November 16, 1928 An obscenity trial began for Radclyffe Hall’s novel, “The Well of Loneliness.” Great Britain banned it for its treatment of lesbianism, though it contained no explicit sexual references. A U.S. court in 1929 ruled similarly, for its sympathetic portrait of homosexuality, and because it “pleads for tolerance on the part of society.” Radclyffe Hall Read more
November 16, 1989 Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained and -supported death squads in El Salvador.In 1995 the United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador linked the slayings to 19 members of the armed forces who were graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a facility run by the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia. Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. The graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. The Truth Commission’s report More on the School of the Americas
November 16, 1990 President George H. W. Bush issued Executive Order 12735 which found the spread of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) to constitute an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” He declared a state of national emergency to deal with this threat. The order reiterated U.S. policy to lead and seek multilaterally coordinated efforts to control the spread of CW and BW and directed the secretaries of State and Commerce to adopt a variety of export controls.
November 16, 1994 After receiving assurances from the United States, Britain, and France, the Ukrainian Parliament approved Ukraine’s agreement to follow the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapons state.
November 17, 1973 President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” Read more
November 17, 1980 Hundreds were arrested at the Women’s Pentagon Action protest of patriarchy and its war-making. Read more
November 17, 1989 Riot police in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, arrested hundreds of people demanding the resignation of the leader of the Communist-led government. More than 15,000 people, mostly students, took part in the demonstration demanding democratic rights. [see November 18, 1989 below]
November 17, 2000 The Florida Supreme Court froze the tallying of the state’s presidential election returns, forbidding Secretary of State Katherine Harris to certify results of the vote count in the presidential race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
This year’s Transgender Awareness Week (the leadup to Trans Day of Remembrance on November 19) has felt particularly macabre, arriving on the heels of a presidential election that will be disastrous for trans rights. Still, there’s never been a better time to help trans communities across the U.S. find shelter, obtain medical care, and protect themselves from state violence — and if you’re reading this, you can help by getting involved in mutual aid.
Although there are plenty of well-known LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups throughout the country, mutual aid funds prioritize giving directly to marginalized people in need, in order to survive crises and improve their material conditions. Numerous trans-led mutual aid funds exist on local, state, regional, and national scales, and while many may not be tax-deductible, we think that’s a small price to pay in order to help trans folks find safe shelter, obtain gender-affirming care, change legal identity documents, and more.
The phrase “we keep us safe” may have originated in prison abolition organizing, but it definitely applies to LGBTQ+ folks as well. Below, we’ve highlighted just a few trans mutual aid funds that are open to donations — or applications for assistance, if the trans person in need is you — as of November 2024. For more, check out our state-by-state list of mutual aid funds and advocacy groups. You can also search for #TransCrowdFund on your preferred social media platform to find individual trans people fundraising for their own needs.
Organized by the Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit Change Today, Change Tomorrow, the Black Trans Fund offers “unrestricted assistance” for Black trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people. According to organizers, the fund has distributed over $35,000 for “bills, travel, food, medical needs, and recreational needs” over its four years in existence. Donations are tax-deductible. (snip)
Based in Utah, Genderbands offers individual grants for trans people seeking help with medical costs (including surgeries for those over 18), travel, name and identity document changes, and special grants for trans youth with parental consent. Any trans person in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico may apply, although surgical grants are limited to U.S. residents; the application period for 2025 grants, including one dedicated grant for a masculinizing top surgery procedure in Salt Lake City, ends November 30. Donations of gently used binders are also accepted. (snip)
A project of the Iowa Mutual Aid Network, this fund is dedicated to providing aid for gender-affirming medical care throughout the state, and has distributed over $100,000 since 2021, according to its website. Grant seekers may apply every month, and may receive funding for hormone therapy, surgeries, therapy, and some other medical fees, as well as name change costs, travel expenses for medical care, and gender-affirming clothing. (snip)
One of the largest trans-led mutual aid networks in the U.S., Point of Pride has raised millions for trans mutual aid through its annual TikTok fundraisers. The organization funds gender-affirming surgeries, hormone therapy, hair removal, clothing, and more through its various dedicated funds, and offers free binders and shapewear for those who cannot afford to buy their own. In 2024, Point of Pride reported giving $163,000 to 117 trans people through their HRT Access Fund alone, including 49 Black recipients thanks to funding from the National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition. (snip)
Based in Pensacola, Florida, STRIVE’s anticapitalist organizers say their mission is to “provide moral and material support to trans people who need it,” in the form of emergency housing, hormone therapy, food support, transportation, and “any other items needed for our survival.” In addition to its aid funds, STRIVE also holds trans community events and weekly political organizing meetings. (snip)
Although most of its organizers are based in Missouri, Transitional Justice seeks to facilitate travel and “temporary, transitional housing” for trans people fleeing harmful legislation throughout the U.S., as well as “people who have been evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, or denied access to healthcare.” Applicants can request assistance by filling out the organization’s web form. (snip)
Founded in 2013 through the South Carolina nonprofit We Are Family, the Trans Love Fund offers microgrants up to $200 for assorted “medical, legal, and emergency living expenses.” Grants are available to trans South Carolinians ages 16 and older, with applications opening one week out of every month (usually the first week, per the fund’s FAQ). We Are Family also operates the “Closet Case Thrift Store,” which offers free gender-affirming clothing to trans and gender-nonconforming youth. (snip)
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 WoodrowWilson as he traveled around the country eversince 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.
