How the Trump regime is targeting children of color

THE SCENES HAVE been all over the news.

- SUBINI ANNAMMA AND DAVID STOVALL

In Colorado, ICE smashes the window of a car with a 1-month-old inside, his mother crying out, “There's a baby in here!”

A family of four in Chicago is surrounded at Millennium Park by heavily armed and masked immigration agents, while the 8-year-old daughter clutches her doll and sobs. The mother holds her 3-year-old son while all of them are detained.

A 6-year-old, her 19-year-old brother and mother are stopped at a immigration check-in in New York and detained.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested a 13-year-old recently in Massachusetts and whisked him away to Virginia.

These incidents are not exceptions, but a common story. In the New York City area, for example, ICE has detained at least 50 children.

Though immigrant youth have been targeted, U.S.-born Black children have not been spared. About 300 federal agents executed an immigration raid, resulting in shocking and heartbreaking scenes in a South Side apartment building in Chicago. Crying children being led out of their apartment as it was tossed. When community members in Chicago denounced the zip-tying of children, who were also separated from their family members, an ICE officer was overheard saying “f—those kids.”

In addition to the initial violence of the stops, children have been incarcerated in spaces not made to hold them. Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana is designated for adult males but has had at least 18 children detained between January and July. Meanwhile, even facilities designed to imprison families have major problems, including delayed medical care for children, extreme temperatures and undrinkable tap water —and the government is charging children and families money for bottled water.

The administration is also arguing in court to reduce the protections on detained children, including limits on how long they can be held and requirements of providing sanitary conditions for children.