(Above: Not really, we wouldn’t treat dogs like this…)

Can we has impeachment yet?

At what point does inaction morph into complicity?

Texas Monthly

“After New Mexico State University professor Neal Rosendorf read a government report exposing dangerous overcrowding of detained migrants at the Paso del Norte International Bridge in El Paso, he headed to the port of entry to see if he could find anyone protesting conditions there. When he reached the west side of the bridge, he encountered an unmarked open gate, which he walked through in the hopes of asking Border Patrol agents whether they had seen any protesters. Continuing underneath and then past the bridge about 100 yards or so, he was stunned by what he saw—migrants who said they’d been held outdoors for weeks as temperatures rose to nearly 100 degrees.

Rosendorf described it as “a human dog pound”—one hundred to 150 men behind a chain-link fence, huddled beneath makeshift shelters made from mylar blankets and whatever other scraps they could find to shield themselves from the heat of the sun. “I was able to speak with detainees and take photos of them with their permission,” Rosendorf said in an email. “They told me they’ve been incarcerated outside for a month, that they haven’t washed or been able to change the clothes they were detained in the entire time, and that they’re being poorly fed and treated in general.”

Texas Monthly contacted the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USBP) before they published this piece and the USBP took eight days to respond and they basically said — we house prisoners indoors until we can’t, showers are for children and we are taking steps to insure nosy NMSU professors cannot wander onto our facilities unmolested.

At some point U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, got involved and she offered this legal, humane and widely practiced, until Resident Dipshit occupied the Oval, solution:

”Escobar said ICE could alleviate what the inspector general called “dangerous holding conditions” at the Paso del Norte Bridge by releasing more detainees. That would allow CBP to move migrants from the bridge to ICE’s long-term detention facilities so they could begin the asylum process. “I know for a fact that some ICE beds are taken up by people who should be paroled, should be connected to their sponsor, people who are not a threat to America or society, people who are still waiting for the final adjudication on their asylum requests,” she said.”

USBP wouldn’t tell the Texas Monthly how many people are being held outside but Rep. Escobar says she saw at least two hundred.

And the prospect of a humanitarian disaster, to compound this human rights crime, looms:

“El Paso’s forecast calls for high temperatures in the upper 90s to low 100s for the next several weeks. In recent days, the makeshift shelters of the people held outdoors have become increasingly visible to pedestrians crossing into the United States on the bridge above. Escobar fears that disaster looms. “As the weather warms up, I am afraid more people will die,” she said. “It’s impossible to control dehydration when you have people in these large groups sitting outside—even when they’re under a shady area.”

But we get too high up on our horse we should consider that every day that goes by without at least an attempt to bring this criminal and his enablers to justice, on this and half a hundred other issues, is another day closer to that day that own House leadership will no longer be able to claim their own innocence in these crimes.

Please follow me on Twitter @durrati

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