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June 21, 2018 9:10 am - NewsBehavingBadly.com

It is worse than you could imagine — and it is not an accident.

Time has a jaw-droppingly horrific story that compounds our nation’s shame and should infuriate every American:

Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.

The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.

It gets worse…

[A] former child-development specialist who worked inside the facility told The Associated Press she saw kids there with bruises and broken bones they blamed on guards. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the children’s cases.

… and worse…

Many of the children were sent there after U.S. immigration authorities accused them of belonging to violent gangs, including MS-13. President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited gang activity as justification for his crackdown on illegal immigration.

But Kelsey Wong, a program director at the facility, said during a recent congressional hearing that in many cases the children did not appear to be gang members and were suffering from mental health issues.

… and worse.

… prison-like conditions with cells, no privacy from guards to use the bathroom, one hour of recreation time per day, racist taunts such as being called a “Mexican monkey,” physical hitting as well as harsh punishments.

“Several immigrant detainees have reported being stripped of their clothes, occasionally including their underwear,” the Virginia suit says, adding that the plaintiff was punished by being tied to a chair for hours and other children put in restraints for long periods of time.

New York’s Daily News has further disturbing detail from another juvenile detention center:

Allegations of abuse of immigrant children were also filed against the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas, where staff reportedly used powerful psychotropic drugs to treat children who were not behaving with a “chemical straightjacket.”

The drugs were administered without parental approval even though it could have been available and raised the risk of diabetes and suicide for the young children, according to filings from April by the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law.

This is Trump’s America, where policy on juvenile immigrants is all but carved into stone by white suremacist Stephen Miller and racist chief law enforcer Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Violent evildoers are running wild — and they are not the kids wrongly accused of ties to American-bork street gang MS-13.

Are you angry enough yet?

D.B. Hirsch
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.