What would you call a nation that separates children from their immigrant parents and warehouses them in abandoned Big Box stores behind chain-link fences? What do you call a regime that institutes a “zero tolerance” policy for immigrant families fleeing violence, political upheaval, and poverty in their own countries? What does it say about the law when the attorney general quotes Bible scripture to justify the administration’s gestapo tactics while grinning at the camera? And what do you say about a national leader who demands that all followers of a global religion be banned from entering the country?
It used to be verboten for any responsible person to compare our democratic republic with Nazi Germany. But how do you avoid the comparison, when two Texas public defenders testify that some parents were told by U.S. Customs agents that their children were being taken “to be bathed” and were never returned? Reporters have told of nursing babies taken from their mothers; the screams of parents following the realization that their children were gone; and the tears of refugees who presented themselves at proper border crossings seeking asylum but instead were hustled off into criminal custody.
I saw a documentary about children torn from their parents’ arms once, only it took place in 1939 and I had to read the subtitles because it was in German. This is no longer the home of the brave and the land of the free. It’s the home of the intolerant and the land of the incarcerated. I don’t know about you, but I want my country back.
REUTERS | Leah Millis
Stephen Miller
Always looking to deflect his assholism on to someone else, Trump tweeted in his own ungrammatical way, “Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change.”
He’s lying. No law requires this.
During the influx of mothers and children from Central America in 2014, the Obama administration attempted to detain families with Immigration and Customs Enforcement until their cases could be adjudicated, which was administrative rather than criminal detention. Even then, a federal judge ordered a stay for confined asylum seekers and ruled that families could be held in detention for only a short period of time — usually 20 days. And children were not taken from their parents.
In Trump’s America, immigrants are taken into federal criminal custody, thus transforming their children into unaccompanied minors who are then whisked away to one of 200 immigrant detention centers all across the fruited plain. Presidential Chief of Staff John Kelly claimed that children and their parents would be separated “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network. The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.”
Or whatever.
Currently, the government has opened a “tent city” near El Paso, Texas, to house 360 minors in 100-degree heat, with plans to construct numerous such “cities” across Texas. They are also actively looking at military bases to house immigrant children. Even conservative pastor Franklin Graham said it was “disgraceful.”
It only figures that a corrupted corporatocracy like the United States would eventually cough up a hairball like Donald Trump, but you’d have to look far and wide to find a Jewish Nazi like Stephen Miller. A far-right icon, Miller is a senior advisor to the president at the age of 32. Born into a liberal Jewish family in Santa Monica, California, Miller is a descendant of ancestors who fled the pogroms of what is now Belarus. His conversion to conservatism took place after reading Guns, Crime, and Freedom, a screed against progressive ideas and criminal justice reform written by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.
While at Duke University, quasi-Nazi and white nationalist Richard Spencer claims he mentored Miller, although Miller disavows knowing Spencer. Miller’s first D.C. gig came as spokesman for Minnesota’s moron Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who said in 2014 that American Jews “sold out Israel” by voting for Obama, and apologized in Jerusalem only last week for her calls for converting “as many Jews as we can” because “Jesus is coming soon.”
In 2009, Miller became advisor and communications director for then-Senator Jeff Sessions. In an interview with Breitbart News, Sessions praised the National Origins Act of 1924 which restricted immigration from Eastern Europe, saying, “It was good for America.” The irony was lost on Miller.
Miller followed Sessions into the White House, where his white nationalist views meshed perfectly with the new administration. After cozying up to the incendiary Steve Bannon, Miller invited the writers and editors of Breitbart News to the White House to discuss immigration. He played an integral part in Trump’s illegal travel ban and was a crusader for restricting refugee resettlement and immigration from Muslim countries. He even wrote Trump’s “American Carnage” Inaugural speech.
His initial appearance on national news was notable for his assertion that “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” A recent New York Times article said, “Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy.” Senator Lindsey Graham opined, “As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we are going nowhere.”
I don’t know the conditions that create a self-loathing Jew. If Miller was oblivious to the darkest chapter of the 20th century, you’d have thought he’d at least seen Schindler’s List.
The Times reports that over the last six weeks, an estimated 12,000 children have been separated from their families. One immigrant from Honduras killed himself in custody after being separated from his wife and child. With Josef Goebbels wannabes like Miller advising the president, the time has come to decide whether the United States will retain its status as a beacon of liberty to the world or become just another “shithole country.”
Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog.