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AN AUDIO RECORDING of young children crying for their parents as they are questioned by immigration officials inside a US Customs and Border Protection facility has emerged this morning.
The audio was obtained by US non-profit organisation ProPublica and purports to feature the voice of six-year-old Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, who was separated from her mother last week at the Mexican border.
In the audio recording a young boy can be heard crying in the background, repeatedly calling for his ‘Papa’. A border patrol agent jokes: “Well, we have an orchestra here. What’s missing is a conductor.”
The children are questioned about where they are from. The girl, through tears, tells him “El Salvador”, while another child responds “Guatamala”.
“Don’t cry,” he tells them.
The six-year-old pleads with agents to call her aunt, telling them “I have her number memorised” before reciting it for them. She continues throughout the audio to ask officials to call her aunt so she can leave.
“Are you going to call my aunt so that when I’m done eating she can pick me up?” she asks.
“I want to go too,” another child tells them.
Later, as the agent takes the girl to go call her aunt, she repeats:
“My mommy says I’ll go with my aunt and that she’ll come to pick me up there as quickly as possible so I can go with her.”
The audio was given to civil rights lawyer Jennifer Harbury by a whistleblower and she passed it on to the non-profit organisation.
She told ProPublica the person “heard the children’s weeping and crying and was devastated by it”.
The whistleblower said the children on the recording were between four and 10 years old and it appeared they had been at the detention centre for less than 24 hours at the time.
Official data shows more than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents or guardians since early May, when the administration said it would arrest and charge all migrants who illegally crossed the Mexican border – even if they were seeking asylum.
The six-year-old girl did get to speak to her aunt, who said it was “the hardest moment in my life”. She travelled to the US two years ago with her own daughter and is currently seeking asylum. She is concerned that any attempt to intervene with her niece would put her own case at risk.
“Imagine getting a call from your six-year-old niece. She’s crying and begging me to go get her. She says, ‘I promise I’ll behave, but please get me out of here. I’m all alone.’”
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How come we didn’t hear about this when the last guy was doing it? It’s almost like the media are incapable of being objective.
@mike scott: but he wasn’t doing it..oops
@mike scott: it was always a policy as opposed to the law and the policy was relaxed/not enforced. The trump administration took a proactive decision to enforce the policy to its full effect
@mike scott: Maybe this was happening under Obama, and maybe it was even policy back then, I don’t know. However, you can be sure if it was highlighted at the time, Obama would have been appalled (at least publicly), would have promised an investigation and would have promised to end this. Trump on the other hand makes crude jokes about it, and says that it’s the right thing to do.
@OOOOH,SOMETIMES: This has been going on for the last 5 years it started under Obama . He let 2000 kids go and most of them were brought in by people smugglers .
@ウィリアム はげ: I can agree with that.
@Robert Preston: yawn…this is a ‘zero tolerance’ policy that has been enacted by Trump/Sessions.This is the second time that i’ve had to correct you this morning…
@Robert Preston: No, it did not happen under Obama. And it is not because of a democrat ‘law’ Either stop trolling or inform yourself before posting such BS….
@neilo: Breitbart has an agenda, but always cites the source of their information like any other outlet. Just like the Guardian carries a strong left opinion, Breitbart carries a strong right narrative.
@Gerald Broflovski: Breitbart are Nazis
E.O.S.
@mike scott: fake news: sad!
@Robert Preston:
Actually wrong Trump lost those kids… It was on his watch they went missing…
@ウィリアム はげ: Bill Clinton passed this law back on 1996 that children would be separated from adults illegally entering the US.
@Louise Reid Mc Hugh: 100% false https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-law-separate-families-passed-1997/ THERE IS NO FEDERAL LAW DEMANDING THE SEPARATION OF FAMILIES UPON ILLEGAL ENTRY!
@Robert Preston: eh , it hasn’t – almost everything you said there is completely wrong , stop trying to make a partisan political issue out of a recently imposed zero tolerance policy (apr) that this administration enforced and is accentuating a problem ….the original policy was a Bush admin policy but wasn’t forced , try get some facts straight if you could.
