Discussion: Federal Judge: Separated Families Must Be Reunited Within 30 days

Wow. Does anyone think (based on what we’ve read and seen) that the government can meet this deadline? What about parents who have already been deported? I bet there are some DHS officials who won’t sleep tonight.

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This was a blistering opinion from the judge, who correctly pointed out that the Trump administration had NO plan for reuniting these families, and the government tracks property more carefully than it did these children.

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I trust Chief Justice Roberts could find that the relevant statute vests the President with ‘ample power’ to separate children from their parents and that “the Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review.”

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It’s pretty clear they didn’t keep good track of parents and children, both because the system puts them into separate legal tracks, and because they just didn’t give a damn. I doubt they can get all of the children reunited, especially since some number have already been sent home…you can bet that they won’t fly them back to the US to meet their kids (who will be held until their cases are sorted out in months or longer).

I’m sure we’ll get angry tweets from Trump in the morning how this GWB appointee is helping MS-13 terrorists to kill Americans, or whatever he spews.

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So what happens on day 31? A sternly worded letter from the judge? Who goes to jail for this crime when the families are still separated?

It would not have been very hard to put cheap hospital bracelets with unique numbers on all to be separated families. Renew the bracelets once a week because they do wear out.

Heck of a job Jefferson Sessions. Heck of a job Kirstjen Nielsen.

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Honestly I think it goes well beyond mere indifference. Terrorizing these children and parents, and “making an example of them” to frighten would-be asylum-seekers and the immigrant community at large was the whole point of this horrific policy. The agonizing uncertainty of not even knowing where your loved ones are is very much a feature, not a bug.

As far as I’m concerned, the people who unleashed this planned chaos onto innocent families – Trump, Miller, Session, Neilsen, Kelly, etc., and everyone who went along with and defended these monstrous actions (Sarah Sanders, etc) – have forfeited their right to live among decent people.

They should all be exiled to a very uncomfortable rock somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

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Time for SCOTUS to revisit Marbury vs. Madison?

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Give them 24 hours to do it, and if they can’t, jail all their deplorable asses for contempt, child abuse and kidnapping.

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Napoleon’s house on St. Helena still stands, IIRC.

…Who can this judge jail, if the order is not obeyed?

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We know two facts

  1. They intended to separate the families
  2. They had absolutely no plan to reunite the families.

It certainly seems the plan all along was to steal the children, deport the adults, and have the adults spread word of the kidnappings in their home countries.

You can make a case that this constitutes genocide under the UN definition.

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I think you could nail a number of the actors for misprision of a felony.

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As a side effect of all this, I expect that aside from some older Cuban-Americans in Florida now going senile, the Latino community has been driven entirely out of the Republican Party.

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Or else, they had no plan at all and were just making it up as they went along, never thinking about what would happen next; ignorant of the law and basic facts, generally. I think that this, as well as a general attitude of malice, is the explanation of all of this.

But the effect is the same.

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Longwood House is now a museum, and a treasured national landmark for France. The two villas he stayed at on Elba are also museums.

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But, Sarah says the simply “ran out of resources.”

Meaning, they launched a nationwide program with three weeks budgeted!

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Things are about to get real for the Trump administration. They were having so much gleeful fun torturing asylum seekers and their children they plain forgot to keep records. They won’t be able to comply with the court order because some of the underage victims are missing or worse.

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This day has been a wild ride on the judicial front. I was gratified to read a ruling that spoke with simple legal and moral clarity. No obfuscation, no procedural cop outs, no pretzel logic to hollow out the meaning of the Constitution and established precedent to support the white nationalist cause, just a clear application of the law to a moral and humanitarian crisis created by the government.

What I like most about this ruling is that the judiciary doesn’t give a fuck what racist SCOTUS majority thinks. They won’t be intimidated from freely applying the law to the facts at hand and defending constitutional principles. There is no chilling effect from SCOTUS’ decisions because everyone knows their rulings this term have been whack.

The SCOTUS majority does not stand for the Constitution. They stand for white nationalism. That’s the cleanest and simplest way to reconcile the myriad of rulings that always seem to align to what a conservative racist right wing nut would support.

This ruling was cleverly written to focus not on the authority to detain, but on due process, due diligence, and the basic standard of care owed by the government to detainees.

Let’s see the appeals and let’s see the SCOTUS overrule this. Each ruling they make in favor of white nationalist views and against equal treatment, due process, and equal protection de-legitimizes that court even further.

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How are they going to enforce this ruling? What is the penalty for TRussia if they ignore it?

I do sense a slow political awakening in the Latino community. The election results this fall will tell the story. That voting bloc could be instrumental in several states.

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