Ok, in the middle of Nowhere, Utah, Mother, Jaime, the girls, and I would not be an effective march - especially since anyone driving past to see us would probably be a relative, so this is my virtual march - it will probably get more eyeballs, and last longer than I would walking out in the heat.
Indefinite detention is not appropriate for children. Regardless of the cleanliness or feel (and cages and space blankets are definitely not appropriate), locking children up is not who we are reaching to be as a nation. More, though - indefinite detention for anyone who has not been *convicted* of a felony is not appropriate - it's not just that it's inhumane (which should be enough for anyone), it's not cost-effective. Instead of doing what should be done (actually funding the initiative properly, including adequately staffing immigration judges and both prosecuting *and* defense attornies, rather than expecting 3 year olds to defend themselves in court) we're throwing money at the private prison industry. Yes, we're taking one of the few things that should be the definition of a governmental function, and we're outsourcing it. What could possibly go wrong with giving a profit motive to locking people up? So, we're paying around $750 a day for each child ripped from their family... and now proposing to lower that price to around $250 a day for each family locked up until we can finally get them through the backlog... instead of being sensible, using an ankle bracelet to monitor while they're released on their own recognizance at around $25 a day. These are people who committed (at most) a misdemeanor by going around rather than waiting up to 2 months in line. Now, I'm not talking about this for the 240 actual dangerous gang members (who we could concentrate on with the resources freed up by not prosecuting families). (Yeah... 240. All this yelling about rapists and murderers of MS13 is based on 240 desperadoes.)
While I'm thinking about this - how about doing the same thing for non-violent potential offenders who *are* US Citizens? Our current bail system has people waiting in jail to be tried for potentially months just because they're too poor to pay bail. Let people out until their court date - pilot programs have shown an over 90% rate of compliance, and we'll save money, keep people working (and paying taxes, and (most importantly) be humans again.
