Arizona Republican Mistakes Bus Filled With Kids Headed To Camp For Bus Of Migrant Children
A Republican candidate for Congress who showed up for a protest against a bus shipping migrants from the Texas border to a holding facility in Arizona ended up protesting a bunch of kids on a YMCA outing:
Republican congressional candidate and state legislator Adam Kwasman had just raced up to Phoenix Tuesday morning from the protest in Oracle over the expected arrival of dozens of migrant children at a shelter.
He had tweeted from the scene, “Bus coming in. This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law.” He included a photo of the back of a yellow school bus.
Kwasman later told me he saw the migrant children. “I was actually able to see some of the children in the buses. The fear on their faces…. This is not compassion,” he said.
But there was a problem with Kwasman’s story: There was no fear on their faces. Those weren’t the migrant children in the school bus. Those were children from the Marana school district. They were heading to the YMCA’s Triangle Y Camp, not far from the Rite of Passage shelter for the migrants, at the base of Mt. Lemmon.
12 News reporter Will Pitts, who is at the protest scene, says he saw the children laughing and taking pictures of the media.
I had to break it to Kwasman that those weren’t migrant children. Kwasman later deleted the tweet. He did back flips trying to take back the story he told me.
The interview is pretty amusing, especially when Kwasman tries to get out of the hole he dug himself when the reporter tells him the students weren’t migrants at all.
But, hey, I’m sure they all look alike right Mr. Kwansman?
No mention of this on Fox, so it did not happen.. :))
In slightly less humorous news on this topic, the bodies of dead children are washing up on the shores of the Rio Grande.
Well at least he had something right.
@Jenos Idanian #13: So, if the possibility of horrible death by dehydration or drowning is not an effective deterrent, what the US government could possibly do to stem the tide, in your opinion?
Kwasman is pretty much the dictionary definition of shanda fur die goyim.
@humanoid.panda: Glad you asked.
What’s drawing these kids is the 2008 law (written and passed by Democrats, who controlled both Houses at that point) and spreading word that the kids will be welcomed here. The Obama administration saw this coming — they put out an RFP to hire “escorts” for up to 65,000 illegal alien children back in January. So they saw this coming, and kept it quiet.
Here’s my suggestion: any unaccompanied minors under, say, the age of 15 that illegally cross the border are granted citizenship and declared to have been abandoned by their parents, who have forfeited their parental rights. That makes them eligible for adoption. If their parents object, then the kids are sent home to families.
15 and up: given the option of being placed in adoption/foster homes or sent back home.
Any kids with indicators that they belong to gangs get sent back. We’ve had plenty of reports of teens with MS13 tattoos coming across the border.
And we send a nasty note to Mexico: stop admitting people without documents who have the express purpose of coming on to the United States. Mexico very strictly controls its southern border, but gives a pass (literally) to those who say they’re just passing through. They need to knock that crap off.
Obama essentially invited all these unaccompanied minors into the US. So he’s responsible for these deaths.
@Jenos Idanian #13: You mean the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Action Act, that was passed unanimously in both houses of Congress and signed into law by Bush? Sorry, stopped reading after this little nugget of BS.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
As I read your post I find myself nodding at some of your suggestions. They are cold blooded but I get the point. Then I come to your last sentence and realize I am slightly agreeing with an unhinged, deranged, partisan lunatic.
You know what, I changed my mind. Your ideas are just hillarious
1. If Obama proposed to just give citizenship to kids under 15, you’d be screaming for his blood (also, where will you find adoptive parents for these kids)?
2. What percentage of 15-18 year olds will prefer to go back over 2-3 years in foster care system? If that number is above 5%, I am willing to sit on a cactus.
3. The gang thing I am pretty sure is a red herring, if only because its doubtful Guatemelan kids are members of Mexican gangs.
4. Your argument that Obama “invited these people over” is especially funny, because
a)we already established the law in question has very little to do with him
and
b) your proposals are far to the left of anything the administration is proposing and will in fact trigger a mass exodus of kids here. If you think that parents in rural Guatemala who are sending their kids alone to trek into the desert hoping that they might not get deported only because they hope one day the kids will bring them North, you moral imagination is really lacking. If these parents are offered a deal in which the kids get adopted by American families, get US citizenship in exchange for loss of parental rights, they will take it in a millisecond. That’s what desperate, poor people do.
@humanoid.panda:
This also points out the rediculous concept of that “we must secure the border” before doing anything on immigration reform. There is simply no way to physically secure the border to completely stop illegal crossings.
