[Update 12/21/19: Donald Trump’s ‘moral disaster’: AP reveals scope of migrant kids program

As the year draws to a close, about 5,400 detained migrant children in the U.S. are sleeping in shelters with more than 1,000 other children. Some 9,800 are in facilities with 100-plus total kids, according to confidential government data obtained and cross-checked by The Associated Press.

That’s a huge shift from just three months after President Donald Trump took office, when the same federal program had 2,720 migrant youth in its care; most were in shelters with a few dozen kids or in foster programs.]

Last July 4^th Therese Patricia Okoumou climbed up the base of the Statue of Liberty to protest against Trump’s migrant family separation policy. Seven other people protesting had been arrested that day on Ellis Island but Okoumou, a naturalized US citizen who lives in Staten Island, made the headlines by climbing onto the base of the statue (approximately 10 stories  high) and holding a tee shirt with the slogan “Rise and Resist.” She was eventually removed hours later by police and arrested.

On Monday  the Guardian.com reported Patricia Okuomou’s trial for climbing the Statue of Liberty ended. She was found guilty of trespassing and interfering with government agency functions, as well as disorderly conduct-charges that in total could carry a sentence of 18 month in prison.

Outside the courthouse she remained committed to stopping the Trump administration family separation policy: “We stand on the right side of the history. I am not discouraged,” she said.

“While migrant children who simply came to this country, like our ancestors did, to seek happiness, freedom and liberation. Instead of welcoming them like Lady Liberty symbolizes, instead of treating them with kindness, what we showed them is cages. So if I go in a cage with them, I am on the right side of history.”

And what’s it look like on the wrong side of history?

Well the Trump administration was ordered to halt the separations but one way and another it has continued in an alarming fashion. Last week a seven year old Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal Maquin, died in custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. She was with her father when he was arrested after crossing the U.S. border. The CBP’s reports say she died from dehydration and shock but this description is disputed by her father, Nery Gilberto Caal Cruz.

Even more questions over this child’s death were raised when it was reported that, astoundingly, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan knew about the death of the child in its custody before his congressional testimony earlier but he failed even to mention it.

And the cost in dollars for Trump’s cruel policy to date is sizable — as of last month, the NYTimes.com reported it was as much as $80 million and rapidly growing.

The lack of preparation and condition of mass housing shelters (many of them contracted out and privately run) provided for separated children have potential for major problems. Govexec.com reports: The tent city, built on a patch of federal land near the border in El Paso County, has been a focal point of criticism and controversy as the number of children housed there has ballooned in recent months to about 2,800.

Late last month, as part of a larger investigation into child safety at the shelters, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services warned that the Trump administration had waived FBI fingerprint background checks for employees at the emergency tent shelter and had hired “dangerously” few mental health counselors.

To handle any potential crimes at the tent city, the government has assigned the largely obscure Federal Protective Service.

The chief mission of the FPS is to protect federal buildings, such as the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration, which it mostly does through its force of 13,500 private security guards.

And to the administration “whatever” looks like the following.

A couple months before Okuomou climbed the Statue of Liberty and about the time images of detained children in cages became public, John Kelly, who was then Trump’s Chief of Staff (once DHS head), was asked by NPR about the cruel implications of separating families and holding them in custody.  Kelly dismissively remarked: “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever,”

Many people demonstrated last July, and since then protests continue against the cruelty of Trump’s migrant family detention policy, but the administration carries on with it and their reaction to the suffering they inflict seems to be “whatever.”

Now imagine a pregnant-out-of-wedlock Maria with her fiance Joseph, arriving at the border. And you may have guessed there is no room at the asylum-processing centers. They move along the border, are detained, separated, and Maria gives birth behind razor-wire-topped fences. She calls the infant Esperanza, hope. But they are given no water, food or “whatever”, and the infant dies.

What would Trump say, “Feliz Navidad!” or “whatever” ?