Tag: Trump Administration

Rosa Maria’s Challenge for School Reform

October 30, 2017 4:22 pm October 30, 2017

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A lot of people will be talking about the indictment of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and his former business partner, Rick Gates, on charges of money laundering…

A lot of people will be talking about the indictment of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort and his former business partner, Rick Gates, on charges of money laundering and failure to register as foreign agents on behalf of Ukranian and Russian interests. After all, the move by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on that front, along with the guilty plea by George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to Trump during his successful run for president, are the first steps in what might end up being Trump’s impeachment for colluding with the Russian government in its alleged effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

But your editor is far more concerned about how the current Occupant of the White House’s regime is harming the life of a 10-year-old undocumented emigre child with cerebral palsy who was detained last week in the midst of a medical emergency. That case is the latest example of how the Trump Administration’s goal of harming the lives of poor and minority children — and another reason why reformers from all sides must stand against the administration’s abuse.

The child, named Rosa Maria Hernandez, was detained by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Patrol on her way to emergency surgery for a ruptured gall bladder. The child, who was brought to the country as a three-month-old in order to get better healthcare than she could in Mexico, suffers from a level of cognitive disability that renders her more like a four-year-old than a child in the fourth grade. Even though the Trump Administration has the discretion to let Rosa stay at home with her family in Laredo, Texas, in order to recover from the surgery — and despite having a cognitive disability that renders her unable to protect herself from the kinds of sexual and physical abuses that happen in immigration jails — it decided instead to detain her in a jail 156 miles away in San Antonio, from which she will likely be sent to a country that she has never known.

As you would expect, Rosa’s case has attracted media attention as well as the presence of the American Civil Liberties Union, which now represents her. It has demanded the Trump Administration to release Rosa from jail within the next 24 hours or find itself facing another of many suits it has filed over the regime’s denial of due process for (and criminal abuse of) undocumented emigres. The administration, having been willing to engage in propaganda campaigns instigated by former Homeland Administration Secretary (and now White House Chief of Staff) John Kelly that smear undocumented emigres as “rapists” and “bad hombres”, and has sparred with congressional leaders such as Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson over the president’s insensitivity to the widows of servicemen killed in action, has shown no willingness to back down.

The Trump Administration is keeping Rosa Maria from her mother and father at a time she when needs them the most.

Given Rosa Maria’s condition, what the Trump Administration has done to her and her family is morally unacceptable. Yet it is the norm for this regime.

President Donald Trump himself has made nativism and White Supremacy the hallmarks of his tenure in the White House — and his demagoguery has been on display long before he ran for the presidency. On the campaign trail, he accused Mexican immigrants, undocumented and legal, of being “rapists” and “bad hombres”; embraced conspiratorial rhetoric from the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a speech given a month before his victory; denigrating the family of a dead soldier who was also a Muslim; and accusing Gonzalo Curiel, a federal judge presiding over a case involving one of his business of being biased against him because of his Mexican heritage.

Since taking office, Trump’s efforts against immigrants and refugees has continued unabated.This includes the executive orders banning Muslims from several countries from entering the country; to the repeal of the Obama Administration’s executive order requiring traditional districts and other public school operators to allow transgendered children to use bathrooms of the sex with which they identify; to the round-ups and deportations of undocumented immigrants who contribute greatly to the nation’s economy; to even claiming in July that Mexican emigres wanted to take young women and “slice them and dice them with a knife because they want them to go through excruciating pain before they die.”

The major step came last month when the Trump Administration ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era initiative that protected 760,000 children, youth and young adults (including 20,000 teachers working in America’s classrooms) brought to the country as children from deportation. Since then, the Trump Administration has worked to frustrate efforts by DACA recipients in states affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma to register under the program for protection.

