Contributors

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

The Republican Child Torture Regime

There's been an outcry in recent weeks over the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. Pictures of kids placed in cages by ICE agents have been plastered all over the media, making Republicans who have some semblance of conscience -- and a desire to be reelected -- reconsider their support of Trump's evil policies.

But this is just part of a long-standing Republican policy of using children as weapons.

Republicans claim to be pro-life and against abortion. They claim to value children above all else. But their actual policies show that they don't care about kids at all. They're constantly railing about welfare moms, trying to eliminate early childhood education programs like Headstart, children's health insurance programs like CHIP, children's nutrition programs like SNAP, and the entire budget of the Department of Education.

Republicans want to eliminate abortion not because they care about the children, but to force women to bear children as punishment for their "debauchery." Republicans think they're making women do the responsible thing by forcing them to have kids, but if you're poor and you've already got two kids, adding a third will just make you poorer and even less able to work.

The Republican trope for people on food stamps is a welfare queen with a half a dozen kids getting pregnant yet again to collect bigger checks. The responsible thing for a person in this position is to get an abortion. Yet that's the last thing Republicans want to let them do.

And at exactly the same time Republicans are making it harder and harder for women to get birth control. They push "abstinence education" which they know full well will fail -- if you look at the reddest counties in white America you'll find the highest rates of teen pregnancy.

But they want to punish girls who have sex, even though, nine of ten times, it's the boyfriend who is so eager to have sex in the first place.

Now, when immigrants come to the United States seeking asylum from abysmal conditions in their home countries, Republicans are taking their children away from them as punishment for "breaking the law."

But the fact is, being in the United States unlawfully is just a civil violation, not a crime. The punishment is deportation, not kidnapping your kids.

Furthermore, entering the United States illegally is not a serious crime, unless you lie or try to evade immigration officers. It's punishable by a $50 fine for a first offense.

That's a misdemeanor. It's like taking a woman's kids away from her for getting a parking ticket.

The people who are presenting themselves to immigration at the border and are being arrested, imprisoned and having their children taken from them are not criminals: they're refugees.

The apparent reason for this oppressive regime of retaliation against immigrants through their children is to incite fear in potential immigrants. Trump is trumpeting to the world, "Come to the United States and we'll steal your children!"

But if you think about it, there's another reason. Who's taking care of all those kids? Prison companies that began setting up large facilities along the border right after Trump's election. There's billions of dollars in contracts for housing and detaining immigrants awaiting hearings and deportation.

Taking their kids away from them means more profits for the prison companies.

And that's why they gave Donald Trump so much money during the campaign.

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