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“Systematically separating kids and parents is a new Trump policy,” said NBC News reporter Jacob Soboroff today about this first-person account. “But detaining families isn’t.” You’re going to want to read this thread.

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Thread: How did we get here?
In 2015, I shook President Obama’s hand, thanked him for DACA, and asked him to reverse course & close the for-profit baby jails (also known as “family detention centers”) he opened in Dilley & Karnes City, Texas. What he said shook me to my core 1/ pic.twitter.com/K5vi6S2RPj

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

2/ Specifically, I told him, “It’s wrong. And it’s going to be a stain on your legacy.” He stopped moving on to the next person in the rope line and looked back at me. I’d gotten his attention. He turned back, looked at me and “Are you an immigration lawyer?” “Yes”

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

3/ Just days before, President Obama’s senior immigration policy advisor @cecmunoz had received a chilly welcome during her keynote address to the @AILANational annual conference attendees in National Harbor. She was greeted with silent protest & signs saying #EndFamilyDetention

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

4/ I later learned that her meeting with senior AILA attorneys had been testy to say the least. See, Obama had previously timed great news, like #DACA to coincide with the AILA annual conferences. We all watched ecstatic in Nashville in 2012 as he announced it on giant screens.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

5/ So the President’s immediate association of “End Family Detention” with immigration lawyers wasn’t random. He’d been told and believed we were basically the only ones who’d care, and even then, it would be a minority of us that wouldn’t extract from him a political cost.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

6/ So when I said “Yes”, the President looked back and engaged: “I’ll tell you what we can’t have. It’s these parents sending their kids here on a dangerous journey and putting their lives at risk.”

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

7/ And he walked on down the rope line. Not, “I know. I’m working on it.” not, “Thanks for your support”. Just, “Yes. This is the right move given what I perceive the facts to be.” I was dumbfounded. Let’s unpack the logic of what he said because it’s that logic which led us here

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

8/ First, the President tacitly admittedly that he was using detention of mothers and children as a deterrent. Days later, a federal court would find that policy likely violates the due process clause. https://t.co/FxCyUqnWSW. And rightly so, as @ACLU powerfully demonstrated.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

9/ Detention as Deterrence of future migration works only if it’s unpleasant, and only if you can ensure that people don’t get out. You don’t just detain to deter. You detain to deport. You have to do it by sending a Gandalf message down the pipeline to the Northern Triangle.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

10/ What’s wrong with that? First, it doesn’t work. It assumes a parent would rationally chose to watch her daughter raped or murdered in Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras instead of helping her flee to seek the domestic and international legal protections of US law. Would you?

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

11/ People in the Northern Triangle were (and are) fleeing for their lives. They’re looking to what we’ve held out as a shining city on a hill and following the beacon to safety. To convince them not to flee, you must convince them a worse fate awaits at the end of the journey.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

12/ Today’s DHS Kidnapping policy is the logical extension of yesterday’s family detention decisions. It’s the same mouthful of detention-as-deterrence mouthwash, just swished to the other side. Nothing, NOTHING in our law requires us to abuse and traumatize families and children

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

13/ The reason otherwise friendly partisans on the left went to the mat with the Obama Admin is because we saw the utter inhumanity that happens inside these internment camps. Women aren’t allowed to let their children farther than 3 feet away from them. Imagine your toddler.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

14/ I remember holding back tears when I saw cutouts from Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar on the walls in the “kids’ area” of the legal trailer and thinking about how this would mean those kids will always associate the same book I was reading my child with this jail.

— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018

15/ I remember hearing the constant, violent coughing and sickness of small children, and the worry of their mothers who sto

See the original posting on Boing Boing

Roll Sebastian Bergne’s $3.33 pencil dice across the table to get a randomish value from 1-6. Useful for writing choose-your-own-adventures! (via Geekologie)