17 Jun
News and Analyses, A Foreign Perspective
Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
A group of peaceful protesters at the Oceti Sakowin Camp, February 2017.
Police Mace water protectors and pipeline protesters at Cannon Ball, November 2016.
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Jeff Sessions says policy is not about ‘being mean’ to children
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US cardinal: ‘Separating babies from mothers is immoral’
Occupants line up at Casa Padre, an immigrant shelter for unaccompanied boys aged 10 to 17, in Brownsville, Texas, on Friday. Photograph: Handout/Reuters
Almost 2,000 children have been separated from their families at the US southern border over a six-week period during a crackdown on illegal entries, according to Department of Homeland Security figures obtained on Friday by the Associated Press.
The figures show that 1,995 minors were separated from 1,940 adults between 19 April and 31 May 2018. The separations were not broken down by age, and included separations for illegal entry, immigration violations or possible criminal conduct by the adult.
Under a “zero tolerance” policy announced by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, Department of Homeland Security officials are now referring all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution. US protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime, while the parents are.
Sessions announced the effort on 6 April, and homeland security began stepping up referrals in early May, effectively putting the policy into action.
Since then, stories of weeping children torn from the arms of their frightened parents have emerged and the policy has been widely criticised by church groups, politicians on both sides of the aisle and children’s advocates. A fresh battle in Congress is brewing, in part over this issue.
Some immigrant advocates have said women were being separated from their infants – a charge homeland security and justice department officials flatly denied. They also said the children were being well cared for and disputed reports of disorder and mistreatment at the border.
The new figures are for people who tried to enter the US between official border crossings. Asylum seekers who go directly to official crossings are not typically separated from their families.
A small number of reporters were given strictly controlled access earlier this week to one immigration detention centre where some children forcibly separated from their parents, or crossing the border alone, are being held. A quotation from former president Barack Obama is written on a wall in the Casa Padre centre in Brownsville, Texas. In English and Spanish, it states: “We are and always will be a nation of immigrants.”
Many of the 1,500 children in the facility, a former Walmart, might more readily agree with a part of Obama’s 2014 speech that is not on the wall: “Our immigration system is broken – and everybody knows it.”
Conditions in sometimes makeshift and overcrowded detention facilities were also in the spotlight four years ago when the Obama administration struggled to deal with an influx of unaccompanied minors. This time, however, an explicit policy of family separation is contributing to a fresh crisis.
Frederic Penard of SOS Mediterranee urges EU member states to adopt immediately an adequate and common response plan to the ongoing crisis in the Med
Refugees disembark from the Aquarius rescue ship in Valencia, Spain on 17 June 2018. Photograph: Heino Kalis/Reuters
The extraordinary support we have received from European civil society since we were first refused a port of safety for the 630 people who were stranded on the Aquarius shows that citizens are wiser than their leaders (Report, 13 June). By showing their attachment to human life and dignity first, they contrast with the European heads of state and governments for whom this intolerable journey should be a wake-up call. To those EU leaders who would like us gone, we repeat that, as a maritime and humanitarian organisation, our only aim is to save and preserve life according to the law of the sea; and to bear witness on behalf of civil society to the ongoing tragedy in the Mediterranean.
To those who’ve been supportive, we are sincerely thankful. Nevertheless, we have to remind them that as EU member states, they are co-responsible for the situation in the Mediterranean. By contributing to the training and financing of the Libyan coastguard, they are consciously participating in interceptions of boats in distress, which not only result in people being sent back to the Libyan hell, but also gravely jeopardises safe, efficient and professional search and rescue activities in international waters. To those of them who have been indifferent to our repeated calls for more coordinated search and rescue capacity in the central Mediterranean and for a European response to the drama on our common shores, we say that time has come to wake up. We urge all EU states to adopt immediately an adequate and common response plan to this tragedy: a European rescue fleet must be deployed and a EU-shared policy must be found for the safe disembarkation of the rescued people in the nearest port of safety.
Indifference has resulted in too many deaths; inaction is criminal. As long as there will be people risking their lives at sea, SOS Méditerranée will pursue its mission in the international waters at the doorstep of Europe to search, rescue and testify.
Frédéric Penard
World Politics
United States
Human rights abuses – what human rights abuses? How the US president likes to keep his enemies close
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