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April 19, 2017 Page 7 Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. O PINION Trump’s War on Urban ‘Carnage’ was a Ruse Moves spell trouble for police reforms e bony s laughter -J ohnson One of President Trump’s favorite themes is what he calls “American carnage” — typified by “the vio- lence” and “the gangs.” To that end, he’s re- peatedly highlighted the violence in Chicago. A few days after he was inaugu- rated, he even issued this warning via Twitter: “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on… I will send in the Feds!” Trump, a vocal supporter of stop-and-frisk, additionally by pledged that his administration will “stop the gangs and the violence” and “stop the drugs from pouring into our communities” by empow- ering police offers. To be sure, Chicago is facing a uniquely violent moment in its his- tory: The city witnessed 762 murders and 4,331 shooting victims in 2016 — more than in New York and Los Angeles combined. The homi- cide rate was the highest it’s been since 1996. Yet the police are a critical component of this violence. A 2016 Justice Department inves- tigation revealed scores of abuses by Chicago police, from racial dis- crimination to witness intimidation to endangering civilians. In a particularly memorable anecdote from 2013, an off-duty Chicago cop watched a man enter a vacant building. Deeming him suspicious, the officer pursued the man. When confronted, the man produced a shiny object, prompt- ing the officer to fire his weapon, killing the man on the spot. As for the shiny object, it wasn’t a gun: It was the man’s watch. Despite not waiting for backup and initiating a deadly confronta- tion, the officer was put back on the beat. Last November, the same cop killed another man he claimed had brandished a gun. No gun was found. Under the Obama administra- tion, the federal government played a key role in exposing abuses like these in scores of local police de- partments. Yet Trump’s attorney gener- al, Jeff Sessions, has promised to “pull back on” suits against police departments over civil rights viola- tions. He recently ordered a review of all reform arrangements the De- partment of Justice reached with local police under Obama, which could imperil programs that have been shown to produce enduring positive changes. Why? “It is not the responsibil- ity of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforce- ment agencies,” Sessions insists. All this exposes Trump’s prom- ises to curb violence in America’s cities to be what many suspected all along: a meaningless ruse. After all, when it comes to civil rights, he’s actually pulling the feds out. Need more evidence? The ad- ministration has also proposed depriving the Department of Jus- Help Our Immigrant Brothers and Sisters Harrowing narratives of detention m arian W right e delman The just concluded holy season of Lent and Easter in the Christian calendar was a time to reflect and act to help the most vulnerable in our midst. With harsh assaults on undocumented immigrants and refugees who must fear every knock on their door, many Amer- ican citizen children are afraid to go to school, afraid of being bul- lied, and afraid to leave their par- ents who might be arrested at any moment. In Texas, these real fears are in- tensified with stories about build- ing new walls on the border and about children, like their brothers and sisters, refugees from the vi- olence of poverty and gangs and drug lords, locked in residential detention centers in their state. A ban on crayons. That’s what it came to at the visitors’ center at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, one of three immigration detention centers that Immigration and Cus- toms Enforcement (ICE) currently uses to house mothers and chil- dren who’ve been stopped seeking asylum in the United States. Six volunteer lawyers who work with detained families wrote a letter to ICE explaining why they liked to bring crayons when by they met with clients: “Having children color and draw provides a distraction for children while their mothers relate incidents of trauma, violence and abuse. Other children sit outside the interview rooms and draw at the tables, so they are not forced to listen to their mothers’ harrowing narratives nor witness their moth- ers’ fragile emotional states during these in- terviews. But ICE determined some of the children were doing “damage” to tables and walls in the visitors’ center while coloring. The crayon ban was just another blow to children already essential- ly being housed as prisoners by the federal government. The lat- est memos from the Department of Homeland Security outlining plans for enforcing the executive orders on immigration issued by President Donald Trump mean the numbers of children and mothers being detained this way (in Amer- ica) will only swell. Family detention centers are just one way current immigration policies hurt children. The Karnes County center is managed by ICE but owned and operated by the GEO Group, a $2 billion for-profit private prison company that seeks to double the number of people it can hold there from its current capacity of 532 beds. Across the state, the Southwest Texas Fam- ily Residential Center in Dilley, Texas can hold 2,400 people. Also managed by ICE, that center is owned and operated by Correc- tions Corporation of America, also known as “CoreCivic,” a for-prof- it company that makes upwards of $260 million a year housing moth- ers and children at a rate of $300 a Providing Insurance and Financial Services Home Office, Bloomington, Illinois 61710 Ernest J. Hill, Jr. Agent 4946 N. Vancouver Avenue, Portland, OR 97217 503 286 1103 Fax 503 286 1146 ernie.hill.h5mb@statefarm.com 24 Hour Good Neighbor Service R State Farm R day, per detainee. In December a Texas court struck down a regulation that would have allowed these two for-profit detention centers to obtain state child care licenses. Children’s Defense Fund–Tex- as Associate Director Dr. Laura Guerra-Cardus, a medical doctor, was among those who testified that family jails are not child care facilities and that children held there with their mothers are not physically or mentally safe. Bree Bernwanger, managing attorney of the Dilley Pro Bono Project, commented, “Yet another court has found that locking up children and their parents is not a form of ‘child care.’ It’s time for ICE to recognize that detaining fami- lies is illegal and these facilities should be closed.” Following that ruling 460 wom- en and children were released from tice of over $1 billion in funding, including major cuts to the Civil Rights Division, which is in charge of managing police reform. And it’s attempting to vacate another reform arrangement with the Bal- timore Police Department, where the last administration found many similar civil rights abuses. It’s no great surprise that choosing an attorney general like Sessions, another stop-and-frisk proponent who’s complained that civil rights protections undermine police officers, spelled trouble for police reform. Now trouble has come — and it seems like more is on its way. Ebony Slaughter-Johnson is a freelance writer whose work cov- ers history, race, and the criminal- ization of poverty. Distributed by OtherWords.org. the two Texas detention centers, flooding immigrant support net- works in a surprise move officials said was unconnected to the loss in court. Many of those women and children had to be immedi- ately hospitalized due to chronic conditions and other health prob- lems resulting from their detention treatment. The centers have been the source of a number of contro- versies, including several alleged sexual assault and abuse cases and alleged use of solitary confinement as punishment for hunger strikes at the Dilley center. At the third ICE family center, owned and operated by Berks County, Penn., a group of 22 mothers imprisoned with their children between 270 to 365 days wrote a letter last year explaining why they were starting a hunger strike: “We are already traumatized from our countries of origin. We risked our own lives and those of c ontinued on p age 15 The Law Offices of Patrick John Sweeney, P.C. Patrick John Sweeney Attorney at Law 1549 SE Ladd, Portland, Oregon Portland: Hillsboro: Facsimile: Email: (503) 244-208 (503) 244-2081 (503) 244-2084 Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com