Trump Immigration Court Deporting Unaccompanied Children As Young As 2

At this point, no decent, empathetic human being could deny that under President Donald Trump, immigration enforcement has become a regular practice of cruelty, inhumanity, and general heartlessness. While Trump continues to welcome white Afrikaners from South Africa into the country as refugees to save them from a fictional “white genocide,” his administration is canceling protections for Black and brown migrants who are actually in the country to escape the deadly violence of their homelands, fitting them with ankle monitors and deporting many of them to other dangerous countries they are not even from and have no connection to.  

In fact, on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily granted Trump permission to resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own, according to the New York Times. Again, it’s only a temporary ruling, as the justices also said the court would fast-track the case and hear oral arguments about it in December, setting up a final ruling on the issue next year, but the fact that we’re here in the first place — the fact that we’re talking about the government trafficking human beings to so-called third-world countries they have no ties to like it’s just another Tuesday — indicates what we already knew: that Trump’s mass deportation agenda was always about bigotry and the devaluing of Black and brown lives, not the legality of one’s immigration status.

In fact, even when we are talking about children as young as 2, immigration courts under this administration don’t develop a smidgen of compassion. Just ask officials in Harlingen, Texas.

From CNN:

In a Texas courtroom Monday, 25 migrant children lined the pews — a 6-year-old pretended to fly an airplane, a 3-year-old played with the mic, and a teen girl tried to make eye contact with a friend. The judge reminded everyone of what was at stake.

“I see you’re smiling and think these proceedings are funny, but I need you to pay attention,” the judge told the teen girl. “They could determine whether you remain in the country or are removed.”

Migrant children as young as 2 are showing up at immigration courts nationwide, many without attorneys, to make their case to stay in the US and avoid deportation.

Inside the immigration court in Harlingen, Texas, on Monday, caseworkers quietly explained to the minors who everyone was — from the interpreter and secretary to the judge in a black robe.

Most of the children, dressed formally with neatly styled hair, waited impatiently for the judge. Among the first to appear before the judge was a 13-year-old Honduran boy named Angel. He didn’t have an attorney.

Asked whether there was a reason he couldn’t return to Honduras, Angel told the judge, “My mom and almost my entire family are here. It’s too dangerous to go back.”

But that wasn’t enough for the judge, who told the boy he did not qualify for asylum. “Would you like to request voluntary departure, or should I issue a removal order?” The judge asked.

“I don’t know,” Angel replied before bursting into tears. He stared ahead stoically and continued to cry, eventually saying: “I have no one. I have nothing.”

“I understand, but based on your answers, US immigration laws are very strict,” the judge concluded, and gave Angel until the end of the month to appeal his deportation order.

Imagine being this judge. Imagine looking at the faces of children, some of whom are toddlers and not even old enough to understand what’s going on, and instead of being horrified by what they’re being forced to endure, you scold them for behaving the way one can only expect children to behave. 

Imagine listening to a 13-year-old boy tell you, “I have no one; I have nothing,” and responding to that by essentially saying, “I understand,” but rules are rules. It doesn’t matter that the judge might not have the legal authority to undermine the “very strict” immigration laws; this response indicates that these officers of the court are desensitized and comfortable enough with the routine that they aren’t seeing people in front of them; they’re seeing checkmarks on a docket.

According to CNN, hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children who were detained trying to cross the southern border or whose families were picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are being held in shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. Caseworkers, not family members, are accompanying these children to court. One 3-year-old named Mateo was questioned on the stand by the judge while his attorney appeared remotely.

At one point, the judge reportedly asked a group of 15 minors who had no attorneys present at all, “Is this your first time in immigration court?” to which they all responded, “Yes,” to which the judge responded by asking, “Do any of you want voluntary departure?” as casually as if the question was, “Does anybody want McDonald’s for lunch?”

CNN also noted that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, a federal law that has been on the books for nearly 20 years, is supposed to protect unaccompanied migrant children from speedy deportations to who knows where, but attorneys told the outlet that under Trump, those protections are being undermined.

This is what the evil of white nationalism does, and our federal government is not only sanctioning it; it’s championing the cruelty proudly. We can’t even say that this is what America has become, because this is what it has always been; this administration is just making it great again.

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