This is all just the art of the deal. Make a bad thing happen, blame the other side and then negotiate from the higher ground. Except it’s not going to work this time because people have their eyes open. The Trump administration have rejected I think three immigration bills that included increased border controls and funding for the wall. But here’s the real funny thing, they now blame obstructionism even though democrats couldn’t possibly stop republicans from passing a bill they agreed on.
@mike scott: What last guy you mean Obama but he didn’t separate parents/guardians from children – only Herr Trump and the Nazi’s did that.
@mike scott: That’s a bit hypocritical, claiming a lack of objectivity. Read the above Snopes link.
@mike scott: Because the Obama administration exercise some human decency and were not separating children from their parents. The law was always there, the zero tolerance and abhorrent actions were not. You cannot claim asylum from outside the country, therefore they must ILLEGALLY cross the border, which as I understand is a misdemeanor and does not warrant this abuse of children.
Welcome to Trumps America
@Gus Sheridan: Would not go a miss in Hitlers Germany.
This is a very dark time in American history. The last time they did this with Americans of Japanese descent in WW2, at least they kept them together. This is just wrong. There is NO defence.
@Cian O Donoghue: Japanese descent or basically anybody with Asian looking eyes
@Cian O Donoghue: What are you on about? There are millions of families around the world that are seperated because their parents broke the law and ended up in prison. If these families don’t want to end up like this they should apply for asylum like everyone else and not try to enter illegally. It’s quite simple really.
@Stephen Walsh: You cannot claim asylum from outside the country. They have no option but to cross the border illegally to claim asylum. An illegal border crossing is a misdemeanor crime. This level of punishment is unfitting.
@Dani: They can apply legally at border posts no problem.
@Stephen Walsh: f’__wit
@Stephen Walsh: and if you actually read other peoples post you would see that they still get detained and separated when they do present at ports and apply legally. So you think that’s still OK do you?
The border patrol officer is a disgusting person making fun of distressed children. I know he has a job to do but a little compassion towards these innocent children is not a lot to expect. This situation has been handled so badly.
@Cheryl Mellett: You think this article, which invites you to listen, is any different or less worse?
@saitek: And it does so for cheap hits!
@saitek: it’s called reporting.
@saitek: So that’s your defence?
Media outlets shouldn’t be reporting the reality of this Trump/Sessions policy because people would click on it generating ad revenue so they can continue to report?
How is it different to papers selling ad space.
WOW, that’s some serious mental gymnastics you’re doing there to try and deflect this story.
@saitek: Nothing changes if people don’t know what is going on. Publicity and reporting is very important. You just have to see the impact of the media and indeed social media to see it’s power.
@Cheryl Mellett: media only report what suit politicians. Young girls raped in Ireland by migrants do not see media reporters telling it because they are been silent. The are reporting the president trump because he speak out against them
@Patricia Cooney: can you please back up that claim Patricia?
@Patricia Cooney: random claims made by someone on the Internet with no proof. It must be true!
@Patricia Cooney: media only report what suits politicians? Yeah, there’s never been a news story in this country that embarrassed the government. There are about three big ones being reported in daily here at the moment.
@Dell: two girls rapped last week by three African media is silent
@Patricia Cooney: and where did you hear this? Also you do know that not every crime is reported on in this country and I know of several rape cases that didn’t make it anywhere near the news that involved irish men, born and bred. Your xenophobia is causing you to become paranoid.
@Patricia Cooney: What country are you really from? Russia perhaps?
Have these poor children not been through enough…shamefull. where are their human rights..
@Mari: I blame the parents
@JimmyMc: so you believe child cruelty is an acceptable response to the actions of the parents?
Imagine a world where people come from war torn countries, and those ripped apart by drug wars over the Cocaine that fuels America and the world, they travel hundreds and hundreds of miles risking there lives to the world’s formerly brightest beacon of freedom, only to have there children ripped from their side by callous border guards, placed into cages like rats, wrapped in foil blankets, given a number, and surrounded by men carrying guns and speaking a strange language…
Sounds like the plot of some horrible movie… But it’s Trump’s America!
@Dotty Dunleary: The officers tell the mothers they are just taking the children to bathe them only for them not to return. The next move may well be tattooing numbers on the arms of these children for identification purposes………..
