Below is an article about the likely encampment of the children of many undocumented immigrant parents who have been deported recently.
We live in a country where those in power have promoted what they call family values. "Family values", my ass. This country has only valued white families (i say this as someone who is white). It can be easily argued that "family values" has been used only to control people's sexual and reproductive rights when they have a history of and continued participation in dividing families.
Take indian schools for example. Not only did the u.s. government physically take native american children away from their families, they did a number of other things to "kill the indian, save the man" (or woman?). Although i have never personally heard anyone white express any regret over that (besides people i associate with), perhaps we'd hear, just like slavery, that that is in the past. Not only was it acceptable a lot more recently than slavery, there are also other things that occur that are against family values. Like the poisoning of people via placing toxic facilities on their land which often result in health problems and high rates of miscarriage.
I could also mention all the examples of efforts to curb the fertility of women of color, such as the forced sterilization of many women, the testing of unapproved unsafe birth control on women, etc. such as on puerto rican women.
There is also the example of some separation of family during the japanese internment. And then as recently as a couple years ago, families were separated in the aftermath of hurricane katrina. These are very anti-family actions- if in some cases only consequences of negligence. These things happen in high proportions in communities of color. It is no surprise then, that the parents deported out of the u.s. would not be re-united with their kids. And it's also no surprise that someone will be profiting from keeping them encamped. Is it anyone affiliated with the private prison business? Or militarization of the border? Perhaps we'll find out...
Posted on Wed Jun 27th, 2007 at 11:27:46 PM EST
Over the past year, there have been numerous federal operations, carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where thousands of immigrants have been rounded up in surprise workplace raids — a number of them likely not even reported in the national press.
In many of those cases, the children of the immigrants, a number of them U.S. citizens, were at school or in daycare when the raids came down.
Their parents were whisked off to immigration detention centers around the country and many have since been deported back to their native countries.
But what has happened to the children — again, some certainly born in the United States and legally U.S. citizens? The mainstream press doesn’t seem to have connected all those dots — nor have most of our political leaders.
It was a promise she was unable to keep this month. Escoto and at least 360 other illegal immigrants were taken into custody here March 6 after a raid by federal agents on the Michael Bianco Inc. factory — a military contractor 60 miles south of Boston. Many of them, including Escoto, 38, were women whose detention [she was shipped to Texas] separated them from their children, some of whom were stranded at day-care centers, schools, or friends' or relatives' homes. … With dozens of children like Escoto's left without parents, the raid immediately sparked a public outcry here. The Massachusetts Department of Social Services dispatched two teams of 18 social workers to ask detainees in Texas how their children were being cared for. … Under public pressure, immigration officials began to send single parents home, or if they had arrested both parents, to release one. But as of late last week, New Bedford school officials said the children of at least six arrested immigrants remained in the care of someone other than their parents, and many more were missing one parent. …NEW BEDFORD, Mass -- During her two years working in a garment factory alongside hundreds of other immigrants, there were few assurances in Marta Escoto's uncertain life. One of them was the promise she made to her children -- I will always take care of you.
Turning Japanese?
So what ultimately has happened to these kids – and the hundreds, if not thousands, of others like them around the country? What happens when the temporary caretakers, for financial or other reasons, can no longer watch over the children — again, a number of them U.S. citizens?
Well, one source, whom we cannot name, has told Narco News that something is afoot that the U.S. government is keeping very tight-lipped about at this point.
That source says school officials in San Antonio, Texas, have been told to prepare for the arrival of a number of Spanish-only and limited-English speakers who will soon be shipped in from around the country to be warehoused, under a private contract, in San Antonio. The school system has been made aware of this because they will have to provide educational services to these children.
The source, who is in a position to know of such things, also says these are the children of immigrants who have been swept up in federal raids. Their parents are now either in federal detention somewhere in the country or already deported.
It is not clear at this time whether San Antonio will be the only holding area for these anti-immigrant “orphans,†the source says. But even one detention center for children — again, a number of them potentially U.S. citizens — is a black mark on the conscience of the nation, if we do still care about human rights.
Now please take this information for what it is — a well-qualified lead on what could well be a very under-the-radar program being undertaken by the federal government to deal with the byproduct of its failed immigration policy.
Narco News, at this point, has not been able to independently verify the source’s information.
However, one former high-ranking official with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, who attempted to look into the source’s claims told Narco News:
The impression I got was that HQ is keeping that operation and others very quiet.
But regardless of whether this particular lead turns out to be on the mark, every U.S. Senator in a position to now affect immigration reform has to ask themselves a hard question before they cast their vote: Where are the children being warehoused?
