Liberal Immigration Lawyer Details How Obama HIMSELF Justified Family Separation https://t.co/I477AZ5yAq
— Jeff Dunetz (@yidwithlid) June 20, 2018
Thread: How did we get here?
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
16/ if being in these cages ate away at our humanity, getting to know the people locked inside them helped restore it. They women We represented had been raped, beaten, or stalked in some of the most violent places on the planet. They carried on for their kids. They had hope.
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
18/ I remember sitting down with my Member of Congress soon after I got back from the baby jail and trying to impress upon him the fierce urgency of taking immediate action to close these places down. I believed if people just knew, it would end. We as a nation would end it.
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
18/ I remember sitting down with my Member of Congress soon after I got back from the baby jail and trying to impress upon him the fierce urgency of taking immediate action to close these places down. I believed if people just knew, it would end. We as a nation would end it.
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
19/ what I hope for us in this moment of critical mass, in this tipping point, is that we will collectively have the courage to hold our leaders accountable when they tell us putting families in for-profit cages to deter asylum-seeking is necessary to stop family separation.
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
21/ It means making sure @RAICESTEXAS and @AlOtroLado_Org and @NWIRP and @MigrantFreedom and @DetentionWatch have the resources they need to represent, visit, and document the abuses committed against human beings in cages. And it means showing up when we’re called to be present/
— R. Andrew Free (@ImmCivilRights) June 19, 2018
