I'd thought I'd seen it all. Truly, I had. I thought the cruel simpletons running this country had lost the ability to astound and disgust me. Why am I always so very wrong about things? From The New York Times:



The news of the resignation came shortly after agency officials disclosed that more than 100 children had been returned to a troubled Border Patrol station in Clint, Tex., a location where a group of lawyers who visited recently said hundreds of minor detainees had been housed for weeks without access to showers, clean clothing, or sufficient food.



They moved them back to the Black Hole of Stephen Miller's Soul? What do you suppose went through the minds of these children when they got off the truck and saw that they were back to the warehouse of snot and misery?

And, as this was happening, the acting head of the Customs and Border Protection Agency decided that his acting career was over.



Mr. Sanders announced his resignation in an email to colleagues shortly after it was reported by journalists. He led the agency since President Trump tapped the former Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Kevin McAleenan, to replace Kirstjen Nielsen as homeland security secretary. Mr. Sanders specialized in developing technology for national security initiatives and previously served as the chief technology officer for the Transportation Security Administration.



So now the agency at whose vicious whims these children are shipped from one hellhole to another and back again has no leadership, only the kind of anonymous chickenshit who says things like this in phone calls with reporters.



In a call with reporters on Tuesday, a Customs and Border Protection official disputed the lawyers’ accounts of conditions for hundreds of migrant children at the facility in Clint, saying that detainees who are housed by the agency are given periodic access to showers, and are offered unlimited snacks throughout the day. That assertion ran contrary to what the lawyers, from some of the nation’s top law schools, said they were told by children. During a court-ordered visit to the facility earlier this month, some children said they had not been allowed to shower in nearly a month, and were so hungry that it had been hard for them to sleep through the night.



“I personally don’t believe these allegations,” the Customs and Border Protection official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, told reporters.



I personally don't believe you have a heart, or a soul, or any guts whatsoever. I personally believe you are filled with used straw from the barns at Churchill Downs.

John Sanders resigned as acting Border Patrol chief amid widespread reports of horrific conditions in the facilities he oversaw at the border. Getty Images

These ongoing crimes against humanity already are poisoning our politics and rotting away what little moral credibility this country had remaining with the rest of the world. The damage is vast and ongoing. The recovery, if it ever comes, and I'm wondering about that now, will take decades. And this was the take last week from one of the meathead stars of the president*'s favorite morning TV show, Three Dolts on a Divan:

Like it or not, these are not our kids. Show them compassion, but it's not like he's doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country.

Don't look now, Brian. But you're halfway down a long road that ends at some forbidding iron gates.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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