If large areas of inhospitable desert and dangerous rivers are no enough, what leads one to believe that a fence will work? And whats after that? Minefields?
@Jenos Idanian #13:
The bill also passed on a voice vote in the House and with unanimous consent in the Senate. I would say this is a pretty good sign the GOP was on-board with the bill as well.
Bonus quote:
This whole situation is the result of a bipartisan bill.
From your link, it shows the administration was looking to staff contractors to follow the law as it is written. Isn’t this the chief complaint the right has about Obama – that he ignores the law and is an imperial President? The link states this staffing increase is proof Obama planned the whole thing. I think it’s more likely the situation was anticipated due to the increasingly deteriorating situation in Central America.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Cripes… seriously? Define “plenty.” Without a doubt there are gang members coming across. And yes, we should do our best to weed them out.
But what are the actual numbers that we are talking about. Here’s one of the few reports that actually put some *hard* numbers to this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690223/Teen-members-feared-MS-13-gang-admitted-torture-murder-trying-recruit-young-illegal-immigrants-border-center-U-S-powerless-stop-them.html
Total number of gang members found at the Arizona holding facility: 16!
Thats out of the thousands of child immigrants crossing into Arizona alone. Not exactly high percentages so far.
It’s something that needs to be tracked and mitigated — along with the those crossing with health issues and sexual assaults in these centers — but “plenty” is a great way of inflating the numbers in the name of making brown people more scary.
@humanoid.panda:
This. This. A Thousand Times This.
@Matt Bernius: C’mon Matt, there is nothing scarier than a person with a dark complexion. Everyone knows that.
Now that I’ve got everyone’s attention, maybe we can finally get a few ideas of what constitutes “common sense” immigration reform. For all the blathering about it, all I’ve seen for particulars is 1) don’t bother securing the border, and 2) don’t do anything else that conservatives might like. Actual details and proposals? Sadly lacking.
@Jenos Idanian #13: From the Wikipedia entry of the Senate immigration billed, endorsed by Obama:
Now, most liberals think that all this border security will not do much to stop illegal immigration for good, for the simple reason that a rich country bordering very poor ones will always draw migration, unless it decides to totally sever all economic links with its neighbors. Nevertheless, they agreed to include of all of the above in the bill, explicitly to make conservatives happy. Of course, conservatives won’t be happy until we dig a moat patrolled with sharks with laser beams on their heads, but that’s a totally different topic.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Flipping it around, it’s the Republican/Conservative position that nothing should be done until the border is “secure.” And yet, there is very little explanation of what a measurably secure border is.
Perhaps you’d like to take a pass at defining that first. Then that provides something we could respond to.
[Update] Or if its easier, perhaps you could respond to the definition of “secure” in the draft legislation that @humanoid.panda posted.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I dispute the actual existence of “anything else that conservatives might like”.
@humanoid.panda:
So the proposed solution to immigration is to place the southwest portion of the country under martial law?
@Jenos Idanian #13: The idea that we can “secure” the border is about as common sensical as faster than light travel. Even if it were possible (it isn’t) Republicans would never approve the cost or the tax increases, or the expansion of government power that would be required to even attempt such an endeavor.
@Stormy Dragon: “I dispute the actual existence of “anything else that conservatives might like”.”
Don’t be silly. Conservatives like lots of things.
Until they’re adopted by Democrats. Then they hate them.
@Stormy Dragon: I didn’t say I approve of this, I was just responding to Jenos’ argument that nothing was done to make conservatives happy about the immigration package.
@Stormy Dragon:
Care to unpack this?
I’m having a hard time seeing how selective deployment of the National Guard to assist border patrols = martial law. In fact, it seems like a necessary step as immigration law is a Federal Issue, and therefore National Guard involvement needs to be approved in keeping with Posse Comitatus.
We should reopen Elise Island and return to being the melting pot that we are supposed to be. All it should take to become a US citizen is an in depth background check.
The GOP outreach continues.
@Matt Bernius:
“rural,high-trafficked areas” doesn’t mean just patrolling the border, especially given the SCOTUS precedent that customs powers extend 100 miles inland from any border or coast. I don’t like the idea of the National Guard patroling a significant part of the US conducting suspicionless searches.
@Stormy Dragon:
From my reading of the draft, the section that the National Guard could be involved with patrolling are the sections of land that fit under the following description:
If that’s the case, before we start worrying about the extend of martial law, I think it’s worth establishing how many miles of border fall into the “high risk” sectors.
