TOMORROW: Migrant Family Detention Protest in Brea

Not nearly enough people in the U.S. are mad at the Trump Administration’s cruel and unlawful detention of migrants. Especially children, some extremely young, who’ve been separated from their parents for no good reason.

“At any given time, for the past several weeks, more than 2,000 children have been held in the custody of US Border Patrol without their parents,” Vox reported on June 25. “Legally, they’re not supposed to be held by border agents for more than 72 hours before being sent to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for finding their nearest relative in the US to house them while their immigration cases are adjudicated.”

Mad yet? How about you read this excerpt from the June 22 New Yorker interview with law professor Warren Binford, who visited the Clint, Texas detention camp and spoke with more than 50 child prisoners there:

Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you. This is important. So, on Wednesday, we received reports from children of a lice outbreak in one of the cells where there were about twenty-five children, and what they told us is that six of the children were found to have lice. And so they were given a lice shampoo, and the other children were given two combs and told to share those two combs, two lice combs, and brush their hair with the same combs, which is something you never do with a lice outbreak. And then what happened was one of the combs was lost, and Border Patrol agents got so mad that they took away the children’s blankets and mats. They weren’t allowed to sleep on the beds, and they had to sleep on the floor on Wednesday night as punishment for losing the comb. So you had a whole cell full of kids who had beds and mats at one point, not for everybody but for most of them, who were forced to sleep on the cement.

“The cruelty is the point,” Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic in October to explain why the Trump Administration does the things it does, especially in regards to immigration. President Donald Trump’s policies are designed solely to further white supremacy–that people are imprisoned in squalor or have died is irrelevant to him.

“Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it,” Serwer wrote. “The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.”

On Saturday, June 29, Indivisible CA39 will protest this barbarism in Brea. From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., you can wave signs and show how much all this outrages you at the corner of East Imperial Highway and State College Boulevard.

“Our Government has violated the human rights of migrant children and  their parents,” states the protest announcement from Indivisible CA39. “It is morally wrong to hold these youngsters in detention  centers only because they were seeking asylum and safety in the United  States of America. We oppose the disintegration of families and the cruelty towards migrant  children. We are fed up with the poor conditions, mistreatment and  neglect of babies, toddlers and children by DHS, ICE, CBP and  subcontractors.”

Click here for more information on the protest and to RSVP (they would like a headcount of attendees). Organizers ask those wishing to attend to bring signs, flags, and props, but also to abide by all laws and understand that this will be a peaceful rally.