Immigration

“Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells,” the AP reports.

“The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.”

“President Trump caved to enormous political pressure on Wednesday and signed an executive order meant to end the separation of families at the border by detaining parents and children together for an indefinite period,” the New York Times reports.

“But Justice Department officials said it was not clear whether the practice of separating families could resume after 20 days if a federal judge refuses to give the government the authority it wants to hold families together for a longer period.”

“And a Health and Human Services official said that more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy will not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.“

North Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Cramer (R-ND) “pushed back hard on the idea that keeping border-crossing children in chain-link cages was inhumane, defending the practice in two local radio shows on Wednesday,” TPM reports.

Said Cramer: “By the way, chain link fences are around playgrounds all over America, all over North Dakota. And chain link fences allow line-of-sight visual connectivity with children and families. You know, there’s nothing inhumane about a chain link fence. If it is, then every ballpark in America is inhumane.”

The coverage of President Trump’s sudden reversal on his policy to separate migrant children from their parents at the border is universally brutal.

The Fix: “It’s at once an admission that the politics of the issue had gotten out of hand and that the administration’s arguments were completely dishonest. Virtually everything it said about the policy is tossed aside with this executive action. It’s the political equivalent of waving the white flag and the legal equivalent of confessing to making false statements. Rather than letting Congress rebuke it, the White House is rebuking itself and trying to save some face.”

Politico: “It was a remarkable shift from a president who is typically reluctant to bow to outside pressure. He often doubles down on his existing stance when confronted with criticism.”

“Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas,” the AP reports.

“Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.”

The Hill reports that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow broke down in tears on-air over the report about “tender age” shelters.

Politico: “Senior House Republicans learned late Tuesday night that they were far from the 218 votes needed to pass a compromise immigration package after doing a whip check on the bill, according to multiple GOP lawmakers and aides. Some conservatives warned that Trump was not specific enough in his support of the leadership’s bill. Others simply continued to worry about blowback from the far right for supporting anything that could be labeled ‘amnesty.’”

Said one top GOP lawmaker: “It did not move the needle at all. He made comments like ‘I’m behind it 1,000 percent,’ but what is ‘it’?”

“Congressional Republicans moved on Tuesday to defuse an escalating political crisis over immigration, but failed to agree on how to end President Trump’s policy of separating immigrant children from parents who cross illegally into the United States,” the New York Times reports.

“The Senate had one plan, and the House another. Mr. Trump remained defiant, refusing to act on his own.”

Washington Post: “President Trump implored anxious House Republicans to fix the nation’s immigration system but did not offer a clear path forward amid the growing uproar over his administration’s decision to separate migrant families at the border.”

“As he prepared to visit Capitol Hill, President Trump continued to insist Tuesday that Congress produce comprehensive immigration legislation, while anxious Republicans explored a narrower fix to the administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents,” the Washington Post reports.

“The message came as Trump was scheduled to visit Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday evening to lobby them on immigration legislation that would provide billions of dollars for his long-sought border wall and other security priorities.”

“Amid a public outcry, Republicans are also planning to defy the White House by crafting legislation to ease the effects of the administration policy of dividing families.”

Meanwhile, Trump doubled down on Twitter claiming migrants are threatening to “infest” America.

“The Trump administration has likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant children, thousands more than lawmakers were alerted to last month,” according to a McClatchy review of federal data.

“Federal officials acknowledged last month that nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors arrived on the southern border alone without their parents and were placed with sponsors who did not keep in touch with federal officials, but those numbers were only a snapshot of a three- month period during the last fiscal year.”