By ending DACA, Trump signaled clearly that his low-grade ethnic cleansing would extend to the most-vulnerable, boys and girls who have only known America as their home. Helpless children in the midst of learning now being told by the federal government and by the Trump regime that they are undeserving of being treated humanely like the Children of God and members of the Family of Man that they are. Teachers helping poor and minority children gain the knowledge they need for lifelong success being tossed from this country just because their parents brought them here to have better lives and be builders of this nation. Collegians who will be the nation’s future leaders and builders of society kicked out because they aren’t White or native.

But the Trump Administration hasn’t limited its bigotry to immigrant children. Through the U.S. Department of Education, the regime is working hard not to enforce its civil rights obligation to poor and minority children in American public education. This includes a move to limit evidence that can be used by investigators in determining if districts and charter school operators are overusing such harsh discipline as out-of-school suspensions and solitary confinement.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been a collaborator in the Trump regime’s agenda against poor and minority children.

Last week, Politico reported that the administration planned on delaying or eliminating a rule enacted under the Obama Administration that requires districts to limit the number of Black children condemned to the nation’s special education ghettos (and denied opportunities for the high-quality education they need and deserve). By delaying or eliminating the rule, DeVos and Trump would give districts and other school operators free reign to use special ed as a way to not address the literacy issues of young Black men and others, setting back an important part of the school reform effort George W. Bush began in the last decade.

Meanwhile the administration hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the 8.9 million poor children who were receiving health care through the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program after Congress let the authorizing legislation expire last month. Without CHIP, those children will now lose out on medical treatments that allow them to thrive in school and make it to adulthood.

Now comes the case of Rosa Maria and her plight in a San Antonio immigration prison. Once again, the Trump Administration has proven that it will do ill to even those children who are disabled all because of who they are and who gave birth to them.

Plenty of reformers, from Teach to America to TNTP, have condemned the Trump Administration’s other actions against poor and minority children. There are still others who remain silent. Particularly among conservative reformers (including those with ties to DeVos and her philanthropies), it is much-easier to change the subject than it is to confront the reality of this administration’s evil towards children for whom they proclaim concern.For them, the case of Rosa Maria should serve as the last straw and should push them to condemn the administration.

Certainly reformers can’t spend the bulk of their time on immigration reform. But they can sign on to the ACLU’s letter demanding her release and ultimately, a path towards citizenship for her and her family. They can go further and demand that DeVos weigh in by expressing support for a plan to help DACA emigres gain the citizenship they deserve.

Finally, those who haven’t actively condemned Trump’s bigotry should do so. If they can take time to castigate traditionalists for defending the superclusters in American public education that fail Black and Brown children daily, they can also denounce an administration that wants to further those failures.

Rosa Maria deserves better. So do other poor and minority children. The time to call out the Trump Administration for its evil is now.

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Three Thoughts

Protect Our Immigrant Children

August 30, 2017 12:01 am August 30, 2017

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As you already know, the Trump Administration has declared open war on undocumented immigrant children and their families, as well as the 5.9 million native-born children of emigres to this…

As you already know, the Trump Administration has declared open war on undocumented immigrant children and their families, as well as the 5.9 million native-born children of emigres to this country who fled economic despair, political oppression and violent crime. For the school reform movement, it is another reminder of why we must fight harder to oppose what the regime is doing (and plans to do) to our most-vulnerable children and their families.

President Donald Trump made clear his bigotry toward Latino children (as well as his contempt for the rule of law) last Friday night when when he pardoned former Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The disgraced law enforcement official, whose long list of misdeeds includes failing to investigate alleged sexual assaults of undocumented emigres (including the molestation of 32 children), was convicted this month of contempt of court for violating a federal court order to stop discriminatory profiling of Latinos (including those native-born and undocumented who had no criminal record) to ascertain their citizenship status.

By pardoning Arpaio, Trump gives rogue cops and police departments the carte blanche to engage in criminal abuse of immigrants as well as blessed all kinds of police brutality and other violations of civil liberties of all Americans. Given the wide criticism he received over the last two weeks for failing to condemn White Supremacists who committed murder and mayhem earlier this month in Charlottesville, Va., the pardon is also a clear sign of where his administration stands when it comes to the federal role of protecting the civil rights of poor and minority communities.

