Washington, DC — The following is a new Substack post from America’s Voice Editor Gabe Ortíz and Research Associate Yuna Oh. As they write, “as long as de-facto President Stephen Miller continues to stick around and dictate the anti-immigrant agenda, mass deportation rages on unabated.” As they detail, children and Dreamers are among those being harmed by the cruelty.
Read “Stephen Miller’s Cruelty Rages On: Children Detained and Abused While Dreamer Separated from U.S. Military Spouse” in full on AV’s Substack and find key excerpts below:
“We noted last month that much-hyped personnel changes that included the firing of now-former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem were nothing more than a public relations stunt and that as long as de-facto President Stephen Miller continues to stick around and dictate the anti-immigrant agenda, mass deportation rages on unabated. Just take it from one of those “new” faces themselves.
MILLER AND HOMAN REMAIN IN CHARGE: “Ramp Up”
So-called “border czar” Tom Homan – who replaced disgraced former Border Patrol official Greg Bovino following his deadly and chaotic invasion of Minnesota under “Operation Metro Surge” – boasted that mass deportation “won’t skip a beat” following the recent firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Instead, it will actually “ramp-up,” he said.
“The president’s already set the priorities on immigration enforcement,” Homan told Fox News late last week. “You’re [going to] see arrests go up. You’re [going to] see more worksite enforcement operations coming. So you’re [going to] see a ramp-up in immigration enforcement in this country.”
Meanwhile, his actual boss – Miller, and not Noem replacement Markwayne Mullin – “is still pursuing his immigration agenda, but more quietly,” as The New York Times reported. While the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda is tanking among the American people and could spell doom for Republicans in the upcoming midterms, his nativist obsessions matter more. “White House officials in recent weeks have said that Mr. Miller grew frustrated with Ms. Noem and the attention-grabbing approach to immigration operations endorsed by her and some of her top lieutenants,” the report said. “But there is little to no evidence that Mr. Miller pushed back against the aggressive tactics of agents that prompted bipartisan criticism.”
In other words, there’s no plan from the top to readjust anything. He’s just hoping you don’t notice stories like The Marshall Project report detailing the fact that Donald Trump has detained more than 6,200 children in his second term, many beyond the legal detention limit set by the courts.
CHILDREN ABUSED: “700 COMPLAINTS”
At the migrant family jail in Dilley, Texas, families “have raised more than 700 complaints over medical care with lawyers, according to court filings,” the report said. “In one instance, a baby received poor care before being sent to the hospital with dangerously low oxygen levels. Families have reported children in mental distress: a two-year-old who hit himself, potty-trained children who began wetting themselves, and a 13-year-old who was put into isolation after attempting suicide.”
Even short periods of detention can be damaging to children, as experts have said. But instead of allowing children and their families to remain where they feel safest – at home in their own communities – the administration has detained more than 1,600 children beyond the 20-day limit under the Flores Agreement, forcing children to endure additional harms beyond their initial arrest and detention.
But other entirely preventable forms of abuse are also playing out beyond Dilley. The AP reports that a child who was torn from her mother after crossing the southern border and endured unnecessary additional time in foster care because the government stalled reunification with her dad was sexually abused during the length of her separation.
“During that time, according to court documents, the girl said she was sexually abused by an older child staying with her in foster care in Harlingen, Texas,” the report said. “A caregiver noticed the child’s underwear was on backward, according to the lawsuit. The girl then told the caregiver she was abused multiple times and it caused bleeding. Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement officials told the father that there had been an ‘accident’ and his daughter would be examined, he told the AP in an interview.”
The child’s father had attempted to reunite with the child but it “stalled as the government told him it couldn’t make an appointment to take his fingerprints,” the report said. “I asked them, ‘What happened? I want to know. I’m her father. I want to know what’s going on,’ and they just told me that they couldn’t give me more information, that it was under investigation,” he said.
“To have your child abused while in the government’s care, to not understand what has happened or how to protect them, to not even be told about the abuse, it is unimaginable,” the family’s attorney, Lauren Fisher Flores, told the AP. “Children deserve safety and they belong with their parents.”
