Thread by @HereticNoir

What we're doing on our border will be remembered as a blight in history. The fact that it has to be said to not forget that these are human beings. Like everyone else, the vast majority of these people are just that, people. #refugees #ImmigrantsHaveRights #ConcentrationCampsUSA

They want to have safety, dignity, not to have to fear for their families, food, water. They're not demons, vicious animals, or parasites - just desperate people suffering greatly. They aren't coming here out of malice against us. They're just humans who want to to survive.

Our government has dehumanized these people. They demonize their motives, so much so that we act as though they: women, children, men, the elderly - deserve to suffer. Instead of just deriding them let's consider:

1. The fact crossing the border is illegal doesn't moralize how we treat them. Over even our recent history many things that were the right thing to do were illegal, and many that were legal were immoral. The legality of something is no statement on it's morality.

2. The flight of people from south of the border is largely due to our policies of corporate exploitation, interventionism, and political sanctioning. We're a neocolonial power in C/S America.

In the early 20th century the Banana Republics were named because our companies wanted the arable land for commercial tropical agriculture, which was oil tier big business at the time.

By the end of the first quarter of the 20th century in nations like Honduras, literally 100% of the arable land was owned by Western business interests. The acquisition of this land was largely accomplished by killing and dispossessing indigenous populations from their homelands.

Afterwards, the Cold War took off along with the other wars between the Communist and Capitalist powers. The West used Central and South America as proxy war zones.

These countries responded to the centuries of colonial rule between Western imperialism and corporate neocolonialism by having workers revolutions based on Marxism. This resulted in the raising of Socialist/Communist states across the area and alliance with the Soviets.

Well, what were these people thinking self governing in ways the US hadn't put on the allowed list? So, we trained genocidal forces and sent our own troops to create regime changes that destabilized many of these nations.

Since then we have acted as a mostly destructive force in the region. Most of the MS-13 gang members in El Salvador actually began their careers in the USA, and the gang itself was born in America, so instead of El Salvador being the source of them here, it's the other way around

In Venezuela we worked with the Saudis to drive the price of a barrel of oil down from $118 to like $30, crashing the economy. In the Reagan era, Honduras was called the "Pentagon Republic" because we used their soil to train groups like the Contras and other rebel groups.

We also helped to destabilize the coffee trade that was Honduras' main export. In 2009, when Honduran oligarchs staged a coup, the US could have acknowledged the change as invalid, but then would lose its interests in the nation, so it approved of the change.

3. The trip from somewhere like Honduras to Texas is incredibly perilous. It's over 2000 miles. There are kidnappings and human trafficking. There's exposure or the chance of getting arrested along the way.

Trekking across the Sonoran Desert is hell, yet so many people nonchalantly accept that parents are dragging small children on this trek or sending them alone is just because they're horrible people who don't care about their kids.

Think for yourself, esp those of you who have children... How terrible would your situation have to be for you to have no better option than something so daunting? These aren't entire nations of horrible parents.

They're nations of parents who have suffered more and are more desperate than anyone here can possibly fathom. They don't want to leave ancestral lands and their homes, but their homes are now nightmares, and largely due to US activity over the last century.

4. Many of these people aren't Spanish, they're indigenous. One of the issues at the border is that there's a lack of translators for indigenous languages. Many of these crossers don't speak Spanish at all.

Over 30% of the families released from detention in AZ in 2015 spoke indigenous languages, not Spanish, and 40% of the families from Guatemala (over 20 Mayan and other languages spoken). Some of the most common are zapotec, nahuatl (Aztec), mam, k'iche', maya, mixe, and mixtec.

These are people who have been across this land long before we drew lines on a map. The Uto-Aztecan languages are also spoken across North American tribes. I think this is important because we have divided up people as different, who actually view each other as the same family.

And how are we treating families who've traveled thousands of harrowing miles from homes their people have inhabited for 10's of thousands of years to escape the fallout of our own greed and power hunger.

