America is treating immigrant children as subhuman, taking them from their parents, abusing them, losing them. Social media is full out of outrage about this so it seems a bit redundant to write it all down. But it is an atrocity that is happening and the least I can do is bear witness.

America has a newly aggressive policy of separating children from parents if ICE thinks the parents entered the country illegally. It is a supreme form of cruelty being perpetrated by the state, often against families fleeing persecution and trauma.

Once separated from their parents we harm the children further. Some of those children are physically abused by Border Patrol officers, kids being punched, kicked, sexually assaulted, held in solitary confinement. ICE then destroys the evidence of the abuse. Many kids are placed in foster care but then we lose a large number of them, like literally don’t know what happened to them. Some of them ended up in the hands of traffickers. “Sorry Mom, we lost your kid, check the local brothels.” This problem is not new but much worse under Trump.

All of this is happening in the dangerous context of dehumanizing immigrants.

“I called them animals the other day, and I was met with rebuke,” he said. “They said, ‘They’re people.’ They’re not people. These are animals, and we have to be very, very tough.”
“They exploited the loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors.” Trump added: “They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.”

See, they’re not immigrant children at all. They are criminals. And animals. So it’s OK to abuse them, to separate them from their parents.

It is going to keep getting worse.

I had a nice two week visit to Portland. I have fantasies about moving back there so I indulged that for a couple of weeks renting a house like I dreamed about when I was in college right near Hawthorne & 39th (now Cesar Chavez). My Wanderings app captured where I went.

Mostly a lot of hanging out in SE, with a couple of trips to downtown and once out to NE. A lot of the activity is dining. Some of the best places I went were Teote for beer in the back garden, Pok Pok for fantastic Thai, and Coquine for fine dining out by Mt Tabor. Also nice experiences at Xico, Afuri, Tasty ‘n’ Alder, Han Oak, The Imperial, and of course the Rum Club. The food and beverage situation in Portland is really great and has been for a few years now. The economics are such that restaurants can do interesting things without having to charge outrageous amounts for it. Lower risk for everyone = more interesting food and drink.

It's great fun to visit Portland and see all my old and new friends. I'm amazed how many people have moved there; only about ⅓ of the folks I know in Portland were from my college days. I still can’t really move back to Portland, too many roots in California. But I like the idea of visiting and staying in AirBnBs in SE more frequently. Particularly in the four months of the year the weather doesn’t suck.