@Dotty Dunleary: Remember, it was the CIA fueling, controlling and trafficking cocaine that increased the problem. Americans meddling in other countries, just like the mass emigration of the Middle East, has caused this issue. The criminal has no conscious.
@Dotty Dunleary: And in Italy a minister wants to have a census of the Roma and only those with Italian citizenship will remain!! They are Europeans don’t need Italian citizenship but what the hell. Europe is weak, divided no wonder Trump and Putin laugh at it.
Why would I want to listen to it as the headline invites? Not everyone needs to hear children crying to invoke an emotional response within themselves which they then forget about 10 mins later and get on with their day.
@saitek: nope, some people need to hear it. Some people need to be made uncomfortable for pressure to rise on those causing this. The more people that hear this the better.
@saitek: __ It seems to me that you’re a hard core Trump fan who doesn’t want anything reported that puts your hero in a bad light. I suggest you suck it up.
@saitek: Go back to sleep
@saitek: did daddy beat you?
2 ways to prevent this problem. Claim asylum at border posts. 2. Don’t claim asylum when arrested trying to cross the border illegally.
@Stephen Walsh: Came across this post and i decided that i share it with you.
So, I did immigration casework for Senator Fritz Hollings, studied immigration law at law school under a former INS general counsel, and worked for a border Congressman in the district that included the Rio Grande Valley. So hear me out:
1. These people in detention have not committed a crime.
2. I don’t mean that in a moral or a figurative sense. I mean literally. It is NOT a crime to ask for asylum.
3. These people didn’t jump a fence, they didn’t sneak into the back yard. They are knocking on the front door and saying “People are trying to kill me in my home country, will you let me in?”
4. Now, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck. Some of these people are lying. That’s why you have a hearing. And because they might wander off, these people are held in detention until the hearing.
5. This hearing is NOT in a criminal court. It’s in an immigration court. Because these people have not committed a crime.
6. Immigration court is not like criminal court. You don’t have a right to an attorney.
7. So these people are waiting around, separated from their children, with no attorney, until they get a hearing.
8. In 2015, the median wait for an immigration hearing was 404 days.
9. Here’s where it gets even more twisted.
10. If people plead guilty to asylum fraud, they get their kids back and get deported.
11. So these people knock on the front door, which is perfectly legal, and we take their kids, and tell them the quickest way to get them back is to confess.
12. If someone committed a crime – shoplifting, armed robbery, murder – and you took their kids away to make them confess, that confession would be thrown out.
13. But these confessions are lawful, because this isn’t criminal court.
14. Because these people haven’t committed a crime.
15. Now some people think that if we make it so unpleasant for these people, they will stop trying to cross the border.
16. But the message this sends isn’t “Go Home.” The message it sends is “Sneak in.”
17. If they go home, they think they will be murdered. If they request asylum, they are separated from their children.
18. If they sneak in successfully, they’re safe. If they sneak in and get caught, they are no worse off than if they sought asylum legally.
19. And remember, these people haven’t committed a crime.
Wyeth Ruthven
you were saying
@Tom Doyle: Or thirdly. Apply through an embassy or consulate.
@Stephen Walsh: border posts are turning people away. They have effectively been shut. Leaving asylum seekers no choice but to enter illegally and claim asylum when caught. Also, did you see the part of the article where they mention that asylum seekers are also being separated from their children? For a guy that tried to sum it up simply you sure as hell don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
@Stephen Walsh: do you think irish women and children should have been held in laundries? Im sure whoever threw them in there were following the correct procedures too.. These people have done nothing that warrants this.
@Stephen Walsh: Claim asylum at border posts.
Wrong…
“The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants — including those in families that are split apart — enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry.”
Families split up include families who legally entered/arrived US at border crossings and asked for asylum as refugees, indeed families are more likely to seeking asylum rather than arriving for economic reasons as they understand the risk of loosing their kids.
The previous policy was to detain most all adult family members but not arrest/detain one family member, an aunt, older adult sister, who minded the kids. Trump has change this policy so that all adult members are arrested, so there’s no one to mind the kids. So there’s now reports like a 4 month old baby had to be fed by an unrelated child of 16, staff didn’t give a s…
@Stephen Walsh: what is wrong with you?
