Category: Abuse

Stole this from Janet’s Blog:

Stand with Sarah McBride: Join the Bathroom Ban Protest

21Nov

I assume you read this blog because you care about trans rights. At the very least, you are not hostile to women like me. As such, I have a favor to ask of you.

You may or may not be aware. The very first openly transgender person was elected to the House of Representatives in this past election cycle. Sarah McBride was elected to Congress to represent the state of Delaware in an at-large House district. The people of Delaware believe she is a good choice to represent their interests in Congress.

Unfortunately, the Republicans in the House have seen fit to disrespect her in a truly nasty way. They have decided to bring a transgender bathroom ban to the halls of Congress. This disgusting turn of events began with Nancy Mace of South Carolina. She introduced a resolution this week. It would ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms and other facilities at the Capitol. She has said that the bill “absolutely” targets Rep.-elect Sarah McBride. House Speaker Mike Johnson has voiced support for this move.

Sadly, among the Democratic caucus, only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has had the courage to speak out forcefully. A few others have joined her in opposing this move. It simply has not received the widespread condemnation that is so resoundingly deserved.

Now to that favor I mentioned. Today, there is a petition circulating. It allows cisgender women to state that they are opposed to such actions “in their names.” As I write this, almost 2700 cis women have signed the petition. It needs many more signatures. I ask you to sign this petition.

Share it with like minded women who also are unafraid of transgender women in “women’s spaces.” I’m providing a link to the petition below, with the exact title given to it.

Not In Our Name: Cisgender Women Against Trans Bathroom Bans – Action Network

The journey continues. The Republicans are sending strong signals about how they intend my life to be in the future. I will not be silenced.

(I stole this because the reblog button is not present there, I’m sure it will be back, but meanwhile, it’s bedtime, so I stole it. Please sign and continue to disseminate this, all right? And thank you!)

Peace & Justice History for 11/21:

November 21, 1945
200,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike against General Motors, the first major strike following World War II. The UAW’s demand for a 30% wage increase was based on the increase in the cost of living during the war (28% according to the Department of Labor), the wartime freeze on wages, and the cut in the average workweek with the disappearance of overtime pay in manufacturing.

But the UAW also considered profits and prices a subject for negotiation, a position rejected by GM. The union did not merely say that labor was entitled to enough wages to live on. It also said that labor was entitled to share in the wealth produced by industry. “… Unless we get a more realistic distribution of America’s wealth, we won’t get enough to keep this machine going.”–Walter Reuther, UAW President
More about the strike 
November 21, 1973
President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed White House tape recordings of Watergate conversations made by President Richard Nixon in the days after the Watergate break-in.The erasure was blamed on an accident by Nixon’s private secretary, Rose Mary Woods, but scientific analysis determined the erasures to be deliberate. White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig later attributed the gap to “sinister forces.”

Rose Mary Woods, demonstrating how she might have created the Watergate tape gap
More about Rose Mary Woods 
November 21, 1974
Both Houses of Congress voted to override President Gerald Ford’s veto of updates to the Freedom of Information Act. Originally passed in 1966, it required federal agencies to release information upon request to citizens and journalists.The amendments put an end to governmental resistance to compliance, including excessive fees, bureaucratic delays, and the need to sometimes resort to expensive litigation to force the government to share copies of documents.
Ford advisors Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Dick Cheney, and government lawyer Antonin Scalia advised him to veto it.

Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, President Gerald Ford
and Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney April 28, 1975
What was the dispute? 
November 21, 1975
The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, led by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), issued a report charging U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders – Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Patrice Lumumba (Congo), and were heavily involved in at least three other plots: Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam), Rene Schneider (Chile).

Senator Frank Church, left, chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee,
displays a poison dart gun as co-chairman Senator John Tower (R-TX) watches.

The committee, a precursor to the Senate Intelligence Committee, was established to look into misuse of and abuse by intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and FBI, some of which had been revealed by the Watergate investigations.
  
