TRUMP'S TREATMENT OF MEXICAN CHILDREN IS NOTHING NEW (Revised & now Fluid)

HISTORY OF AN ATROCITY, MEXICAN REPATRIATES AND TODAY THE PRESIDENT IS IGNORANT OF THE LAW AND A HISTORY OF CRUEL IMMIGRATION

Trump continues to mislead Americans, obfuscating the nature of the crisis at the Mexican border. His surrogates serve to confound and confuse the "zero tolerance policy" and tie it to a "law" that does not exist. Trump seeks to elude all responsibility at any means. The "sero tolerance policy first emerged in a February 2017 meeting  with White House officials and then DHS chief, John Kelly. The policy targeted Latin Americans who illegally gained entry and therefore be subject to family separation. Children are taken from their parents and placed in detention centers. While young children face a lifelong effect of trauma while caged while the parents are deported. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General sees it as upholding the law and this is a method of retaliation as an act of deterrence. It is to serve as a warning for any Latin family contemplating fleeing their native countries where they are suffer extortion, violence and murder by members of the same gangs previously deported.

 Trump speaks to a friendly audience that comprise his support. that this travesty is the fault  of "obstructionist Democrats" who refuse to sit down and sign on to new Immigration legislation. Trump is in denial. Nothing can be further from the truth. This cruel and unprecedented separation of children from families is "policy" that can be revoked by he "alone can fix" America's problems as restore "greatness." 

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielson as a Trump surrogate says her agency "is merely enforcing existing laws of a zero tolerance policy." Nielson is another "yes person" serving in the Cabinet who defends a President will not accept responsibility and to avoid hid culpability and uses children as pawns to change immigration laws. 

In her tweet last night Nielson goes so far as to threaten the Freedom of the Press.

"This misreporting by Members, press & advocacy groups must stop. It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry."

This is not the fault or failure of Democrats. Members of Congress including Senator Lindsey Graham (R) are repeatedly correcting this misguided President that there is "no "existing law" that allows this travesty to occur and continue. Right now, 11,875 children of Mexican families are in DHS custody.

However, let me depart from former First Lady Laura Bush's anguish over the "immoral" treatment and "cruelty to children" of the Mexican families seeking asylum out of fear and threats of murder. Laura Bush makes the analogy of the internment of American Japanese families during World War II in her condemnation of the Trump policy.

THE CRUEL HOAX OF AMERICA AND MEXICO OF THE DEPRESSION ERA 

Clark Park is where Detroit's Latinos were forced to assemble for Repatriation.In the end Detroit's Latino population went from 15,000 to 1,200.

"A CARAVAN OF SORROW"

THIS RENDITION IS NOT OF THE MASS CARAVANS SEEKING ILLEGAL ENTRY, BUT THE ILLEGAL REPATRIATING MEXICAN ALIENS AND LEGAL CITIZENS OF THE 1930'S.

SEPARATION IN REVERSE: REPATRIATION OF MEXICAN ALIENS AND U.S. CITIZENS OF MEXICAN HERITAGE

Since October 7, 2001 when I first became aware of the plight of Mexican Americans in Detroit and Los Angeles I began reading and researching this travesty ignored by history. 

As I possess a degree with history as a major and a strong minor in social studies at first became outraged followed by a thirst for truth (over what today they refer as fake news). It has been my intention to introduce Detroit's role in sordid history when I first began writing a blog in 2008. Let me now relay a portion of what I learned.

The issue of immigration reform has dominated the news today and controversial political issue in recent elections. Our major candidates debate immigration policy failures, the injustices at our border and on occasion mentioned on the floor of Congress.

There is a little known body of work preserved by the group Los Repatriados whose mission was to record an oral history of elderly Mexican immigrants. In 1998 these testaments were carefully crafted into a book co-authored by Francisco E. Balderrama, Raymond Rodríguez entitled,

"Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s" 

Later it became depicted in a film premier for Detroit presented at the Detroit Institute of Arts home to the world renowned Diego Rivera courtyard. The work of the historians and artists is nothing short of courageous. It is a sad chapter that was never mentioned in our history books and conveniently forgotten by our government. 

The crime was the result of Republican policy under President Herbert Hoover (R), in a feeble attempt to address the outrage of now jobless whites due to the Great Depression. Hoover became terrified that the voters would blame the demise of the economy on his administration. (Today, it is Trump base).

Hoover and Republicans of the time then orchestrated a insidious plot with the knowledge and compliance of the Mexican government to forcibly deport thousands of Mexican residents working here legally and repatriate them to their country of origin. 

The targets were the population centers of Detroit and Los Angeles, California for this is where a concentration of Mexicans could be rounded up in massive numbers and fall victims to lies and a hoax that sent them upon a journey, a caravan of sorrow to reunite in Mexico.

In Detroit's Southwest neighborhoods and areas near the Ford River Rouge and other factories, Mexican aliens were forcibly evacuated from jobs they held for years. A greater miscarriage of justice occurred when legal immigrants who became American citizens were also identified as part of the same minority who moved here to steal jobs.

In fact, Henry Ford welcomed them as part of his innovation of the assembly line. At first Ford put up a strong resistance to the pressures of a Republican White House, but finally acquiesced to the will of the administration. Ford's reasons to give-in remain unclear.

As I came to learn the events to unfolded was shocking. The Mexicans were taken forcibly rousted from their homes, which some owned by what the Detroit newspapers identified as workers from the City and Wayne County (DHS) Department of Human Services. How ironic it is DHS, Department of Homeland Security performing the dirty work now and back then administration officials feared to be involved.   

Mexican families were hastily set on their way in a "caravan" (depicted above) to make the long trek back to Mexico by automobile, truck and horse drawn wagons of the previous century. The elderly and children could ride but many other of the adult parents went on foot. The result was predictable as untold numbers died in this "Caravan of Sorrow" or what I sometimes refer as "Tears."

The "Greatest Hoax" came at the end of the tragic journey. What the Mexican Americans were told is that the U.S. Government struck a deal with Mexico that the massive caravan would be welcome back into the country and promised homes as well as jobs. To those who survived in the caravan when they arrived, the Mexican government had no such agreement or "deal" with the President or U.S. Government. In other words, they received no warm welcome and their subsequent fate is unclear.

What also was shocking to me as a Detroit native is when I learned the aliens, legal migrant workers and those Mexicans who were U.S. citizens were assembled at Clark Park in SW Detroit bounded by Clark St to the south and W Vernor to the north.

Clark Park Today (my own photo)

Those of my former peers who served the State of Michigan may be shocked by this forced assembly at the hands of local social workers.In reality, similar recent events of unjust action by mostly Republican administrations in Michigan is no surprise.  

Trump's promise to deport 11 million illegal Mexicans branding them a race of rapists and criminals is beginning to take form enacted by contradictory hyperbole, misrepresentation of the law and acts of cruelty of the most vulnerable. 

We have not only an uniformed and uneducated electorate, but a President, a Cabinet, close Confidants all colluding to extricate themselves from their self-inflicted wounds.