What could Donald Trump possibly say to justify this??
Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia is a Guatemalan national who came to the United States seeking asylum from a dangerous domestic abuse situation in which she feared for her life.
When she did, all she found was more abuse — at the hands of the U.S. government, who took her 7-year-old son, Darwin, by force and refused to tell her where he was.
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Now, according to a DailyMail.com report, she’s filed a lawsuit which will test Trump’s cruel policy toward immigrants.
Here’s some background:
For years the U.S. has granted abused women asylum because the misogynistic governments of their home countries were unwilling to protect a woman from her husband.
We were the good guys.
Last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions officially dropped the protection for abused women.
Mejia-Mejia may have gotten in under the wire as she entered back in May. But she was still subject to the new “family separation” policy.
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In order to seek asylum, you have to be in the country, which means you have to enter illegally then make your request.
Under Trump’s new “zero tolerance” policy, everyone who enters illegally, no matter the reason, is thrown into a prison camp and prosecuted. Not turned away, not sent back. Jailed.
More cruelly, as has caused much controversy over the past couple weeks, is the new policy of taking these parents’ children away — sometimes by trickery and sometimes by force — and throwing them into their own prison camps.
It’s that policy Mejia-Mejia is challenging with her lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court on Tuesday against 6 federal agencies and 10 senior officials.
The suit says after Mejia-Mejia turned herself in to Border Patrol to request asylum, agents refused to tell her where they were taking her boy:
“Men dressed in green uniforms (border agents) told Ms. M. they needed to take her son and would not tell her why. Ms. M. said “no” and demanded an explanation, but they would not tell her why they needed to take her seven-year-old son, and they took him anyway.”
The complaint says the 7-year-old was “screaming and crying” throughout the ordeal.
“That was the last time Ms. M. saw her son.”
Furthermore, the suit alleges Mejia-Mejia “has not been given any paperwork to indicate where her son is or what his status or health condition is.”
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After Mejia-Mejia posted bail after giving a “credible fear” she was allowed a single phone call with Darwin in which he was “crying and scared”:
“An official facilitating the call, who was with D.M., told Ms. M. that her son was ‘fine,’ but Ms. M. could clearly hear her son saying ‘Mama! Mama! Mama!’ in a distressed voice over and over and over again.”
Horrifying.
The Trump administration is claiming this is in accordance with the law, but the law only says children of immigrants can’t be kept in the detention centers if their parents are being held. It’s obvious to any reasonable person the intent was not for the children to be held in another detention center away from their parents.
Trump is intent on prosecuting every single person that comes across the border, so everyone gets thrown into a camp — and EVERY child gets taken away. That’s “zero tolerance” for ya.
But like we explained, Mejia-Mejia is not being prosecuted. She qualified for asylum. And yet she does not know where her son is.
Can you imagine?
Mejia-Mejia is demanding in her suit that a federal court order Darwin returned to her, forbid agents from deporting her without him, and declare the act of taking him away to be illegal.
The ramifications of such a ruling could change everything.
[Image via Johnny Louis/WENN/Border Patrol/ABC News/Facebook.]
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