1. A Texas facility for migrants with a 125 person capacity was found to be housing almost 900 individuals. Individuals have been in standing room only conditions (i.e. unable to lay down) for weeks. Clothes were soiled for weeks without access to showers. abcnews.go.com/Politics/900-m…

2. Another facility became known as the "Dog Pound" because it houses migrants in outdoor kennels without any access to protection from the elements. Again, they are housed in grossly overcrowded conditions, some men being there a month without a shower: texasmonthly.com/news/border-pa…

3. A 17-year-old Guatemalan woman at the Ursula facility was held past the 72 hour release for unaccompanied minors and detained at the facility. She had given birth by emergency cesarean in Mexico. She was placed in a wheelchair in the facility.

Her infant was 1 month premature and in need of continued hospitalization. By the time the auditing attorneys found her the mother was ill and the baby listless and cold to the touch. Who is pro this baby's life: buzzfeednews.com/article/hameda…

4. Part of the reason children are dying in BP custody is they come out of the Sonoran Desert suffering from dehydration and other exposure problems. As a result, humanitarian groups like No More Deaths go into the desert and leave jugs of water and snacks like granola bars.

The Border Patrol confiscates these things and dumps out the water when they find it in the desert. In fact, volunteers with this group face arrest for doing this (up to 6 months in prison in fact). So, these people deserve to be left to die in the desert? inthesetimes.com/article/21725/…

5. In the opposite of the heat of the Dog Pound, a more common housing system is what has become known as hieleras, Spanish for freezers. These facilities keep people in inhumanely cold conditions.

While detention centers claim the facilities are kept at 73 degrees F, unannounced site visits have found the temperature closer to 56 degrees F. In these facilities women and children are kept and given at best a thin bedroll, many no bedroll at all sleeping on concrete floors.

The only blanket they get is a thin mylar silver blanket. Again, these facilities have no showers. Women are changing diapers and then feeding young children with no way to wash their hands between, causing illnesses. HRW has been handing out hand gel. hrw.org/report/2018/02…

6. The next facility to open, Ft Sill, has a long history as exactly a concentration camp. Originally, it was used as a concentration camp for imprisoning the Nʉmʉnʉʉ (Comanche) when they were forcibly removed from their homelands in the Great Plains to Oklahoma.

Afterwards it was used as a concentration camp for their forcibly removed children during the residential "school" era. Afterwards, it was used as an internment camp for the Japanese during WWII. To reopen this facility for migrant detention is sort of unbelievable.

Let's look at the definition of a concentration camp:

1. a place where large numbers of people (such as pow, political prisoners, refugees, or minority) are detained or confined under armed guard (check)
2. in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities (no doubt there)

So yes, we are housing migrants in concentration camps and rationalizing it by dehumanizing them.

So the next question I know is "So what do you suggest we do about it"

First, I'm not a government with billions of dollars, but some ideas:

1. Quit meddling in and destabilizing nations for greed and power. Right now we're meddling with Venezuela. We meddle in Honduras to keep the tyrants in power because it benefits us. Aid should be directed at stabilizing the nations even if it means we can't exploit them.

2. We need to declare these people asylum seekers, which is what they are. Then the UN will become involved and help to fund, sort, and place people. Nations like Canada will take refugees. It will allow for better facilities and more people processing.

3. We need to re-instate "catch and release" for minors, women, elderly, and families. We also need to make it quicker and easier for those with family already here to connect with them. It takes some parents years just to get their children.

4. Tap into private organizations like humanitarian and religious organizations to help with housing and placing refugees.

What I can say is there is no situation where the treatment above is acceptable for any nation that claims it is civilized.

Ask yourself, how many of us have ancestors or even current family who have been called animals, nothing but criminals, degenerates, drains on the system, etc? How many of us have family that was locked up or corralled up for being too uncivilized for the right people in society?

How many of us today may be viewed by police or society as less than the "right" people? Don't do to these people what has been done to your people. Most people are just people like everyone else and need to be treated as such with a little human dignity.

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