Fidel Castro / Patrice Lumumba / Rafael Trujillo / Ngo Dinh Diem / Rene Schneider
Read more  
November 21, 1981
More than 350,000 demonstrated in Amsterdam against U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missiles on European soil.
November 21, 1985
A full-scale summit conference, the first of five between the President Ronald Reagan of the U.S. and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union concluded. There was optimism over beginning a more productive and cooperative relationship between the two countries, each of which had thousands of nuclear warheads targeted at the other.The U.S. had proposed building a space-based anti-ballistic missile system, commonly known as “Star Wars,” which the Soviets had strongly opposed as an escalation of the nuclear arms race.In an unofficial meeting the previous evening, President Reagan had noted that he and Gorbachev were meeting for the first time at this level and had little practice. Nevertheless, having read the history of previous summit meetings, he had concluded that those earlier leaders had not accomplished very much. Therefore, he suggested that he and Gorbachev say, “To hell with the past, we’ll do it our way and get something done.” Gorbachev concurred.
Reagan and Gorbachev at their first summit
November 21, 1986
National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, began shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran in an attempt to free hostages, and the diversion of the proceeds to an insurgent Nicaraguan group known as the contras.
Fawn Hall
Oliver North
More on Fawn Hall 
November 21, 1995
China officially charged well-known human rights activist and political dissident Wei Jingsheng with trying to “overthrow the government.” Wei had not been seen for a year and a half after disappearing into police custody after meeting with a U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs.“If the people allow the power holders, in the peoples’ name, to violate and ignore the rights of some of the people then, at the same time, they are giving the power holders the power to violate the rights of all the people.”
“ Most people wait until others are standing to make their move, very few are willing to stand up first or to stand alone. That’s why my friends call me a fool! But I don’t have any regrets.” – Wei Jingsheng

Wei Jingsheng
He had been imprisoned previously for his involvement with the Democracy Wall movement, including years in solitary confinement. He had also spoken out on behalf of the Tibetans.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november21

Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’

By: Sherman Smith – November 18, 2024 1:45 pm
Eric Meyer delivers remarks during the Kansas Press Association Hall of Fame ceremony on Nov. 15, 2024, in Topeka.

 Eric Meyer delivers advice to journalists in a speech at the Kansas Press Association Hall of Fame ceremony on Nov. 15, 2024, in Topeka. (Evert Nelson for Kansas Press Association)

Publisher of raided Kansas newspaper delivers advice to journalists: ‘Make democracy great again’

TOPEKA — The editor of the Kansas newspaper raided by police last year has a message for journalists struggling with their sense of purpose.

Go on the offensive.

Eric Meyer, editor and publisher of the Marion County Record, delivered remarks Friday as he was inducted alongside his mother, Joan, into the Kansas Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame.

“I think this is a time when we have to establish for the people of this country the fact that we are important, that we have things that we can tell them that they will want to know, that they will want to change their positions about,” Meyer said.

He added, in a nod to the results of the presidential election: “Let’s not make America great again. Let’s make democracy great again.”

Police raided the Marion County Record newsroom and the home where Meyer lived with his mother in August 2023 under the false pretense that journalists had committed a crime by looking up a public record. Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner whose profane clash with police officers was captured on camera, died a day after the raid from stress-induced cardiac arrest. The raid spawned five civil lawsuits and a criminal charge against the police chief who led the attack on a free press.

Meyer said he is “an odd duck” because he retired to run a newspaper, rather than retire from it. He returned to Kansas during the COVID-19 pandemic to take over the publication his parents had operated for decades. After teaching journalism for 20 years at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Meyer wanted to practice what he had been preaching — that journalism is still vital. (snip-MORE)

Peace & Justice History for 11/20:

November 20, 1816
The term “scab” was first used in print by the Albany (N.Y.) Typographical Society.
A scab is someone who crosses a union’s picket line and takes the job of a striking worker.
 
