After a brief discussion of Tuesday’s results in Michigan, Anat and I spent the bulk of this week’s Substack Live with Sarah Mehta, the ACLU’s Deputy Director for Policy and Government Affairs for Immigration, on an urgent story that has flown horrifically under the radar for a year and a half: the systematic dismantling of every legal protection this country has for unaccompanied immigrant children. About 24,000 innocent kids will now be forced to plead for their lives in immigration court alone, or with incompetent and compromised lawyers.
Stop Kids from Being Disappeared
Sarah explained that when Trump was re-elected, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan said on the record that unaccompanied minors were a top target. They’ve made good on that threat in a multi-layered attack that’s less visible than the broad-daylight ICE kidnappings we’ve all heard about, but deserves every bit as much public attention and outrage.
First, kids who’ve been living for years with family members or vetted sponsors are being pulled out of those homes by armed agents, under the guise of a “wellness check.” Many of those agents are effectively bounty hunters for ICE — local law enforcement incentivized to kidnap as many kids as possible for $22,500 a head.
Second, the regime is racing to build concentration camps to hold thousands more kids, even though the number of kids in federal custody has fallen: bids for multiple 3,000 bed facilities and reported plans to open a converted military base in Louisiana, previously deemed toxic and polluted with “forever chemicals,” into a site to hold children. They’re building these camps because they intend to fill them, which means more raids to lock up and traumatize more children.
Third, the regime is taking away the lawyers these kids need to help them avoid deportation to unfamiliar or dangerous countries. Their current lawyers haven’t been paid in seven months and are owed $65 million in back pay. Now HHS has refused to renew their contract — while awarding a no-bid contract for $150 million to a law firm with zero experience in immigrant rights or child welfare.
Finally, the regime is trying to take away basic rights for children in detention under the pretense of fighting child trafficking, with bills like the Kayla Hamilton Act that would allow kids as young as 12 to be strip-searched and sent away to a prison with no judicial review, and the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act that would create mandatory long-term detention for children and families.
Sarah pointed out that under Trump 1.0, it took about two years for the public to catch on to the horrors of family separation. Now is the time to act and keep history from repeating itself. Especially if you live in Texas or Louisiana, flood your city council meetings to demand a halt to building new concentration camps for kids. Call your member of Congress to demand that all kids have basic rights and competent legal counsel, which means HHS paying legal service providers what they owe and renewing their contract, and to oppose harmful bills like the Kayla Hamilton Act and the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act.
Don’t Make Republicans’ Arguments For Them
Abdul El-Sayed beat Haley Stevens in the most expensive Democratic Senate primary ever, despite being massively outspent by outside groups and facing a steady drumbeat from establishment voices fretting that he wasn’t “electable.”
There’s a concept from the early ‘90s, credited to the late Paul Tully, called the message box: a four-square grid made up of what you want people to believe about you and about your opponent, and what your opponent wants people to believe about you and about them. Some Democrats have developed the troubling habit of adopting the Republicans’ side of that box against their fellow Democrats — using the primary not to hash out real issue differences, but to pre-load the opposition’s attack ads for the general election. Every dollar spent doing that is, functionally, an in-kind contribution to the GOP. The FEC just doesn’t require anyone to report it that way.
As Anat put it, “‘Electability’ is telling people that voters will never vote for, or find unseemly or untoward, certain kinds of Democrats.” What we should be saying instead, relentlessly, is that voters are turning out in record numbers to kick MAGA to the curb.
