Teresa Hanafin of “Fast Forward” of the Boston Globe wrote the following:
While you were sleeping: The BBC reported a stunning story about a British couple, their 3-month-old baby, and their relatives on vacation in Vancouver who accidentally crossed the border into the US back on Oct. 3. They were pulled over by a cop, arrested, separated, put in freezing cold cells at a detention center, and forced to sleep on the floor. The woman refused to let her infant sleep on the “filthy” floor, so she tried balancing him on her chest. Food and blankets were woefully inadequate.
Then they were flown to a family detention center in Pennsylvania, known as a “baby jail,” where the infant — who hasn’t had all of his immunization shots yet — was exposed to dozens of other kids. Again, dirty conditions, with sheets and blankets that the mother said smelled like a dead dog. It was close to a week before they were allowed to call their embassy, and today, two weeks after they were first nabbed, they’re still in custody.
Why weren’t they allowed to just turn around and drive back into Canada? Because this is who we are now, abusing and alienating allies around the world, one family at a time.
Welcome to America!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane Isn’t it odd that Trump is so internationally-minded where his BUSINESSES are concerned, but so tribal, nationalistic, and closed-in . . . where pandering to his base is concerned. CBK
Unfortunately, nothing this administrations promotes surprises any more: totally despicable.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Wow! All common sense has disappeared.
We are no longer the United States of America, we are no longer a republic (unless you think this type of treatment is just fine and dandy). We are the The Un-United States Under the control of the Trump/(far right) GOP Regime. It is going to take leaders with the powers of resurrection to bring US back to anything similar to what we were before. And what we were before wasn’t exactly great, so let’s not strive for that either. Let’s strive for greater, learning from our past mistakes, the atrocities committed on US soil. Let’s make a commitment to teach students the real, not white washed version, but the absolute truths no matter how shameful of our collective histories. Let’s teach culture, traditions, religions of the world not prophesying, but teaching the histories of, which is the oldest, and so that students know the difference between religions vs extremist. Maybe then we can stop lumping people together based upon one bad act. While also showing that when you get down to it, look at history, if we are going to label any One group as evil, bad based upon reign of terror it would be white men.
This is what evil looks like.
I long to see Trump and his Minister für Propaganda, Miller, standing in the dock at the International Court of Justice, charged with crimes against humanity, including denial of legal rights, kidnapping, and homicide via criminal negligence.
Of course, Trump wanted just straight up homicide. The New York Times reported last week that in March our part-time President, Jabba the Trump, railed for two hours at his aides because they told him that he could not legally just have border agents shoot legal asylum seekers. He was furious about this. If you and I held a meeting and called on our subordinates to shoot a bunch of innocents, every person at that meeting would call the police. Next, we would quite rightly be arrested and remanded for psychiatric evaluation. Then we would go to a mental institution or prison. This is entirely appropriate for people who are criminally insane and extremely dangerous.
I’ve been referring to us, lately, as the Untied States. Just what Vlad wanted (among other things, like control of Syria and undermining of NATO), from his Asset Orange.
“Why weren’t they allowed to just turn around and drive back into Canada? Because this is who we are now, abusing and alienating allies around the world, one family at a time. Welcome to America!”
I want to revise the above quote a bi … well more than a bit.
Welcome to Trumpistan and the Trumplican Party that was formally Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party. The United States has been taken hostage by 30-percent of its population. They are the Emperor of Lies Donald Trump’s mostly fat, white, racisit supporters.
The United States is now buried under more than 12,000 of Donald Trump’s lies, with help from Moscow Mitch McConnel and all the former Republicans that now are fascist Trumplicans, and the U.S. Constitution is spinning in its grave.
I am a United States citizen. I do not recognize Donald Trump as my president. When the Civil War to take back the United States explodes across the country, I will join up and fight alongside other Americans that want to defend the U.S.Constution and take back OUR country from Trump and his fascist, racist followers.
If the fascist, racist Trumplicans do not like living in OUR Constitutional Republic, they may leave OUR country and move to Russia, Turkey, or North Korea. Or we can give them Alaska.
I have to add another item to my weekly shopping list … start buying more ammo.
Side note: I have zero clue why my first comment was posted several times.
Lloyd your civil war comment is quite frightening. It was perhaps right before Trump took office or shortly after that I began hearing talks of a 2nd civil war via far right wing political rantings on XM radio. I had a free service at that time and would entertain myself by often listening for a few minutes to what they were saying. The talk of civil war was on nearly everyone of them. Then some months later via NPR an interview of two civil war historians/professors from a university was on. They said something along the lines of we are already in a cold civil war and it wouldn’t take much to make it hot.