I’d like to apologize for my earlier ignorance. According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the border is already secure.
So now that that is done, let’s talk about just what “comprehensive immigration reform” means.
@ Stormy Dragon
Can’t remember if it was Jenos or Florack, but one of them was waxing poetic a while back about building a wall on our southern border topped with machine guns a firing at anyone who approached.
T
@anjin-san: Can’t remember if it was Jenos or Florack, but one of them was waxing poetic a while back about building a wall on our southern border topped with machine guns a firing at anyone who approached.
Feel free to back this up with an actual link, or I’ll just write this off to more of your confusing your fantasies with reality.
@Matt Bernius: Some of these people are spending thousands of dollars and putting their childrens’ lives at risk to get them into this country. Since there is a huge profit to be made, it is going to be hard to put these transporters out of business. I don’t know if Mexico is doing a lot about it. One idea would be for the US to set up refugee camps in the countries that they are coming from. There they would be safe and could wait until they have permission to come in. This sets up a process that has been used in other countries. The President also needs to have a word of prayer with some of the leaders down there: they straighten it out or we can straighten it out.
@Matt Bernius:
Tucson is 70 miles from the US border. The fact that they contemplate military patrols that far in from the border is exactly the sort of thing I’m concerend about.
@Stormy Dragon: Yeah, I can just see the benefits of a bunch of soldiers with machine guns wandering around Tuscon stopping all people who look vaguely Hispanic: “your papers, please!”
…and the outreach continues….
Look, if we don’t want to have people coming across the border, we’re going to have to put something like the Berlin Wall down there, all umpteen hundreds of miles of it. And man it like it’s the Berlin Wall. If we want to do that, fine. But let’s not pretend we’re going to be able to do this on the cheap, or without repercussions.
This is what it must have seemed like in Rome just before the fall. Barbarians greet the bus with slogans and slurs concerning “the rule of law.”
@Stormy Dragon:
Fair point, though I’m having issues resolving the words *rural* with the idea of military patrols in the *city* of Tucson.
But thats exactly the type of thing that could be dealt with as part of the drafting and compromise process.
BTW @Jenos, someone put some actual hard proposals on what “securing” the border could mean for Democrats. Any chance you’re interested in that “serious” discussion of “Actual details and proposals” you were asking for @here?
Or are your able to define what a measurable “securing” the border means from a “conservative” perspective?
@grumpy realist:
Not only that, but lets not forget that the Berlin Wall was porous as well. By that I mean that people still found ways to smuggle themselves across/underneath/around it.
Hence why “secure” needs to be realistically defined.
Man, that is some fantastic pivoting. You don’t even acknowledge that every person in the thread called you out for being just disgustingly partisan, but rather you make it seem that your buffoon shrillness ( “So [Obama]’s responsible for these deaths.”) was just a ploy to get a “serious” conversation going.
A serious conversation that you then skip out on.
**APPLAUSE**
This is impressive, even by your high (low?) standards.
@Matt Bernius: Not to mention that they killed people who wouldn’t turn back. Is that really where we want to go with this?
Is it supposed to be Mr. Klansmen?
@Matt Bernius: You’re asking Jenos if he’s interested in a serious discussion of an issue? Really?
@Matt Bernius: The number of agents on the southern patrol has increased by over 400% since 1993.
At what level would the border be “secured” for the RWNJs? 1,000%? 10,000? 1e12%?
@Matt Bernius: No, this is not a racial issue. Some people want to make it one, but there is no cause or reasonable argument in that. Trying to put race in this confuses the real issues, mainly sovereignty.
@Timothy Watson: What Matt is arguing is not that we need to “secure the border,” but that all this border security stuff, most of which is useless, is the danegeld liberals (or at least, Democrats in the Senate) are willing to pay the republicans to get a reform package passed.
@Tyrell:
I’d buy that if they were giving a #&!% about BOTH borders. We have two, you know. The northern border is just as porous (maybe more so) with illegal immigrants and actual terrorists sneaking across – god only knows how many we didn’t catch when we look at the ones we did! If this is about sovereignty, then we would be concerned about BOTH vulnerable areas. Except when you hear “secure the border” they mean the southern one only. While I can forgive a focus on it due to the sheer optics of it, it’s really blatant that when you point out Mexico isn’t our only major border issue you get blank stares at best and angry partisan diatribes at worst.