Arpaio’s pardon comes on the heels of new reports that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents are engaging in all kinds of roguery.

Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed in a lawsuit on behalf of three undocumented immigrant youth that the federal agency is teaming up with police departments (including the 250 law enforcement agencies operated by traditional district schools) to pick up, detain, and ultimately, deport unaccompanied refugee children and other undocumented minors. The children, already vetted by other federal agencies, are supposed to be turned over to their parents or to the Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, ICE is violating federal law by placing them in detention centers halfway across the country from where they live, putting them in danger of being molested and assaulted.

In the particular case being represented by the ACLU, ICE teamed up with Suffolk County, N.Y., police officers to pick up three unaccompanied refugees from Honduras and El Salvador attending high school in New York’s Brentwood district for allegedly being members of the MS-13 gang. ICE agents and Suffolk County cops have proclaimed in court that the children admitted gang affiliation even though they have been unable to provide any physical evidence or corroboration.The Brentwood district allegedly conspired with ICE and Suffolk County cops by suspending students who were suspiciously picked up for deportation days later.

Through ICE, the Trump Administration has attempted to pry data from districts in order to conduct their operations as well as standing outside schools so they can pick up kids and parents entering schoolhouse doors. Such data is prohibited from being disclosed to ICE by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the law governing the release of school data, but district staffers aren’t always aware of this. As a result of the tactics, traditional districts are issuing guidance to school leaders and others to not release any data.

Meanwhile the Trump Administration has taken particular aim at “border children” from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala who fled to this country to escape violence. Two weeks ago, Homeland Security canceled the Central American Minors Parole, which allowed 3,000 such kids to remain in the country. This will likely lead to those kids, some as young as 11, to be deported, and shortchanging them of schooling they need and deserve. The move by ICE this month to deport Lizandro Claros-Saravia, who was set to attend Louisberg College on a partial athletic scholarship, shows that collegians who are destined to contribute greatly to America’s economy and society, will also be shown the door.

Things will likely get worse for immigrant children will likely in the next few months if the Trump Administration moves to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the initiative started under the Obama Administration to exempt emigres brought to the country as children from deportation. Some 760,000 children and young adults ages nine and older are protected under DACA. This includes 100 Teach for America recruits who are working in the nation’s traditional public and public charter schools.

If Trump goes ahead and ends DACA, as many expect, children in elementary, secondary, and schools of higher education will be tossed out of the country when they should be learning and ultimately becoming the nation’s future leaders and builders of its economy. It also means that teachers who are improving the quality of education for poor and minority children will also end up being deported, harming the futures of the children they serve.

As it is, the Trump Administration has already begun targeting DACA emigres for deportation. This has resulted in even more allegations of roguery by ICE agents. In the case of Riccy Enriquez Perdom, who was briefly detained last week and then released after public outcry, ICE agents allegedly told her that her DACA status had expired even though it had been renewed seven months ago.

The consequences for children of undocumented emigres and those kids who are undocumented themselves can already be seen in our schools. As the New Yorker detailed back in March, children are skipping school out of fear that their parents and themselves may end up detained and deported, or, in the case of native-born children, end up in the nation’s child welfare systems. Those kids whose parents are rounded for deportation suffer dramatically; on average, the household of those children, whose parents were working, paying taxes, and contributing to communities, declined by 50 percent, according to a 2014 study by Robert Warren and Donald Kerwin of the Center for Migration Studies.

It is almost impossible for children to learn and gain the knowledge they need for brighter futures if they are in conditions of instability and poverty caused by government action.

