The Guardian
Biden detains migrant children. Will the world still care when Trump is gone?
Flowers, butterflies and a pink banner with the text ‘Bienvenidos’ decorate the children’s detention center. Is that to fool us into thinking this is humane? “Supporters in the camp are labeled with names like Alpha, Charlie and Echo, names commonly used in military detention practices like Guantánamo Bay.” Photo: HANDOUT / Reuters This week, the Biden government did the unthinkable. It reopened a Trump-era detention center for migrant children. The detention center, a converted oilfield workers’ camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas, is expected to house 700 children between the ages of 13 and 17, and dozens of children have already arrived there. This is a terrible development, reminding me of some of the worst wrongs of the Trump years. And while, of course, we don’t know how this ominous development will play out in the long run, we do know this: Unaccompanied migrant children deserve compassion, not detention. But instead of looking for new and better solutions, the Biden government is instead trying to give us a picture of a kinder, gentler prison sentence. How else are we to understand the words of Mark Weber, spokesperson for Health and Human Services (HHS), the body that oversees the welfare of unaccompanied migrant children? Weber told the Washington Post that “the Biden administration is moving away from the Trump administration’s ‘law enforcement’ approach to one that focuses more on the well-being of children.” That may sound like a sound bite, but how welfare-oriented is it to put children in prison at all? And if you think it is not a prison, you should know that the “unaccompanied teens sent to the shelter in Carrizo Springs are not allowed to leave the facility,” reports the news website BorderReport.com. Instead, the Biden government is trying to give us a picture of a kinder, gentler prison sentence. Getting worse. The camp will operate “based on a federal emergency management system,” with “trailers labeled with names like Alpha, Charlie, and Echo,” names commonly used in military detention practices. (Camp Echo, for example, is a notorious spot in Guantánamo Bay.) And while staff fortunately won’t be wearing military equipment, the government spokesman makes it a point to tell us they will “wear matching black and white T-shirts. shirts with their roles: disaster driver, incident support, emergency management ”and that“ the most colorful trailer is at the entrance, where from Carrizo’s first opening in 2019 still flowers, butterflies and handmade posters hang on the walls ”. Give me a break. The problem with this kind of language is that it hides and obscures the brutal reality of detention with the rosy rhetoric of summer camp. Post’s story describes the center as a 66-acre site where “groups of beige trailers surround a gigantic white diner tent, soccer field and basketball court. There is a bright blue hospital tent with white bunk beds in it. A legal services trailer has the Spanish word ‘Bienvenidos’ or welcome on a banner on the roof. There are trailers for classrooms, barber shop, hair salon. Who, I wonder, is really comforted by a “welcome banner” on a roof, the jailers or the inmates? Do you think I’m not being generous? That the Biden administration is just trying to make it clear to the public how its detention regime will be healthier than Trump’s? If so, health issues, especially during a pandemic, are paramount The government has told us that these children will arrive in Carrizo Springs after a period of quarantine and all before entry will be tested at Covid. But when BorderReport.com asked HHS if everyone entering the facility, not just these teens, will be tested for the virus, they didn’t get a straight answer. It doesn’t stop there. the administration comes, these children face a terrible and potentially illegal situation In 1997, a collective action settlement established standards for the detention and release of unaccompanied minors detained by the authorities. Under the Flores settlement agreement, the federal government must transfer these unaccompanied children to an unsecured and licensed facility within days of their custody. In an emergency, the government can hold the children for up to 20 days while trying to reunite them with relatives or place them with a sponsor. Meanwhile, the Carrizo Springs site is a secure site (the kids cannot leave), it is not licensed by the State of Texas (it is operated by a government contractor for the Office of Refugee Resettlement), and children are expected to stay for 30 days , as reported by the Washington Post, which is clearly longer than the 20 days prescribed by the Flores Agreement. Detention is also very expensive, costing $ 775 per day per child, compared to $ 290 per day for permanent centers. All of these extremely disturbing facts surrounding this detention should arouse tremendous outrage in all of us, but the Biden administration is trying to fend off the criticism by assuring us that their version of juvenile detention is considerate and humane even if they open a facility where children stay. delivered in unmarked vans to an internment camp that is geographically remote and difficult to access. Does it feel like we are being sold a merchandise list It sure does to me. Yes, it’s not as evil as Trump’s family divorce policy, but if our way of judging political behavior right now is whether something is just ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than Trump, then we’ve elevated Trump’s actions to our new standard. of behavior. And when we do that, we have lost all real judgment in the first place. There is no doubt that, with an increasing number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border during Covid, Biden’s administration has a tough road ahead. But expanding a long-discredited system of locking up children cannot be the answer, no matter how good the government wants it to sound. Every government spreads their message. But if we fall blindly for the spider, the fault is not theirs. It’s with us. Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem ?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a Professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York