Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Brings Back Oldie But Goodie: Family Separation At Border
Because it worked so well when Trump did it.
On June 20, 2018 — two days after the release of that audio recording of young Central American children sobbing for their parents crystalized for most Americans the cruelty of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s family separation policy — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on Texas’s congressional delegation to pass immigration reform, saying “this disgraceful condition must end.”
Five years later, Abbott is separating families all on his own, as Texas state troopers take part in his vanity project to overthrow federal authority at the border. Maybe it’s less disgraceful when people have become numb to the horror and you can claim you’re protecting Texas from an “invasion.” Maybe Abbott wasn’t actually all that bothered by it in 2018. In any case, now he’s bringing back family separation, just one more tactic to “deter” asylum seekers from the border, along with ordering state troopers to push migrant children back into the Rio Grande and refusing to give migrants water in the middle of a heat wave.
The Houston Chronicle reports this week that in the last few weeks,
officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety have broken up at least two dozen families by detaining fathers on trespassing charges, while the other members — including small children — are transferred to Border Patrol agents, according to spouses and attorneys representing those migrants.
In many of those cases, the attorneys told Hearst Newspapers, the fathers remain in state custody and have not seen their families since.
Texas’s New Cruelty, the Chronicle notes, is a departure from a 2021 policy that directed DPS officers to turn over families to the Border Patrol if they have children under 18 with them.
But don’t you worry, folks, Abbott’s administration has given this a lot of thought, and this version of tearing families apart at the border is much, much nicer than Trump’s version, because only the fathers are being taken away, tossed in jail on misdemeanor charges, and kept from contacting their families.
DPS spokesperson Travis Considine acknowledged to the Chronicle that troopers have been separating families, but pointed out that children aren’t being taken from their mothers, so it’s perfectly fine, don’t you see? This is therefore nothing like the Trump non-system, which took children away, classified them as “unaccompanied,” and placed them in shelters, usually without any record of where their parents went, making it difficult or impossible to reunite them.
You have to imagine the Abbott crew guffawing and slapping each other on the shoulders after they came up with this one. It’s not family separation because it’s only the men, and everyone knows they’re all criminal gangster drug mules anyway!
“There have been instances in which DPS has arrested male migrants on state charges who were with their family when the alleged crime occurred,” Considine said. “Children and their mothers were never separated, but instead turned over to the US Border Patrol together.”
As recently as June, the Chronicle notes, Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw has testified to the Senate Committee on Border Security that of course it’s standard policy to keep families together and hand them over to the Border Patrol.
“We don’t want to mess with children, and frankly there’s low value in that,” McCraw said during a May hearing. “We think it’s the best way to do it — just keep the family unit together, and refer them to Border Patrol.”
And you just know that now the bastards will insist that the families are in fact together, just without the fathers, who are all giant hulking Narcotraficante super-soldiers bent on invading America and taking our landscaping and short order cook jobs, threatening national security.
People who aren’t trying to get on Fox News and/or run for president still say it’s family separation, no matter how kind and caring Abbott’s version is.
It is “nothing short of state-sponsored family separation,” said Kristin Etter, an attorney and special project director at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. Etter said she knows of at least 26 families that have been split up since July 10. […]
Several of the fathers reported that state troopers “forcibly separated them from their wives and children, promising they would reunite in immigration custody,” said Audrey Mulholland, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. “To date, many of those fathers remain incarcerated in state or federal custody with some having no idea where their family members are.”
The Chronicle story includes accounts by two women who told how their partners were taken away in July. Neither of them has seen their men since the arrest, and they don’t even seem to appreciate what a favor the Abbott regime has done them by not also taking away their children. Funny how they get all sentimental about the people they love and miss the bigger picture, which is that a man in Texas really wants to be president. Selfish of them, really.
One woman, Esneidy Carolina Jerez Moreno, 29, told of crossing the border with her one-year-old son, her 10-year-old daughter, and their dad, Franco Jose Castillo Parra, 23.
And just like in the Trump days, the cops lied through their teeth about what would happen:
They were with a large group of families crossing the river at once. She said all of the men were quickly separated and arrested. An officer told her that she and her kids would be taken by Border Patrol and that Parra, to whom she is not legally married, had to be processed elsewhere and would meet them soon.
“That was a lie,” Moreno said. “They handcuffed him with more men from our group, and they separated us.”
So far, at least no DPS troopers have promised detained women that their partners are simply being taken away for a quick bath and they’ll be right back.
Ms. Moreno, after being processed by the feds, is now living in Philadelphia, and her kids don’t seem to appreciate the great favor Abbott did them by only disappearing their papa, not their mami as well. The one-year-old boy had a seizure that caused him to be hospitalized, and her 10-year-old daughter is seeing a psychologist.
“She’s constantly asking for him, but the calls are only two minutes,” she said. “And the baby, when he hears him, starts yelling.”
She’s been able to speak with Mr. Parra twice since his arrest; he’s been transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement but the story had no further details beyond noting that when Moreno told him about their son’s hospitalization, “She said he cried and prayed.”
The Chronicle also spoke to Angelys Castillo-Medina, a 27-year-old Venezuelan who crossed the border near Eagle Pass, Texas, with her two daughters, aged seven and 11, and her husband. She and her girls got the same lies Ms. Moreno did:
Castillo-Medina said she showed the officers documents proving she was legally married to her husband, who she did not want to name for fear of jeopardizing his case. She said they responded that they didn’t care and loaded him into a van. Castillo-Medina said her daughters begged to go with him and they were told they would be reunited with him soon.
Castillo-Medina, who is now living in Chicago, said she didn’t speak to him until July 23, and then for only two-and-a-half minutes. She has not spoken to him since.
Such tough men in Texas, keeping us safe from a guy whose little girls just want their daddy back. Castillo-Medina, now living in Chicago, says the stress caused her to have a panic attack that landed her in the hospital after she fell while showering, and that
“My daughters and I have slept on floors and have even gone days without anything to eat,” she said. “We didn’t come for this.”
And rightwing readers all over Texas surely muttered “Good” and hoped that maybe this time America can inflict so much trauma on asylum seekers that they’ll finally understand that the anguish they’ll face here is much worse than whatever they’re fleeing, and they’ll all stay away forever.
But people will keep fleeing north, and it’s not difficult to imagine the Abbott crew may decide that just taking the fathers away isn’t enough, and maybe it’s time to get really tough again, just like their hero did in 2018.
God damn America that we ever did that. God damn us all the more that we’re doing it again.
[San Antonio Current / Houston Chronicle / ProPublica / Parody of Francis Bacon’s “Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X” created by Marty Kelley using Dreamstudio AI and Photoshop]
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Image backgrounder: https://www.francis-bacon.com/news/iconic-study-after-velazquezs-portrait-pope-innocent-x-1953-display
I loaded a jpeg of the original in the AI and ran it with the prompt "A postmodernist portrait of Texas Gov Greg Abbott, seated in a wheelchair, in the style of Francis Bacon's "Pope Innocent." disturbing, modern art, screaming elongated skeletal face"
The Crew and I have been scarce lately but we can all agree that Greg Abbott is an unmitigated rancid piece of reeking shit. We just wanted to make that clear to avoid any mistakes. Full stop.