That many undocumented immigrant children (along with their families) came to this country to find safety, political oppression and economic stability makes the efforts of Trump Administration to get rid of them even crueler than it first appears. Given that they are undocumented because of the nation’s broken immigration system (whose quotas are a legacy of the racial bigotry against earlier generations of Latinos, Jews, Irish and Chinese emigres), and that most have never committed a felony, the administration’s effort is arbitrary, capricious, and unconscionable.

But the problem for undocumented immigrant youth extends beyond losing out on teaching and learning. Once picked up for deportation, a child is ensnared in an overwhelmed immigration court system that offers them no opportunities for due process.

The end of the day at Albertville Middle School. Statistics say the student body is 30% latino, but teachers think its higher. Many students were taken out of school when Alabama’s immigration laws were passed.

Judges aren’t required to give an undocumented immigrant child a lawyer who help them obtain a fair trial; 34 percent of the 56,663 children in immigration court in the 2013-2014 fiscal year had no lawyer representing them. When kids aren’t represented by lawyers, they are more-likely to be deported or placed in detention than those who aren’t; 68 percent of undocumented immigrant children without lawyers were ordered out of the country in 2013-2014, compared to just 6.1 percent of those with lawyers.

Even worse is what can happen to those children if they detained end up in detention centers (prisons and jails) in which sexual and other forms of criminal abuse is rampant. The likelihood of those abuses being addressed or even being reported is abysmally low. Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General investigated a mere 570 of the 33,126 allegations of abuse lodged by undocumented emigres in detention centers between 2010 and 2016, according to Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement. Given that ICE is now looking to destroy documentation of such complaints, the likelihood of even more abuse is greater than ever.

This discrimination against undocumented immigrant children and native-born progeny of undocumented Americans (as well as against their families) is that it is based on an intellectually indefensible and absolutely immoral premise: That immigrants are a scourge to the nation. This thinking, almost as old as the racialism that is America’s Original Sin (and has often intertwined with racism to detrimental effect on generations of poor and minority children), continues to be embraced by the Trump Administration, many Congressional Republican leaders, and their supporters despite the overwhelming evidence that immigrants contribute greatly to this country’s economy and society. [The fact that Trump, along with nearly all of his staffers, are the descendants of emigres of the last two centuries, makes their nativism hypocritical.]

The good news is that some reformers have already stepped out to demand that the Trump Administration keep DACA in place. This includes Chiefs for Change, which issued a public call today asking for retain protections for undocumented immigrant children, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Education John King (who called out the administration in a speech last week to a group of school leaders. But reformers can do more.

One step lies in working with districts and school operators to help them give sanctuary to the undocumented. Districts such as Chicago have already taken these steps, refusing to cooperate with ICE and other law enforcement agencies in their deportation efforts. But those districts need help. The movement can reach out to immigration reform groups and others to develop ways to help those families evade deportation; this includes running bus services that can transport children from homes to schools without endangering their families, as well as work with community groups such as San Francisco’s Arriba Juntos to provide schooling to those in fear of appearing in schools.

Reformers can also offer their experience on the school data front to help immigration reform activists hold ICE and the federal government responsible. This includes advocating alongside immigration reform activists to oppose destruction of records and complaints of abuse lodged by undocumented immigrants in detention center.

The longer-term step starts with supporting immigration reform efforts on overhauling the nation’s immigration system. Certainly reformers can’t help in directly crafting policy. But they can help give political support by simply signing on to letters, teaming up on advocacy efforts that advance both immigration and school reform.

Meanwhile school reformers can work on eliminating the presence of police officers in schools. Besides the documented evidence that the presence of law enforces leads to overuse of harsh school discipline and exacerbates the school-to-prison pipeline, they can also end up being used by ICE as tools to identify and deport undocumented immigrant children and their families. As a result, getting cops out of schools helps improve school cultures for all children.

The Trump Administration has once again made clear its policy agenda of harming the futures of poor and minority children. As reformers, we must make sure it fails in its immoral goal.

Featured photo courtesy of Chip Somodevilla.

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