Where Is a Concentration Camp "Rebranded" a Licensed Child Care Center? Answer: USA

May 16, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Since 2014, the U.S. has imprisoned tens of thousands of Central American refugees. Many are young women with their children, and there are many children who have come alone. These refugees—who have committed no crime—have been put into concentration camps. Now the Obama administration, in tandem with the Christian fascists who run the Texas state government, wants to “rebrand” one of these concentration camps—the “Karnes County Residential Center”—as a legally certified “care provider for children.”!

Sadistic and Systematic Child Abuse



A cell with a crib and children's toys that houses an immigrant family at a detention center in Taylor, Texas. A similar Texas U.S. immigration concentration camp that locks up women and children, the “Karnes County Residential Center,” has been “rebranded” a legally certified “care provider for children.” AP photo

OK, so let’s look at this “child care.” Two examples documented by an immigrant rights group: a soaking wet girl thrown into a freezing cell known as a hielera—ice box—with a toilet as her only drinking water. A boy strip searched, forced to stand naked in front of mocking guards, and threatened that he would be raped because a guard claimed he lied about his age. A report by Common Dreams described Karnes as “plagued with human rights abuses, including: denial of food and medical care, lack of due process, and allegations of sexual assault.” When women recently stood up against such abuse by going on a hunger strike, Karnes reacted by placing women and their children in “cuartos oscuros”—isolation in dark rooms. One of their lawyers described these rooms: “... an isolation room with a bed, a toilet, a sink from which you have to cup your hands to drink water, and lights off until meal time.”

In July 2015, a federal judge ruled that refugee children can only be held in licensed child care facilities. The government had two months to comply. That didn’t happen. Obama’s Department of Homeland Security appealed, and has schemed to sidestep the ruling. Then, in April, Texas granted a child care license to the Karnes prison. (Lawyers representing Karnes inmates appealed this decision, and a judge blocked Texas’ absurd and criminal change of Karnes' legal status. But the hold is only for two weeks.)

It should be clear that this is NOT child care at all, but torture.

The American Death and Deportation Machine

Bob Avakian, "Why do people come here from all over the world?"

Why are people fleeing Central America to come to this country anyway—especially when they are almost certain to be imprisoned in these camps?

They are fleeing violence and poverty in countries ransacked by U.S. imperialism. In the 1980s, the U.S. sponsored genocidal wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people and left millions more homeless—at least 200,000 were killed in Guatemala alone. In this century, U.S.-imposed “free trade” agreements have destroyed the livelihoods of millions more. The U.S. recently paid the Mexican army $80 million to launch a “ferocious crackdown” on Central Americans trying to get to this country. Those who make it to the U.S. face a border bristling with weapons, military and police personnel, armed vigilantes, the Border Patrol, and a prison and legal apparatus designed to arrest and quickly deport them.

Last year, Hillary Clinton said that the U.S. has “to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws, or we’ll encourage more children to make that dangerous journey ... they should be sent back.” Measures Obama and Clinton implement and defend deny people their right to apply for asylum, force them to sign agreements in a language they don’t understand, deprive them of legal representation, and incarcerate them for months and years under conditions of unspeakable inhumanity.

Deport children back to the hells they tried to escape to “keep them safe”; declare that a concentration camp is a day care center—this is the false “compassion” of Clinton and Obama.

A system that creates conditions so bad, that people risk death, imprisonment, and torture to escape... a system that builds prisons for the children of those refugees whose leaders then cynically designate that prison as a “child care center"... if that doesn’t indicate that such a system is utterly depraved, worthless, and in need of being overthrown and replaced at the soonest possible moment, what the hell does?