Nice Judge Bans Family Separation At The Border For The Next Eight Years

What a not-bitterly-ironic way to celebrate Human Rights Day yesterday.

Ursula Detention Center. Source: United States Department of Homeland Security

Yesterday, if you did not know, was Human Rights Day — the 75th anniversary, in fact, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the first major achievements of the United Nations, and something the United States has not felt especially bound by, lo these many years. Especially the parts about not torturing or unlawfully detaining people and pretty much all of Article 25:

1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Well that just sounds like a living nightmare of communism! How are some people supposed to know they’re better than other people if everyone gets food, clothing, housing and medical care? Article 26, which states that “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” and Article 23 may as well join The Squad.

1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Clearly this is all meant for other countries filled with people not rugged enough to enjoy the challenge of an existence unworthy of human dignity.

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But hey! The US did do at least one not-bitterly-ironic thing this Human Rights Day — we put an end to family separation at the border, for at least another eight years. Go team! Or, you know, one judge in San Diego!

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw — a George W. Bush appointee, no less — approved a court settlement on Friday prohibiting federal U.S. border officials from separating families at the border for the next eight years. This would, in many cases, be in line with Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

The settlement was the result of a 2018 lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy” which led to the separation of over 5,000 children from their parents. While the settlement does not include monetary compensation, which the Biden administration had considered, victims of this policy will be eligible for certain kinds of aid.

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The Washington Post reports that those victimized by this policy “may apply for three-year work permits, six months of housing assistance and one year of medical care, according to the settlement. The families also are eligible for three years of counseling under the settlement.”

Additionally, those who were deported will have their records cleared and will be allowed to apply for asylum.

This is all very, very good. Not being horrible to people or separating children from their families, in general, is good. (It would also be super great if we could get more housing assistance, medical care and counseling to everyone in the United States.)

Hopefully, the anti-immigration creeps on the Right are far too busy pretending to be Irish people mad about immigration to Ireland (I have so many questions) to issue any particularly disturbing defenses of family separation. That, too, would be nice.

OPEN THREAD!