The 2018 state elections saw some pretty interesting bills pass shortly afterwards during the legislative sessions. In the GOP controlled, heavily controlled states there was a series of copy/paste bills hitting 15 states or more back to back. These were everything from not expanding Medicaid, or making it extremely hard to stay on it, charter school expansions, giving the GOP governors unlimited power over all state agencies, and permitless carry of firearms. These copy/paste bills had all be written up by lobbyists groups, sent to admin executives working for legislators & governors then reworded by those to fit state, and put up to vote or heard on the house floor. So how do you win a civil war? How do you control a population? The answers lie somewhere in those bills. Or maybe these lobbyists groups were just after money.
For decades the extreme Alt-Right, mostly Trump’s base, has been convinced by loudmouth liars like Rush Limbaugh that “libtards” ( as they refer to anyone that doesn’t think like them and that is more than 70 percent of the population) do not own any firearms and that the “libtards” are trying to take away the freedom of the Alt-Right from taking away the freedom of the “libtards” through the courts and legislation.
I think that means the “Alt-Right” thinks when they start Trump’s hot shooting Civil War to save Trump and anoint him as the chosen one and an Emperor for Life, they have fooled themselves into thinking that no “libtard” is going to shoot back at them (after all, the “libtards” are behind getting rid of the 2nd Amendment (because Faux News has been saying so for decades) and it will be a “libtard” turkey shoot.
The “Alt-Right” Trumpists justify their thinking that it is okay to shoot an unarmed “libtard” because they are baby killers (aka – abortion of the unborn when the fetus is the size of a kidney bean with no brain yet.)
The Alt-Right Trumpists allowed their brains to be hacked into believing this and more.
The copy/past bills, Sarah, came from the ultra-right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. That’s their MO. They create extremist right-wing boilerplate legislation and then invite Repugnican officials to resorts to present it to them.
The copy/paste bills come from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC ia corporate funded and it specializes in writing up “model legislation” that any lazy legislator can easily add a date, state, and so on to make it look as if the legislator(s) produced the bill, not ALEC.
Ah, you beat me to this, Laura!
Extraordinarily well said, Ms. Payne! I could not agree more that we teachers have a responsibility here to tell our students the truth and uphold our ideals. And yes, it’s going to take a long, long time to undo the damage, some of which can never be undone. We can’t bring back alive some child who has died in a concentration camp at our borders.
Thank you. As an educator here in the deep red bible belt where voters ALWAYS vote against their own best interest, where bullying is rampant, with teachers, admin, parents scratching their heads over the whys (which are easily observable), yet never willing to admit, take responsibility, or risk to fix it. Which the fix would be all mentioned above, teaching tolerance(which I despise that word, we should just already acknowledge everyone is different that’s what makes us unique humans and move on), and stop taking away every single bit of time for SEL which has been replaced with nothing but academic level success, placement. And as an educator here it is nearly impossible to teach truths without having your career called into question.
You can teach principles, using historical examples. For example, if I were teaching American history now, and teaching the period leading up to World War II, I suspect that I would linger over the horrors of Hitler’s immigration policies.
This is due to Trump’s zero tolerance policy. We know how well that worked in schools. Anyone watch Living Undocumented on Netflix? Quite eye-opening and heartwrenching stories.
The article fails to mention that 7 were traveling together– all were arrested, including Connors’ Canadian brother, sister-in-law, and 2-y.o. twin nieces. So four relatives and their 3 babies, 1/2 Canadian, 1/2 Brit. An unlikely crew to be handled in this way pre-DJT immigration policy. One might speculate that border patrol– like parking enforcement– get quota-based brownie points for # of detainees, so arrange themselves at likely spots. Or could there be a racially-based culture at work? Connors (& perhaps his brother too) are ‘dark’ as in ‘just’ Black Irish, or maybe 1/2-1/4 Indian. I mention it because the article links to a similar 2018 incident involving a French beach-jogger (same general area) who strayed off-course. Picture shows her to be mixed-race, probably part Arab…
figures
Some people consider this a “Christian” nation and still support Trump. I can NEVER understand this. Trump, the very antithesis of what Jesus taught. For ALL of us, we are digging a hole out of which we can never escape. The world once respected us for what we SAID we promoted. Now, they know better. God help us.
Our word means nothing. Our friends are denigrated and now we betray the people, Kurds as well as those in our own country, “illegals” who have helped build a better nation.
WHAT have we become or have we always been that, hypocrites?
I LOVE what we SAY we believe in. But …