@Timothy Watson & @humanoid.panda:
I don’t think there is anything wrong with defining what constitutes a “secure” border in some sort of measurable fashion. We need to be able to quantify the present situation and define what a solution state looks like.
And once we’ve defined what “secure” is, then we need to apply resources as necessary to maintain security.
What I object to is saying “you need to secure the border” before any other work can be done and then not defining what “secure” is.
@Matt Bernius: I can tell you what secure is not: it is not busloads rolling in like it is Saturday at a theme park.
@Tyrell: Tell me, does it bother you that you are repeatedly humiliating yourself by saying stupid and inane things on the internet? I mean, this is an anonymous forum and all, but don’t you have any shred of dignity?
The Pope has weighed in on the current situation:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/07/15/the-pope-just-weighed-in-on-the-undocumented-children-and-conservatives-wont-like-what-he-said/
It means “Obama sucks and it is all his fault”
@anjin-san:
A wise man.
I understand and agree with the need for a non-porous border (“secure” being a loaded word here). There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to protect and guard your homeland to ensure the safety and happiness of all. We have the right and the obligation as Americans to take care of our nation and any issues that might effect it negatively with our own citizens as a priority without shame or castigation. Good fences make good neighbors, after all.
None of that invalidates our obligation as human beings to treat others as humans. None of that removes the simple fact that if things were to go truly wrong here in the States, that could be us fleeing to a better sanctuary. None of that removes the fact that these are people who just want a better life then the one they’ve been dealt. None of that removes the fact that a damn wall won’t stop any of this as long as desperate people see the USA as the solution to whatever problem they have. None of that means we can take such a burden and bear it or that we even should.
Francis has it right. They have broken the law but they are still entitled to the basic protections and kindness due a person. It doesn’t mean be complete idealistic doormats – it means having a real national conversation without the anger, violence and malice that’s tinging it today. It means stop the hate and start the debate. We can be capable of saying “No” without being complete @&#&*#!^#&#* about it.
From the Statue of Liberty:
Is this a good time for the Republican House to authorize a new inscription? The following would probably get a voting majority of Republicans:
“Whenever possible Give me your tired, your non-poor/Your Caucasian male huddled masses from Western Europe yearning to breathe free”
I’m a fifth generation Californian on one side, third on the other, and one thing I can’t get past when I hear all the vitriol being hurled at immigrants, illegal or otherwise from the south, is that we stole California (and other large chunks of the west) from Mexico in a war of conquest.
Where exactly is our moral high ground?
@anjin-san:
Our moral high ground is in the sewer these days.
You make a very good point. I live in a rural suburban area (in Sonoma County,about 60 miles north of San Francisco) that is probably about one-third hispanic/latino, of which a fair number are likely illegal. What I see every day are people who work multiple jobs, or are regularly looking for day labor – hardworking men and women.
One of our good friends is a big family, the mother and father came here from Mexico illegally in the 80s and they became legal during the 1st Republican-sponsored “amnesty.” All of them – mother, father, children – work hard, some have 2 jobs, some of the grown children now have children of their own.
My daughters went to a good local elementary school where, in the early grades (K-4), about a 1/3rd of the kids needed to be transitioned with bilingual education. Virtually all of them did so successfully, and overall education at the school was not the least bit compromised by inclusion of bilingual education into the curriculum. The school performs well all measurements, and this is a non-affluent largely working middle class area.
Which is exactly why the modern conservative movement has worked so hard to dehumanize people of color.
@Tyrell: except that if you keep stopping Hispanic-looking people in downtown Tuscon as opposed to pasty white people, there IS a racial sorting going on….
Heck, we’ve probably got more illegal immigrants here in Chicago from places like Ireland and the Ukraine (especially now) than we do from South America and Mexico.
@grumpy realist:
and Poland and Russia and their ‘mafia’ are there too
@Jenos Idanian #13: “What’s drawing these kids is the 2008 law (written and passed by Democrats, who controlled both Houses at that point)”
That’s odd; I could have sworn that Dubya was president. I also could have sworn the the GOP had enough Senators to block anything.
@Stormy Dragon: “So the proposed solution to immigration is to place the southwest portion of the country under martial law? ”
Basically.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Let’s face it, the reason current Republican conservatives have a problem with these immigrant children is that they perceive them to be future Democratic voters.
Doug: “Arizona Republican”
You coulda stopped right there 🙂