Tag: immigrant children

They can’t get hugs, but they are forced to pledge allegiance

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Just a reminder that our fascist leader requires loyalty, even from children who have been stolen from their parents. Via the Washington Post:

The children have been through hell. They are babies who were carried across rivers and toddlers who rode for hours in trucks and buses and older kids who were told that a better place was just beyond the horizon.

And now they live and wait in unfamiliar places: big American suburban houses where no one speaks their language; a locked shelter on a dusty road where they spend little time outside; a converted Walmart where each morning they are required to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, in English, to the country that holds them apart from their parents.

Why must they say those words, some of the children ask at the shelter in Brownsville, on the Mexican border in Texas?

“We tell them, ‘It’s out of respect,’ ” said one employee of the facility, known as Casa Padre, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job.

U.S. authorities are compiling mug shots of the children in detention. Immigration lawyers who have seen the pictures say some of them show children in tears.

Drugging immigrant kids

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Link:

Affidavits filed in April claims that migrant children in a taxpayer-funded facility with a history of abuse allegations were forcibly injected with powerful anti-psychotic medications, Reveal reports. In an interview with Reveal, forensic psychiatrist Mark. J. Mills compared the practice to tactics used in the former Soviet Union.

An earlier investigation from Reveal and the The Center for Investigative Reporting found that billions of taxpayer dollars are going to homes and facilities that have faced serious allegations of mistreatment, including physical assault. According to court filings, children held at Shiloh Treatment Center were told they would never be released or see their parents again if they didn’t take medications, which they were told were vitamins. From Reveal:

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist here; it looks like they’re trying to control agitation and aggressive behavior with antipsychotic drugs,” said Mills, who practices in the Washington, D.C., area and was an expert witness for a lawsuit that in 2008 stopped the federal government from forcibly administering antipsychotic drugs to deportees.

“You don’t need to administer these kinds of drugs unless someone is plucking out their eyeball or some such. The facility should not use these drugs to control behavior. That’s not what antipsychotics should be used for. That’s like the old Soviet Union used to do.”