Trump is another Hitler…who is the gob s…. that says go the right way this wouldn’t happen
Will the minister for Foreign Affairs call in the US ambassador to warn that unless the children’s human rights are respected and that separating small children from their families is UNACCEPTABLE and can result in long-term mental problems and may result in Ireland taking action to expel some US diplomats? I don’t think so.
Will the UN who have been strongly critical of the US action take punitive measures against the US? I don’t think so. Business and money come first. We and the (useless) UN won’t rock the boat.
@John Hagin Meade: Can Unicef step in then? Can amnesty? Because someone needs to do something fast this is not right.
Trump is a nut case he shouldn’t be running America
@Margaret Kane: on the contrary, people can finally see the real face of america now the mask has slipped. This is truth.
Wow. We should totally flood our countries with brown people who will replace the native population because my emotions were affected when listening to a audio recording.
@Rocky Stefan: their country had native americans to begin with who were hardly white.. Cover yourself, your racism is showing.
@Rocky Stefan: possibly the most clueless post about American history that I’ve seen here. That’s a pretty big achievement, well done. Let’s not forget that even the places they are going to were Mexico until relatively recently. Texas, Arizona, California, San Diego, El Paso, Mesa, Las Cruces, Laredo, El Campo, Cuero, San Antonio, Alamogordo. All these place names sure seem like white white people names don’t they?
@Dave O Keeffe: they sound like Castellano place-names to me. The Castilians were white Europeans.
@W Kevin Doyle: you and I both know that that is not the definition of white in America. Ask Joe Arpaio.
@Rocky Stefan: Wait so if it was a white person who was born and lived in Latin America that applied for Asylum you’re fine with that?
Absolutely disgraceful.
Great article in the Guardian this morning by Nesrine Malik
It is hard to make any coherent sense of the Trump administration’s policies. They are the result of the temperamental whims of a man-child president and the indulgences of a weak, cynical and ideological White House. There is no coherent plan, just a race to the bottom in order to appeal to a base animated by resentment and grievance………..
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/18/trump-american-caliphate-democracy-arab-world
How can anyone hurt a young child or separate them from their parents, how absolutely vile and disgusting. I can’t bear hearing this, now can anyone do this. There should be trained child pshychologists holding children if this is what they are going to do not some oaf in a uniform, unsuited to watching over children. What a cruel world we live in.
Im an heartbroken. These F.E.M.A/Walmart camps were being set up straight after the election, if you look at the timeline of walmart closures and US gov. funding designated for SouthKey programs. (The charity who runs the camps) This was a plan set in motion way before 2018. Im not usually a conspiracy theorist. But this one is too horrific to ignore. This needs to be acted on NOW. We have a huge migration problem all around the world, but to set the human rights bar this low by one of the so called “super powers”, a country that cultrually has more clought than most, is unacceptable. People need to recognise this for what it is. The words “children in government run camps” should fill you with dread and NEVER be used in a sentence together.
Their country, their rules.
Don’t try to enter the US illegally.
Especially not with kids.
@W Kevin Doyle: imagine if everyone had decided to use your logic in Hitlers time..
@W Kevin Doyle: “Don’t try to enter the US illegally.” It is not illegal to seek asylum.
@W Kevin Doyle: Don’t try to enter the US illegally
Wrong, many entered the US legally at border entries and asked for asylum as soon as they arrived at, but still had their kids taken away..
“The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants — including those in families that are split apart — enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry.”
He’ll have them in Striped Pajamas next……very sad times
ɐɔᴉɹǝɯɐsᴉsᴉɥʇ#
Trump is as cruel as #HITLER to take children away from their their mothers, who could think up such a policy,
But then #Trump is of #German heritage need i say more! Any man that will say #KimJongUn is a great man, with his human rights record, must be mentally unhinged. It is about time #DEMOCRATS woke up! This cannot be allowed to continue, his base is loyal to him, same as #nazis followed #hitler
#kkk & #whitesupremists bigoted bunch of followers,
Are decent #Americans going to continue to put up with this type of admistration continue, listening to children crying, looking for moms & dads is heartbreaking.
@James_665: Why are you using #hashtags?
