ICE Detains Five-Year-Old Liam Ramos: A Feature, Not a Bug, of US Immigration Policy
📰 THE STORY: Newsweek reports on Liam Ramos, a five-year-old held in ICE detention, and updates provided by Trump administration officials, highlighting the human impact of immigration policies without delving into the systemic nature of child detention. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The systematic detention of children at the border did not begin with the Trump
administration. The Flores Settlement Agreement, ruling that minors should be released quickly from immigration detention, dates back to 1997. However, subsequent administrations, including Obama's, expanded family detention centers. In 2014, the Obama administration opened new family detention facilities, turning what was a rare practice into a routine one for arriving asylum seekers, often
housing them in for-profit centers. Double Standard: While Western media routinely decries humanitarian crises in nations targeted for regime change or sanctions (e.g., Venezuela, Syria), holding up images of suffering children as evidence of government failure, the systematic detention and separation of families at the US border by successive administrations receives a far more sanitized, often
'rule of law' framing. The cruelty is framed as regrettable but necessary, rather than a deliberate policy choice, especially when it targets those fleeing US-backed destabilization in their home countries. Follow the Money: The detention industry is highly profitable. Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, major players in private prisons and immigrant detention, have seen their stock prices