
And she’s sitting there on Cullerton’s hill

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Posted on May 31, 2018

By The Electronic Freedom Foundation

President Donald Trump’s blocking of people on Twitter because they criticize him violates the First Amendment, a federal judge in New York ruled last week in a resounding victory for freedom of speech and the public’s right to communicate opposing political views directly to elected officials and government agencies.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute alleging the president and his communications team violated the First Amendment by blocking seven people from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account because they criticized the president or his policies. The seven individuals include a university professor, a surgeon, a comedy writer, a community organizer, an author, a legal analyst and a police officer.

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Posted on May 30, 2018

By The Uptown People’s Law Center

U.S. District Court Judge Michael M. Mihm issued an opinion Friday in the class action case Rasho v. Baldwin ordering the Illinois Department of Corrections to provide mental health treatment to prisoners who are on “crisis watches” and in segregation, as well as to provide medication management, mental health evaluations and necessary mental health staff throughout the system.
The judge ruled that IDOC’s failure to provide mental health care constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as well as violates the settlement agreement that the department entered.
In a 42-page decision, Mihm found that IDOC’s deliberate indifference to mentally ill prisoners is causing “irreparable harm” that requires the court to issue injunctive relief. The court decision states that the constraints faced by IDOC “are dwarfed by the immense harm to the inmates.”

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Posted on May 28, 2018

By Mike Males via Common Dreams

Every day, 42 Americans die in gun homicides, the grim backdrop against which to talk about school shootings.
In the three months between the 10 shot dead in Santa Fe, Texas, on Friday, and the 17 in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, around 4,000 Americans lost their lives in firearms homicides.
In the initial horror following a school shooting, we witness the “thoughts and prayers,” finger-wagging from politicians not wanting to “politicize” the shooting, and promises to “do something.” Then, just as predictably, nothing happens.
Or, worse, bad things are done. The survivors of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida, took center stage to argue passionately for action, and adults initially appeared to be listening. Gov. Rick Scott signed a reform bill into law, but on balance, it does more harm than good. The limited beneficial steps, such as modestly extending background checks and waiting periods on potential gun buyers and banning “bump stocks,” accompanied popular but ineffectual measures such as raising the gun-buying age to 21. Also one very, very bad idea: procedures to arm more teachers and school officers.
But whether those steps will change anything is unlikely. That’s because, while shootings at schools are terrible, it’s not the schools that are the problem. The real problem is that America as a whole is dangerous. As crazy as it might sound after the mass school shootings in the last two decades at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland and now Santa Fe High School, it’s true: We should be exploring ways to make the rest of society as safe from guns as schools are.

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Posted on May 22, 2018

By The Legal Council for Health Justice

Attorneys on behalf of thousands of low-income people filed a motion in court on Wednesday to enforce federal law and the State of Illinois’ agreement to process Medicaid applications in a timely fashion. The attorneys charge that the State is violating both federal law and an Illinois court order by significantly delaying Medicaid applications and denying residents access to health coverage.
The motion, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, asks the court to enforce an existing consent decree that requires the State to determine eligibility for Medicaid within federal timelines, and to offer temporary medical assistance to people whose applications nonetheless pend beyond the federal time limits. The advocates allege the State is woefully behind on its processing and has not offered temporary medical assistance as a solution.
“I have represented a multitude of youth clients experiencing homelessness, many of whom have significant physical and mental healthcare needs, who are going without access to care for months,” said Tanya Gassenheimer, youth health attorney at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
Gassenheimer, who helps youth experiencing homelessness apply for Medicaid and file appeals with DHS regarding any issues with those applications, filed a declaration in the motion.
“My clients rely on programs like Medicaid for survival. These issues are simply inexcusable and it’s well past time for DHS to act.”

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Posted on May 19, 2018

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

“In education, America does everything but equity.” With these words, Failing Brown v. Board, a new report from the civil rights group Journey for Justice Alliance, makes plain how the machine of educational reform, with all its innovations and disruptive technologies, is missing an essential cog: the resources to deliver a quality neighborhood school.
Most states cut education spending in the 2008 recession. Yet, despite the economy having recovered, there is less funding today for education than even those lean years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Researchers from this non-profit found that in 2015, “29 states were still providing less total school funding per student than they were in 2008.”
No wonder the quality of our schools is suffering, and parents are grasping at straws. But the seductive promise of educational programs that don’t grapple with the roots of inequality will eventually ring hollow.

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Posted on May 15, 2018

By Michael Grabell/ProPublica

Two weeks before the presidential election, Donald Trump flew into a faded textile town in North Carolina and riled up the crowd over one of his campaign’s signature promises: bringing back the jobs that businesses had shipped overseas.
“They wouldn’t be doing it if I was president,” Trump said to cheers. “Believe me, when they say, ‘We want to send our product’ – whatever the hell they make – ‘We want to send our product back into the United States,’ I’d say, ‘We’d love to have your product – 35 percent tax. Let’s see if you move.'”
He ticked off a list of companies that had closed factories in the state, calling attention to Leviton Manufacturing, a maker of light switches and electrical outlets found in homes and offices around the world, including Trump’s real-estate properties.
“I buy a lot of Leviton switches,” Trump said. “I’m not buying ’em anymore.”
Fast-forward 18 months. Leviton now stands to benefit from a bill that would eliminate the taxes the company pays to import an outlet it makes in China – not, as Trump vowed, raise them.

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Posted on May 10, 2018

By Jessica Corbett/Common Dreams

After Amazon stocks soared last week – making founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, $12 billion richer – Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted that the company paid no federal income tax last year, which was confirmed by independent analysis on Thursday, and comes as Amazon is trying to kill a proposed tax that aims to end Seattle’s homelessness crisis.
“You know what Amazon paid in federal income taxes last year?” Sanders said Monday. “Zero.”
“He’s right,” PolitiFact declared. “We’ve taken a look at a series of exaggerated claims about Amazon in the past. But in this case, Sanders is on the money.”

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Posted on May 5, 2018