Read The Scab by Jack London 
November 20, 1945
The International War Crimes Tribunal began in Nuremberg, Germany, and continued until October 1, 1946, establishing that military and political subordinates are responsible for their own actions even if ordered by their superiors.Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis were on trial for atrocities committed during World War II, ranging from crimes against peace to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by judges from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain.The Nuremberg defendants
Read more 
November 20, 1959
The United Nations proclaimed “The Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” because “the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.”
Read the text of the Declaration 
November 20, 1962
President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order forbidding racial discrimination in public housing.
November 20, 1969
Eighty-nine American Indians seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, offering to buy the island from the federal government for $24 worth of beads (the alleged price paid to the Canarsee Delaware Indians for Manhattan Island; it was actually 60 Dutch guilders).
Their numbers swelled into the hundreds at times; the General Services Administration, which had responsibility for the site of the former federal prison, and Coast Guard gave them the opportunity to leave the island peacefully.They were reclaiming it as Indian land by right of discovery, and demanding fairness and respect for native peoples. The occupation lasted for more than a year. Said Richard Oakes, a Mohawk from New York, “We hold The Rock.”
Indian people and their supporters wait for the ferry.
Photo/Ilka Hartmann
 
a new entrance to Alcatraz; Photo/Michelle Vignes 
Read more about the occupation 

LaNada Boyer (formerly Means) inside one of the Alcatraz guard barracks where occupiers lived from 1969-71. Much of the graffiti from 30 years ago remains throughout the island today. Photo by Linda Sue Scott.
November 20, 1977

Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset (parliament).
“I come to you today on solid ground to shape a new life and to establish peace. “But to be absolutely frank with you, I took this decision after long thought, knowing that it constitutes a great risk….”
Text of Sadat’s speech to the Israeli Knesset 
Listen to the speech 
November 20, 1987
SANE (The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) and FREEZE (the campaign to freeze all testing of nuclear weapons) merged at their first combined convention in Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the largest U.S. peace organization.
Peace Action today 
November 20, 1993
The U.S. Senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating the world’s largest trade area covering Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november20

Peace & Justice History for 11/15:

November 15, 1917
About 20 women peacefully picketing for universal suffrage (right to vote), who had been arrested in front of the White House a few days earlier, were subjected to beatings and torture at Occoquan workhouse in Virginia.
The National Women’s Party and other organizations had been picketing the White House and President Woodrow Wilson as he traveled around the country ever since the inauguration of his second term.

Mary Winsor
The incident became known as the “night of terror.”
Wilson had led the country into the European war (later called World War I), by characterizing the U.S. mission as “making the world safe for democracy.” The women demonstrating outside in Lafayette Square called attention to the need for complete democracy at home, where half of its citizens lacked complete voting rights. Many women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, had been arrested several times, usually for obstructing the sidewalk, and imprisoned before. When a judge learned of the abuse he freed the women. Public outrage over their treatment increased sympathy for the suffrage movement.

left: Lucy Burns in Occoquan Workhouse, Washington, DC. right: Alice Paul, New Jersey, National Chairman, Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; Member, Ex-Officio, National Executive Committee, Woman’s Party, ca 1915.

Amazing resources from the Library of Congress on women’s suffrage 
November 15, 1940
75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under the first peacetime conscription.

Draft inductees leaving Wilmington, Delaware in November, 1941
November 15, 1943
Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler’s head of the SS (Schutzstaffel or protective rank), Gestapo, the Waffen SS and the Death’s Head units that ran the concentration camps, made public an order that Gypsies (more properly the Roma) and those of mixed Roma blood were to be put on “the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.”

Gypsy prisoners arriving at a Concentration Camp


Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed “inferior,” as well as “asocial” types, such as hardcore criminals. Gypsies fell into both categories according to the thinking of Nazi ideologues and had been executed in droves both in Poland and the Soviet Union. The order of November 15 was merely a more comprehensive program, as it included the deportation to the Auschwitz death camp of Gypsies already in labor camps.
The Gypsies in Germany 
Gypsies: Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust  
November 15, 1957
U.S. Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was founded. Thirty years later on November 20, SANE merged with the Nuclear Freeze organization (dedicated to freezing all nuclear weapons testing worldwide) at a joint convention in Cleveland to form SANE/FREEZE. Its successor is known as Peace Action, the largest U.S. peace organization.

