Thread by @TomJawetz

I have been digging around to try to better explain what the Flores Settlement is all about.

Yesterday I stumbled across something that stopped me in my tracks.

#FamiliesBelongTogether /1

Jenny Lisette Flores, 15, fled civil war in El Salvador In 1985. When she was apprehended at the US-Mexico border she was held for months in an #immigration detention facility together with unrelated adults. /2

nbcnews.com/storyline/immi…

During litigation the government conceded that conditions were "deplorable." Kids were jailed together with unrelated adults in facilities ringed with barbed-wire. They had little to no education, recreation, or visitation. This lasted months or longer. /3 supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/…

Like other detained kids, Jenny Flores was also routinely strip searched.

In 1988, a federal judge ruled in favor of the kids and ordered the INS to stop doing that.

This 30-year-old passage from the opinion is stunning. /4

clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/…

Read that language again. The INS's position was that the 4th Amendment rights of these children weren't violated by regular strip searches and body cavity searches because their lives in Central America were so rough they couldn't have expected to be treated better here. /5

The court rejected that argument.

Instead the court accepted that these kids may not have expected better treatment back home, in the countries they fled.

But they came to #America precisely because they hoped for better.

They expected better.

They deserved better. /6

We want the world to expect more from us. To be Reagan's shining city on a hill.

But what message are we sending the world right now? With the #MuslimBan? #FamilySeparation?

When will #ThisIsAmerica be trending because we are standing by positive values that make us proud? /7