These are economic migrants , having spent many years in the US it’s hard for me to see how we can keep our doors open , those American values all went when John F was killed but I don’t agree with this process , Ireland does this too except there’s a nefarious nature to it whilst all the family are deported , so step down off your not so high horse
@Gaz Barclay Dunnes: I have never seen asylum seeking families forcibly separated here in ireland. Can you show us where and when this has taken place? If it is taking place it needs to be addressed straight away.
@Gaz Barclay Dunnes: “These are economic migrants , having spent many years in the US it’s hard for me to see how we can keep our doors open”
Few things, you say their economic migrants? So you have proof that every single ayslum seeker going to the US is an economic migrant. Please show me this proof.
You then say you spent many years in the US but then say “how we can keep our doors open” Who is the we in this? If you spent time in America your not American, who is the we and who’s doors are being kept open. Remember these are Asylum seekers who have a right to ask for Asylum.
@Dell: Its not taken place in Ireland, he is talking nonsense.
@Mark McDermott: oh I know that. I was just giving him some rope.
@Gaz Barclay Dunnes: No, many are not economic migrants, many are families that asked for asylum as border entries.
“The administration has characterized its policy as being about illegal immigration, though many of the detained migrants — including those in families that are split apart — enter at official border crossings and request asylum, which is not an illegal entry.”
@Mark McDermott: Asylum from what?
@pauline: In 2016,there was approx 18,000 people from El Salvador that looked for asylum in the US of A ..In that same year,there was approx 750+ people from El Salvador that were granted asylum.Of course,some of those 750+ folks could have been waiting a ‘good’ few years before they were granted asylum..As for the reason why they were granted asylum ? Hmmmm..well, El Salvador is ranked one of the top 5 most violent countries in the world…oops,& so is Honduras…
@Gaz Barclay Dunnes: So, were YOU an economic migrant? Did you move there to have a better life?
I wonder how you got legal? (if you are or had to) Did you marry an American per chance like so many people I know who now have the unbelievable hypocrisy to support Trump and his immigration policies.
Or was it an accident of birth? Maybe your parents were illegal and you happened to be born there? Like many others I know.
Cognitive dissonance, no?
Torture plain simple unjustified in any situation to have children persecuted, these inhuman inbred Border Guards need to be prosecuted for Child abuse, but is child abuse even a crime in America. American Ambassador needs to visit the Dept Of Foreign Affairs for a talking too.
I made a comment on the “Grab them by the p#€€y” article posted here before he was elected. I said that Trump could petrol bomb a puppy shelter, using the American flag stuck in the bottle and his followers wouldn’t bat an eyelid. I think that’s proven to be even more true with what’s going on today. He will have to be removed from office, or he will make changes that will allow him to stay in office. America is closer to an autocratic regime now than ever before. If this was happening in another country, America (not this America) would be the first with boots on the ground. Now it’s more like boots on the back of the neck.
Yeah only idiots are outraged by this.
First, in the U.S. AND Ireland when a parent commits a crime, and go to jail, they lose custody of their children.
Second, illegal immigration is a crime: the hint is in the name *cough cough* ILLEGAL.
Third, the best way to avoid this happening to you and your child is to NOT ATTEMPT TO ILLEGALLY IMMIGRATE.
Lastly, i find it highly ironic that the liberals on here are outraged by children being taken from their mothers, but have no issue with fetuses being ripped from their mothers, having their vocal chords cut, and murdered.
Please, please, please slap yourselves repeatedly until you can think with some common sense.
@Daniel Doran: so you have gone from love both to, in this instance, love neither.. There is someone who needs slapping here and it really isn’t the liberals.
@Daniel Doran: I love how you shout in caps to get your point accross and not once do you mention that lots of these people have applied for asylum, what is illegal about asking for asylum?
@Daniel Doran:
First, in America and Ireland when the ruling class commit a crime they do not go to jail.
Second, invading other countries and destroying their societies and slaughtering millions of people is illegal. Actually.
Third, the best way to avoid this happening is to bring down these rotten war criminals, worldwide.