Sane Nuclear Policy poster, 1960
SANE history  Peace Action
November 15, 1969
Following a symbolic three-day “March Against Death,” the second national “moratorium” against the Vietnam War opened with massive and peaceful demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“New Mobe”), an estimated 500,000 demonstrators participated as part of the largest such gathering to date. 
It began with a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House (while Pres. Nixon watched the Purdue-Ohio State football game on TV) to the Washington Monument, where a mass rally with speeches was held.

Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter, Paul and Mary, and four different touring casts of the musical “Hair” entertained the demonstrators. The rally concluded with nearly 40 hours of continuous reading of known U.S. deaths (to that date) in the Vietnam War.
November 15, 1986
A government tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus, a CIA operative, of delivering arms to Contra rebels and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He had been arrested when his plane was shot down by Sandanista troops. He was pardoned a month after his conviction (his last name means “rabbit’s foot” in German).

 Hasenfus under arrest

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november15

A special request from me.

I have posted and told people in email or comments about my friend kamyk who is a fellow abuse survivor.  He was kidnapped at age 7, trained and abused to be a sex toy for wealthy men.  Then for some reason no one will admit to he was returned to his family after months of being used and abused, filmed and made to do sex acts with adults, other kids, and dogs.  He then was abused all his childhood until he became an adult and then sadly was pimped out and sexually abused until at 40 he escaped and started a life trying to understand himself / what happened to him.   

Some background for those that don’t know and I have his permission to share this much.  He was born premature and with an intestine system not fully formed and so he had intestinal troubles and pain all his life.  It effected his bowl movements badly which was bad when he was being abused.  He had diverticulitis which went bad and became full blown diverticulosis.  That means the pockets formed on the outside of the intestine and attached to it forming a pocket got super infected and then burst.   One burst into his bladder. During the time his infected pockets ruptured, his pain in his lower intestines got really bad and he developed a high fever of 104.  He was taken to a walk into care which sent him to the hospital.   They admitted him and shortly he had what they called a dirty surgery.  That was when they couldn’t clean his system out and they couldn’t get a scope inside him because his intestines were so inflamed.  They had to remove his sigmoid colon. 

After the surgery he had a bad incident where a person ordered him up out of bed and ignored his pleas to get help from the nurse.  That caused his abdominal wound to open up among other things.   He was put in the ICU.  He was taken from the ICU and placed in a specialty care facility to further heal.  I tell you all of this because I have a request for my followers who care.  

When he talks to me he is very unhappy, he feels trapped, he feels unworthy to live, he feels depressed, he is lonely.  This afternoon his sister reached out to me and asked me to ask those that knew him and my friends to send him get well cards.  She felt he needed to be flooded with love.  I contacted those on the Male Survivor site I have email addresses for who have asked me to keep them informed and asked them to forward the message to the site.  But they have a strict rule against posting addresses of survivors so that might be hard.  

I am asking you who would care to do so, to please send him a card or well wishes to the address I will put below.  You don’t need to be specific or even mention all I wrote.  Just tell him you heard about his situation and that he was in recovery from Scottie and wanted to send him a get well message.  Or anything like that.  You people all care about others so may know far better how to write a get well message, I admit I am sort of a klutz or clueless at that stuff, Ron does it for us.  On those kinds of things I don’t understand or function well.   

Thank you to everyone.  I used to spend hours at night listening to him cry out his anguish as new memories of his abuse surfaced.  I was doing for him what Randy did for me in 2014 when I had my emotional breakdown for the same reasons.  But now he needs more than someone to listen, he needs to know people care about him.  Thank you.  Hugs

 

Select specialty hospital
Attn: Kamyk Robinson
8049 South Ave room 103
Youngstown Ohio 44512

I am so tired of the lies about immigrants to please the maga bastards.

