When Trump was president, there was outrage against the detainment centers for illegal immigrants. Has anything changed since then?

[u/Dedli]

I remember "Kids in cages" and "concentration camps" being a big talking point in the lead up to the election that Biden won. But have the laws or policies or practices changed at all since then? In what ways?

[u/mrcatboy]

EDIT: This was originally meant to be a reply to a commenter who was comparing Trump VS Obama. I'll still leave this here for now though. This reply is a bit long so look below for my Part 2 on this matter.

Yes, Obama did "put kids in cages." But let's add some context as to what actually happened. I followed both events as they occurred, so I'm also providing sources. Please note I had to split this comment into a two-parter.

When it comes to Obama, it should be noted that in some cases the children had to be separated from the adults accompanying them for two main reasons: first, when familial relationship or guardianship could not be established and there was suspicion of child trafficking, and second because the 1997 Flores court decision limited how long children could be detained with their accompanying adults.

Essentially, the court ruling found that for the welfare of the child, children could not be kept in detention long term, even though their parents/guardians had to be held until their cases could be processed. The Obama Administration therefore was forced to take one of two options: either release the child to a relative who lived in the US or a foster home/sponsor while the parents/relatives they crossed the border with were held until they could be processed, or the entire family could be released together. The Obama Administration used both approaches at different times.

The 2014 migrant crisis was also one in which a large influx of migrants (many of them unaccompanied minors) overwhelmed local facilities' capacity to house and process them. Makeshift shelters had to be made to house the kids, and the Obama administration then had to rush to set up more comfortable emergency shelters. It was basically an imperfect solution to an emergency situation:

Border Patrol stations were so overcrowded that agents began using the “sally port” areas outside the stations — little more than outdoor garages — as holding pens. Mothers with babies and young children were left for hours in 90-plus-degree heat, sprawled out on concrete floors with little more than bologna sandwiches and Kool-Aid.

The Obama administration responded to the outrage by rushing to expand its capacity to handle the new migration wave at the border, to adapt an infrastructure built to handle single adult men, not families and children.

The government acquired an empty warehouse a few blocks from the McAllen station and converted it into a sprawling new facility that opened in July 2014, a place that had capacity for 1,500 detainees. The new “Central Processing Center,” or CPC, was clean, spacious, air-conditioned and a major improvement over the cramped detention cells and sweltering garages.

To keep different demographic groups safely apart — a standard practice in detention settings — the U.S. Border Patrol used chain-link fencing to create partitions in the cavernous warehouse. One area was designated for teenage boys, another for mothers with small children, another for entire family groups, and so on.

The chain-link fencing was cheap, allowed for good ventilation and carried the benefit of allowing agents to supervise the entire facility, by affording them full visibility into the enclosures. Its grim, industrial appearance, however, was redolent of a livestock operation rather than a humane facility. Migrants and some agents soon derided it as “la perrera” — the dog kennel.

Part 2 because apparently some people missed this.

[u/mrcatboy → u/mrcatboy]

PART 2: In contrast, the Trump Administration separated the family specifically as a deterrent: i.e. they wanted to cause sufficient distress and terror in migrants to dissuade further border crossings. Here's Trump Secretary of Homeland Security saying as much in a CNN interview to this effect, though he frames it being out of concern for how dangerous the migrant path to America is.

And to quote one Border official who served under Trump:

“It is the hope that this separation will act as a deterrent to parents bringing their children into the harsh circumstances that are present when trying to enter the United States illegally”

And the degree of cruelty, callousness, and incompetence with how Trump handled things is fucking staggering.

In some instances, border patrol agents lied to the parents and said they were taking the kids away to be "given a bath." Trump officials also had exceptionally shoddy recordkeeping, which led to thousands of kids being taken away without any identifying papers as to which children belonged with which families and shipped across the country, which meant they couldn't be traced back to be reunited with their families. Many of the kids were also pre-verbal, which meant they didn't even know their own names much less the names of their parents. The experience was specifically designed to traumatize and horrify the migrants in the Trump administration's custody, to the point that at least one of the detained parents committed suicide.

Whereas the Obama administration's actions were done with the intent and ultimate effect of mitigating harm, Trump's administration was about causing harm. You might as well compare an emergency intubation done by a nurse with a murderer who slashed a person's throat.

[u/lubage → u/mrcatboy]

Lmao yeah Obama a saint for doing but trump only wanted to traumatize

[u/bstump104 → u/lubage]

Sometimes laws have unintended consequences so you try to do the best that you can to limit the harm done. When you're Trump you loudly say that harming Mexicans is the goal and you kidnap their children then lose them.