@Daniel Doran:Aww bless :)
When a parent commits a crime,and go to jail,sometimes the newborn child can stay with it’s mother for up to one year :)
2) Entering the US illegally for the 1st time,is called a ‘civil offence’ :)
3) Your post about foetuses being “ripped from their mothers” is total emotional hogwash
poor pet
#werepealedthe8th
@Daniel Doran: How about we just slap you instead?
@Daniel Doran: of course you didn’t.. You couldn’t possibly love women.. That takes warmth, humanity, empathy etc. Give you a clump of cells any day of the week though, now that you can love. Not these pesky women and born children. I mean who really cares about them.. They are foreigners anyway. Should I have put some of the words in block capitals for you?
As a mother I can’t even listen to the recording. I got about 20 seconds in. Trump is a monster. Anyone complicit in this is a monster. This is not humanity. These children are innocents and it is they who are being punished and damaged by this. Absolutely shameful.
@Shauna Chalmers: yes it’s REALLY AWFUL for parents to do that to their children, or even worse, send them across the boarder alone: which has happened repeatedly. The worst part is, if the parents were just kicked out and NOT prosecuted, they just keep coming back over and over again.
When you commit a crime in Ireland and are sent to jail do you get to stay with your family?
@Daniel Doran: repeatedly you have been told that at least some of the people separated and detained presented legally at ports seeking asylum yet you continue to SPEW YOUR BILE. You seem to need cap locks on at certain times so I thought it might be helpful for you to understand what has been said to you if I also highlighted certain words by capitalising them.
The American people have elected a idiot for president
the consequence of which we see now.
We are witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great.
Does anybody believe Trump will “make America great ” ?
@Johnny Merren: yes, he’s already making it great by enforcing the laws and drastically improving the economy, not to mention removing the threat of nuclear war with North Korea. Do you need me to draw you a picture?
@Daniel Doran: you are so quick and sharp Daniel! So glad we have you here explaining how great your mancrush trump is. We are all feeling rather red-faced at our stupidity in thinking that only complete idiots think that trump is doing a good job..
@Daniel Doran: The economy drastically improved before Trump came into office. He has just continued the trend (although at a lesser rate) seen during the previous admin. He has done no such thing with Korea. He signed a document reaffirming previous agreements that NK reneged on, at the price of legitimising a murderous despotic regime. And you’re proud of your fanboying?
They could use the isreali defense and just shoot them as they approach. It would save all this malarkey.
@Steven Fitzpatrick: if they thought they could get away with it, they probably would. As it is though, those children are at the mercy of strangers and their parents can not protect them. This is going to be a horror show of all sorts of abuse. Those poor kids. How many people on here were outraged over Irish women being incarcerated for becoming pregnant yet see no problem with this? These children have done nothing wrong and their parents have not done anything that warrants their children being taken from the and put in the hands of strangers in detention centres.
@Dell: Well said.
Sneaking into a country illegally, for whatever the reason, is a precarious thing to do, especially under this new administration. The law is the law, sure why not turn a blind eye to all illegal activity and consider it as minor misdamenours? Everyone who is still attempting to do this with young children will know by now what the consequences will be if caught. Why take the risk? To live as a ghost in a country where youre invisible, nothing about you can be documented, unless you claim asylum legally. If youre not willing to do this, then sont put your children through this by trying to get in anyway. Mexico isnt a war torn country, there must be safe places to live within their own perimetres surely?
@pauline: a lot of these people are from countries other than Mexico, the child in the pic is not from Mexico, and they are actually separating them and detaining in separate facilities even when they do present and claim asylum legally. You have no idea of their circumstances or what they have come from and neither does the American government. I can understand why they need to detain them to process their details but this is not that. This is cruel and inhumane and shame on anyone who thinks that traumatising children is justified in these circumstances.
Yawn these stories are getting really old, give it a rest. Trump derangement syndrome
The argument that implies or directly claims that the Democrats are to be preferred to Trump or the Republicans is a false one. Obama and the Democrats are in many ways thee party of the American ruling class. More so than the Republicans.
Trump derangement syndrome in full effect, mass triggered…. virtue signals….literally Hitler.. striped pyjamas ffs, Yawn.
@Native: “everyone I don’t like is Hitler”
@Daniel Doran: the irony and hypocrisy of you… “everyone I don’t like is a baby killing liberal”
have your say