Movement to call migrant detention centers 'concentration camps' swells online

A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation.



See photos of U.S. Border Patrol working along the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year ... less A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border on June 12, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico ... more Photo: John Moore/Getty Images Photo: John Moore/Getty Images Image 1 of / 74 Caption Close Movement to call migrant detention centers 'concentration camps' swells online 1 / 74 Back to Gallery

Critics aren't doing their due diligence by labeling prisons for migrants "detention centers," a growing number of activists and critics argue.

The effort to relabel the detention centers picked up steam on Tuesday after McClatchy reported that the Trump administration was looking to build "tent cities" around Texas in order to house migrant children separated from their parents.

"Correction: America is planning on bringing back Concentration Camps for people of color," wrote civil rights advocate Qasim Rashid on Twitter.

"Call it what it really is," read another widely shared post. "Concentration camps."

Call it what it really is. Concentration camps. https://t.co/ByZPFLsIi6 — Edward Bowser (@etbowser) June 13, 2018

AT THE BORDER: Texas border agents tell migrant moms they'll bathe their kids. Instead, they separate them.

"Ripping children from their parents and locking them in tent cities is a new low for this presidency," wrote New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. "We should call these what they are – imprisonment camps. And it's happening in our own country. We can't let this become who we are."

Other critics went further and compared the prison camps to those used in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

How long before the Germans invade us and liberate our concentration camps? — Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) June 14, 2018

I would warn journalists who are visiting some of these migrant camps for children in America that show migrant kids playing that the Nazis also built Theresienstadt to show the world's press and Red Cross how well Jews were treated in concentration camps. #MigrantCrisis — Harry Leslie Smith (@Harryslaststand) June 14, 2018

While the term "concentration camp" predates Nazi Germany, the phrase was used by the regime to refer to its own death camps, which led to the deaths of millions of Jews and persons the regime considered "undesirables."

TOUR: Beto O'Rourke visits immigrant detention center, says 'I can only imagine the terror they felt'

The practice of separating migrant families began in April when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new "zero-tolerance" policy prosecuting 100 percent of illegal border crossings.

"If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law," Sessions said at the time. "If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border."

Since then, the zero-tolerance policy has overwhelmed courts lining the border, especially in Texas, where as many as 70 immigrants are tried at the same time.

Roughly 10,000 migrant children are currently in custody, according to a headcount by the Department of Health and Human Services in May.

Last week, the controversial policy caught the attention of the United Nations with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights calling the separations an "arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life" and a practice that "runs counter to human rights standards and principles."

Fernando.ramirez@chron.com

Twitter.com/fernramirez93