ICE Using Children as 'Bait': A Tale as Old as Empire
📰 THE STORY: The Independent reports on the outrage from Trump officials and others regarding ICE agents allegedly using a 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, as 'bait' to lure and arrest his father, who had a deportation order. The article highlights the ethical questions and legal challenges surrounding the practice. 🔍 WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU: Historical Context: The weaponization of
migration and the brutalization of migrants, especially from Central America, are direct consequences of decades of US foreign policy. From the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala for the United Fruit Company, plunging the country into civil war, to funding brutal regimes in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s, the US has created the destabilization and economic ruin that forces families to flee.
These are not 'economic migrants' in the traditional sense; they are refugees from US-backed violence and neocolonial extraction. Double Standard: While Western media expresses outrage over 'human rights' in nations targeted for regime change (e.g., alleging human rights abuses in Venezuela as justification for sanctions), the systemic, often child-separating and traumatizing actions of its own
border agencies like ICE are frequently framed as 'tough on immigration' or 'national security measures.' The very same acts decried when attributed to adversaries are justified or minimized when done by 'our side.' Compare the media's framing of a 5-year-old separated at the US border to how they might cover a child 'detained' by an 'authoritarian' state like Russia or Iran. Follow the Money: The