OK this is me just ranting before bed.  Sorry.  See I was an abused kid.  Most of you who come here already know and don’t need any extra help in that to show you how badly I was abused.  So I don’t need to show you more than my occasionally over the top ranting about my childhood abuse or the republicans claiming the republicans are stealing kids at the border … which is really what the republicans did.  They separated parents from children and then gave the children to Christian adoption agencies to sell for profit.  I wonder how their god feels about that.  But please let’s keep talking about how Biden lost all these kids … who were never lost.  Does any one else mind they are doing this?????   Because as a human trafficked sexually abused and traded person … I fucking sure DO!   Hugs.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-misinformation-migrant-children-missing-7ab0cea2fd2238346197429e952baa8b

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2024-10-02/fact-focus-claims-that-more-than-300-000-migrant-children-are-missing-lack-context

I am so very very tired and sorry if I hurt anyone tonight.  It just hurts what the republicans are doing and keep doing.   They hurt adults … They hurt kids.  They care for no one.

I wrote this post days ago and fell asleep before I could publish it.  Hugs

Peace & Justice History 11/13:

November 13, 1933
The first recorded “sit-down” strike in the U.S. was staged by workers at the Hormel Packing Company in Austin, Minnesota. When the Independent Union of All Workers (IUAW) went on strike, the company tried to bring in scab (strike-breaking) workers.

“ Four hundred men, many of them armed with clubs, sticks and rocks, crashed through the plant entrance, shattering the glass doors and sweeping the guards before them. The strikers quickly ran throughout the plant to chase out non-union workers. One . . . group crashed through the doors of a conference room where Jay Hormel and five company executives were meeting and declared “We’re taking possession. So move out!” (Larry Engelmann, “We Were the Poor — The Hormel Strike of 1933,” Labor History, Fall, 1974.)

The tactic worked: within four days Hormel agreed to submit wage demands to binding arbitration. The success of this strike reinvigorated the labor movement, which had been in decline throughout the 1920s.
November 13, 1956
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional in public transportation. The case, Browder v. Gayle, was brought by four women, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, who had refused to surrender their bus seats to whites in Montgomery (months before Rosa Parks had done so), and had been arrested for violating Alabama law which required segregation on public buses.They challenged the law and the Court agreed, finding the law under which they were arrested in violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Aurelia Browder

A roadside monument was dedicated in 2004 to the four plantiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case.
Colvin, a 15-year-old student at Booker T. Washington High School, boarded a bus in 1955 and refused to give up her seat to a white man. She was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus, as she screamed that her constitutional rights were being violated. 
More on Browder v. Gayle 
November 13, 1960

Over 1000 Quakers (members of the Society of Friends) surrounded the Pentagon for a silent vigil to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first Quaker Peace Testimony issued to King Charles II in 1660.
From the original Peace Testimony: “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever.
And this is our testimony to the whole world….”
The complete text of the 1660 Declaration
November 13, 1974

Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist (Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ Union) at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium fuels production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, was killed in a one-car crash.
Read more about her story  
November 13, 1982
Maya Ying Lin
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. Carved into black granite are the 58,260 names of those Americans who died in Vietnam. The designer, Maya Ying Lin of Athens, Ohio, a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University, was the winner of the competition that drew 1,421 design entries: “. . . this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them.” Eventually, the Memorial included three elements, the Wall of names, the Three Servicemen Statue and Flagpole, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.

The Wall of Names, the Three Servicemen Statue and Flagpole, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial

Read more about the memorial

Stunning photo gallery of the Memorial including interactive panoramic images

Interview with Maya Lin and filmmaker Freida Lee Mock, who made the Academy-Award-winning documentary, “Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision” (My apologies about Charlie Rose; it’s PeaceButton’s link, and it’s good info, Rose notwithstanding. -A)

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november13

Fact Check: Did Kamala Harris Lose More Than 325,000 Migrant Children?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/fact-check-did-kamala-harris-lose-more-than-325-000-migrant-children/ar-AA1rcC4F

I am so tired of this stupid lie.  The right  / republicans keep using it because the children they stole from parents at the border back during tRump’s term have never been found and returned to their parents.   That is what this asshole false claim is about.  Here are the facts. And also notice that the time frame includes tRump’s first term!  Want to know why this pisses me off so much !!!  Because as an abused kid I could have been saved if people had cared enough to do it.  Instead the republicans do this shit that helps no child, helps no kid.  Hugs

Kamala Harris is expected to visit the U.S.-Mexico border during a trip to Arizona this week as the Vice President attempts to win over voters on immigration policy ahead of the November election

Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted Harris over the number of border crossings during the Biden administration, highlighting the role handed to her by the president to investigate the root causes of migration in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

Trump went after Harris again earlier this week during a rally in Pennsylvania when he accused her of losing hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who had entered the country.

