Immigrant children missing under Trump administration
In recent news, the ongoing struggle of immigrants seeking refuge in the United States has become a growing problem. As early as 2001, unaccompanied minors have been coming into the country therefore creating the need to have companies such as the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas that work to detain those children so that they don’t fall into the hands of human traffickers. Under the Obama and Trump administration, issues have surfaced that the whereabouts of over 1,500 of these undocumented children have been lost and according to a top official with the Department of Health and Human Services, Steve Wagner, once they have been placed with a sponsor by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), they are no longer the obligation of the HSS. Their sponsors are in most cases also undocumented, so they don’t want to be tracked by the government that can also deport them. Empathetic people try to do the right thing of protecting these children from being exploited to trafficking and violence but in doing so the sponsors are also being controlled by the government.
When I first read about this problem in news articles and videos, it incited anger and discomfort in me since I have family from Central America and both of my parents are immigrants of South America. I have heard of the dangerous situations in which people,such as my family, are being kidnapped in Honduras by gangs in order to seek a ransom. When Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said, “Our policy is if you break the law, we will prosecute you,”(Dankin) it puts into perspective for us to question why separating families (which is what the Trump administration is proposing) at the border and detaining them in holding cells at the U.S Customs and Border is even necessary. Instead of improving the lives of the voiceless, the government is further silencing them by framing undocumented families as the criminals like those that they are already trying to escape from.
There was an incident in Texas in which their Department of Health and Human Services had inspected four of their detention centers 349 times over the past two years. But it is reported that they “discovered a total of 116 deficiencies that include inappropriate sexual behavior, lapses in foster care home oversight, problems with administering medical care and the improper punishment of children”(Reagan). To gain a personal insight of how these companies work, I contacted Stephanie De Los Santos who is a case worker at Morrison Child and Family Services that assists with finding foster homes for children of immigrants whose parents have been deported. She states that “It’s terrible hearing about the situation that these kids are in because they can only stay with ICE for 72 hours and then they are put to the federal program, Office of Refugee Resettlement, and then sent to shelters. These kids whose case I manage just want a better life with education and to escape violence.” To me this emphasizes the negligence the government has over people in favor of big corporations. What’s disheartening is that our taxpayer money goes to these government contractors as it was revealed that The Shiloh Treatment Center “received over $9.1 million in “unaccompanied alien children program” HHS contracts that began in February 2017 and conclude in January 2020. During the Obama Administration, Shiloh got a similar $16.6 million contract that ended in 2017” (Kotch). This again proves that the best interest these corporations have is ensuring that private prisons and corporations get millions of dollars in these government contracts to detain or transport people who illegally come but they frame it to make it seem as if they are protecting the American people.
This subject connects to similar topics discussed in the novel “Animal’s People” by Indra Sinha in that the powerful corporation of Union Carbide has the ability to exploit those who were affected by the gas leak by contaminating their land and disfiguring their bodies. This occurred on the 3rd of December, 1984 and it killed over 500,000 people in Bhopal, India. The company put the blame on those living in the poor areas by not offering affordable health services. Union Carbide Corporation didn’t properly address an apology or a plan of action until twenty years since the disaster and since the Dow Chemical Company bought Union Carbide. There’s this double standard between the corporations in that they almost value the business and government contracts more than the people who are affected. As Ana Kasparian from The Young Turks puts it, “Corporations have extra rights that human beings don’t have”(TYT), for example, if a regular person was convicted of this crime of killing over 500,000 people they’d be penalized immediately, yet when these companies do it they get privileged extra rights that enable them from not getting sued, not going to prison, or facing any consequences. If anything, they get rewarded with more government contracts such as in Animal’s People, the Union Carbide corporation wasn’t sentenced to trial by court until 2010 in which they’ve received penalties that were reduced from “culpable homicide to criminal negligence”(union carbide lawsuit) and they still didn’t do anything to help the living conditions of the people in khaufpur. They still live in the ruins of the disastrous past used as a constant reminder of how powerless and silenced they are against big corporations that continue to repress them. In comparison to our current news, there are families with children who come to seek refuge in the U.S. but are being separated at the border because it has been known that “Immigration detention is big business in the United States. This is not about saving resources and saving jobs in the U.S” (TYT). Meanwhile the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, hid in America to avoid persecution from the Indian government. It’s hypocritical of the U.S to say that a certain group of people are prohibited to enter the country while it protects a company that murdered thousands. Therefore this creates a false narrative of poor people and immigrants as being bad in order to exploit the insecurity of American middle class fears.
Works Cited
Reagan, Mark. “IES closes Valley centers” The Monitor. 31 March 2018, Accessed 30 May 2018.
http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/article_f0b32d7c-b91c-5f3d-9071-3d6bbcbdf428.html
The Young Turks. “Contractors Making Bank Kenneling Migrant Kids” Youtube. Online video clip. 29 May 2018, Accessed 30 May 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW1ScuUeCdo,
“Union Carbide/Dow Lawsuit (re Bhopal)” Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. Web Access 30 May 2018.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/union-carbidedow-lawsuit-re-bhopal
Kotch,Alex. “Trump Administration Using Contractors Accused of Abuse to Detain Undocumented Children” TYT Network. 28 May 2018, Web Access 30 May 2018.
.https://tytnetwork.com/2018/05/28/trump-administration-using-contractors-accused-of-abuse-to-detain-undocumented-children/
Andone, Dankin. “ US lost track of 1,500 immigrant children, but says it’s not ‘legally responsible’” CNN. 28 May 2018, Web Access 30 May 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/26/politics/hhs-lost-track-1500-immigrant-children/index.html
Moore, John. “ U.S Border Patrol Houses Unaccompanied Minors in Detention Center” Breit Bart. Getty Images. 8 March 2017, Web Access 30 May 2018 http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2017/03/08/trump-era-southwest-border-apprehensions-lowest-point-5-years/
Sinha, Indra. “Animal’s People” Simon & Schuster. 9 March 2009. http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Animals-People/Indra-Sinha/9781416578796
