UPDATED NEWS Nursing mothers taken away from children by US Govt

I live in MA and am so mad and sad about this. I wish I could offer to nurse some of those babies until they get their mamas back. I have plenty of milk.

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Momtwice is right. You don't have to live in Massachusetts to call. This is a federal issue. Please call your representatives today and demand that the INS allow the Massachusetts social workers access to the interned immigrants both in Texas and Massachusetts.

I was following this and was mad but saw that Governor Patrick was involved so didn't do anything. But when I read about how this action has endangered the health of two possibly American-born children... I've been slammed onto my

Even when they do take the kids and keep the families together, the private company the feds have doing this do so in a traditional prison setting. Often, children are separated from their parents at night to sleep in separate cells.

On another board I followed the story of a family who before the holidays were arrested and three of them (the parents and 17yo.) were sent to TX, while the son was put in a prison that also held actual criminals. Everything was announced in Spanish and they're Romanian so they were very isolated. The way they were treated was appalling in general.

They were legally in the country, they thought. They'd gone through all the steps to live and work legally and to gain citizenship, but they had a crooked lawyer who messed it up for them. Now they're in Romania where the father was a cop in the old regime, the 17 yo DD and son who's a legal adult barely or don't at all remember Romania and don't speak the language entirely fluently, in a tiny flat, having lost their jobs, their house...and the grandmother, who is a US Citizen, is all alone in the States now except the 17 yo. girl's boyfriend is helping every way they can.

They've been told they cannot return to the US for at least 10 years. The whole thing is insane. Up until recently a situation like theirs wouldn't have involved them thrown in holding, they'd have been able to continue living at home and working until it was sorted out, because they were not a flight risk.

There are some very WRONG things going on in the reorganized immigration bureaucracy.

This happened with the meat packing plant raids in CO a couple months ago too.

INS doesn't involve any other agencies in what they're doing (say, DFS) and doesn't do anything to address familial issues. And - since the children are born in the USA and US citizens, there are a lot of issues that I think they simply prefer to ignore.

I think a lot of times, the mothers bf at home and babies are encouraged to 'reverse cycle' when Mom is gone.

The whole immigration situation is so messed up. HOW so many people can forget that their own families often fled oppression, corruption, and lack of opportunity to come to America (and do work that most Americans then didn't want, either) ... it's beyond me. OT I know but still - I'd like all the polticos who are ranting about immigrants stealing jobs from American workers to think about how delighted they'd be if their grandchildren WANTED a job like that. Or maybe explain to me why my college-educated immigrant cousin can't get any job except housecleaning, when she's a qualified accountant?

Our priest did a wonderful sermon on this a couple months ago - reminding everyone that Jesus himself was an undocumented immigrant. I wish the sermon was taped, because it was awesome. He talked about the nursing moms and their babies, too.

I have been out of it and I can't find the original article in question. The MA gov. in this article seems to be complaining about the federal treatment of the detainees:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...sent_to_texas/

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THe feds are saying that all the detainees were asked about children and that the women may not have given that information out of concerns:

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I hope those parents and children are reunited soon.

Jessica

I am married to an immigrant (undocumented). Universe help anyone who would try to take him away from us...I would fight them to my last breath...all probably to no avail, but I'd still give them the hell of their lives.

He's hardworking, pays his taxes, and has no criminal record. He is a good husband and father.

There are MILLIONS of people like him in this country...average, honest, hardworking people who pay taxes and live normal lives...all of whom could be taken at any time, for any reason or no reason at all, from their families, FOREVER. They have absolutely no protection or recourse, and neither do the families that love and depend on them.

There is nothing okay about that, or about ambivalence in the face of it/to the fact of it. Inhuman is the only word I can think to write now, but it doesn't scratch the surface of the depth of human cruelty it takes to do this to people and their loved ones. Or that this disease has spread to our legal system unchallenged.

What a pathetic, pathological place this world can be.

Wow. That is one of the most deeply disturbing thing's I've read. :

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Apparently Bush didn't get fully briefed when he said this yesterday:

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Click for the full article.
International Herald Tribune

I think Bush was taking a lesson from Clinton and the art of splitting hairs. Children weren't taken from families! Families were taken from children. It's all in the way you say it.