 
Kamala Harris speaks during a press conference at El Paso International Airport, on June 25, 2021 in El Paso, Texas. Donald Trump has claimed the Vice President is responsible for the disappearance of 325,000 migrant children. PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images© PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

The Claim

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At a speech in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on September 23, 2024, Donald Trump claimed that Kamala Harris had lost more than 325,000 migrant children.

“She [Kamala Harris] lost more than 325,000 migrant children,” Trump said.

“They’re gone, nobody knows where they are. Many of them are dead, many of them are in sex trade, many of them, but many of them are dead, they’ve been trafficked, they’ve been raped. Three hundred and twenty-five thousand children are missing.”

 

The Facts

Donald Trump’s claim is wrong with some caveats.

It appears his claim is based on an

August 2024 audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that uncovered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) statistics on unaccompanied migrant children (UCs).

Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, ICE transferred over 448,000 unaccompanied children to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). After apprehension by the Department of Homeland Security, children are transferred by ICE to ORR.

ORR handles the care and custody of these children awaiting immigration hearings. Care and custody include placing children in shelters or with a sponsor. ICE is responsible for managing immigration cases, and the audit showed the agency struggled to monitor the whereabouts of many of these children after their release from ORR custody.

 

ICE reported that more than 32,000 children had failed to appear for scheduled immigration court hearings between 2019 and 2023. ICE also failed to serve Notices to Appear (NTAs) on 291,000 children, leaving them without scheduled court dates and outside the formal immigration process.

The “more than 325,000” figure appears to be a combination of the 291,000 children who had not been issued a court date and the 32,000 who did not appear for scheduled dates, off by a couple of thousand.

Crucially, the main figure to focus on is the 32,000 children who missed their court date, the audit noting that ICE “was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court.”

The audit also said that failure to send an NTA could limit the chances of maintaining contact when children are released from ORR custody, adding ICE did not always inform ORR about the failure to appear in court.

 

“Similarly, when ICE does not share information with HHS regarding UCs who did not appear for hearings, HHS personnel are unable to determine if UCs need wellness checks or post-release services for individuals at an increased risk of being trafficked,” the report stated.

“Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

However, Trump combined the figures even though the audit did not say that the 291,000 who had not been issued an NTA were lost.

The report also does not say that ICE could not find all 32,000 children who had not appeared in court. ICE is not a child welfare authority either; as explained here and in previous Newsweek fact checks, unaccompanied minors are placed into the care of sponsors if available which ORR is meant to monitor. Although there have been concerns regarding the risk of exploitation in this system, the context of who carries responsibility here is important.

 

Furthermore, the OIG audit covered cases between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. Although more children were transferred into ORR custody between fiscal years 2021 and 2023, Trump’s administration oversaw transfers during the 2019 and 2020 periods and part of 2021.

Newsweek has contacted media representatives for ICE, Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the White House via email for comment.

Trump also claimed during his speech that “many” of the children were “dead”, “in sex trade”, and “raped.” The report does not make that conclusion. While the OIG report mentions exploitation vulnerability, it does not support Trump’s claim.

The Ruling

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False.

Trump’s claim is based on an audit that showed between fiscal years 2019-2023 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had reported that more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children had not appeared in court for immigration proceedings. The audit found that ICE “was not able to account for the location” of all these children.

 

The audit also said ICE had not issued orders for 291,000 children to appear in court.

Trump appears to have combined these two figures to try to make 325,000. The audit did not state that the 291,000 without court orders were missing, nor did it say that all 32,000 children could not be located. ICE is not a child welfare authority and unaccompanied migrant children are placed in shelters or with a sponsor by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is meant to monitor placements.

The audit monitored reporting under the Trump and Biden administrations.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek’s Fact Check team

How Trump’s second term will be different