May 4

Detaining U.S. Citizens

I realize it’s been all immigration issues all the time here at Tiny Cat Pants and I promise we will soon get back to our regular man-hating ways soon enough, but once you start looking at something, you see some shit, you know what I mean?

And so today I’ve just learned that not only do we round up the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and whisk them off to “detention centers,” we’re rounding up U.S. citizens and sticking them in detention centers, too. Yes, if your parents break the law, you, U.S. citizen, can go to the most prison-like non-prison in America.

Check the interview with the lawyer from the ACLU talking about these kids, who “In their prison garb, they play guard-detainee, where the guard screams in the detainee’s face as the detainee cowers and cries.”  Seriously, America, if the fact that we’re rounding up tiny U.S. citizens, sticking them in prison uniforms, and locking them up for no reason other than that they have the wrong parents doesn’t chill you to the bone, what the fuck will?

11 thoughts on “Detaining U.S. Citizens”

  1. “since the government vowed to end “catch and release” policies in which immigrants rarely showed up for their hearings voluntarily. ”

    Decisions have consequences.

    10/12 of the children have already been released as of the writing, presumably when their relatives were located to take care of them.

    Irresponsible parents, blah blah blah
    I won’t bother with the rest of it since you’ve beaten this subject to death already.

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  3. Exador, you’re such a libertarian except when you let your commie side out and, damn, you’ve let your commie side out on this. As a libertarian, I’d expect you to be for, oh, say, liberty and the Constitution, not for locking U.S. citizens up without due process based solely on some group affiliation (in this case, being related to illegal immigrants).

  4. I’m a compassionate giver.

    I’m not in favor of leaving minors without adult supervision. I guess you over-educated types have a utopic fondness for Dickensian street urchins.

  5. This from a man who seems to think that Scrooge is a tragedy about a good man harangued by demons into paying his employees not to work! Let’s not get into an argument about who is more Dickensian.

    I don’t believe y’all have yet managed to gut all the social services in the country. Those kids could have been put with relatives or into the foster care system where, while not ideal, they’d still have been allowed to, say, attend school.

  9. Exador, your response reminds me of something one of my coworkers said about this story: “Why did they open their mouths after so long? Didn’t they know it would get them into trouble?”

    There’s a reason I have trouble taking libertarianism seriously, and this demonstrates that reason. Sure, it’s all ‘freedom’ this and ‘individual rights’ that, until the big bad gubmint throws the right bogeyman up in your face. Then you turn into a Stalinist. Or, more accurately, what Bob Altemeyer would call a “right-wing authoritarian.”

    While it must feel noble to rail against authoritarian government, I guess you get a pass when the victim is someone you’d rather not identify with.

    (On a tangent, I am also reminded of how little respect I had for those who voiced their righteous indignation about the big bad gubmint’s excesses at Ruby Ridge and Waco; where was your outrage when COINTELPRO and its offspring were wiping out dissent and self-help in minority and anti-war communities?)

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