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
On Monday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore honored one of his state’s most beloved military veterans, Harriet Tubman, by promoting Tubman posthumously to the rank of brigadier general in the state National Guard. Why yes, that’s General Harriet Tubman, who in addition to being a famous abolitionist and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad was also the first woman to lead a US military operation during wartime.
Tubman’s history of military service doesn’t get the same attention as her activities as an abolitionist and helper of those who freed themselves from enslavement, which was already plenty enough to make her a hero. But after her final expedition to guide escapees from slavery North, she put her skills of disguise, concealment, and familiarity with Southern territory to use for the US Army when the Civil War broke out in 1861, serving as a spy, scout, and eventually, as the joint leader of an 1863 Army raid on plantations in South Carolina, which freed nearly 800 enslaved people and burned several of the plantations.
Here’s a cool thing: A 2022 CIA website article acknowledges that well before she formally became a military operative, her work for the Underground Railroad “applied sophisticated tradecraft including the use of disguises, clandestine communication, and assets and allies, who provided safe houses, transportation, and funding” — genuine praise for an intelligence operative.
Tubman was recruited for the Union cause by Massachusetts Governor John Andrew and sent to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where she was assigned to work under Major General David Hunter, the head of Union operations there and in Georgia and Florida. As the CIA explains, she was trained as a nurse, and worked as one, but that also gave her the documents and funding necessary for her secret work, recruiting a spy ring of Black volunteers in the area, who gathered intelligence on plantations, commerce, Confederate troop positions, and the locations of “torpedoes” — barrels of gunpowder in rivers that could blow up any Union boats. Tubman was unable to read or write, but had an outstanding memory, making her a valuable spy without leaving any notes behind, encrypted or otherwise.
In 1863, Tubman moved from spying and reconnaissance to actually commanding Union troops in a raid on plantations along the Combahee River in South Carolina’s “Lowcountry” region. Although she was not a commissioned officer, she planned and shared leadership duties with Col. James Montgomery, an abolitionist in charge of a Black Army regiment, the Second Carolina Volunteers. The goal of the raid was to rescue enslaved people, recruit the freed men to join the Union Army if they were willing, and to wipe out the rice plantations in the area.
Montgomery commanded about 300 men, and to prepare for the raid, Tubman was in charge of a group of eight scouts who made maps of the area and helped her get news of the coming raid to enslaved people so they could be ready to run for the Union gunboats from which the attack would be launched.
“She was fearless and she was courageous,” said Kate Clifford Larson, historian and author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero. “She had a sensibility. She could get Black people to trust her and the Union officers knew that they were not trusted by the local people.”
On the night of June 1, 1863, Tubman, Montgomery, and the troops boarded three Union gunboats to head up the river; on the way, however, one of the steamboats ran aground and the troops had to transfer to the remaining vessels. Tubman’s reconnaissance of the area proved invaluable in avoiding torpedoes in the river, and for guiding the ships close to shore, where they launched smaller boats full of raiders to attack the plantations.
Just before the raid got underway, the gunboats broke formation and headed to different parts of the river, with Montgomery commanding one, the Harriet A. Weed, and Tubman leading the 150 soldiers on the John Adams. Just want to underline this: Tubman wasn’t serving as an adjunct to Montgomery, she was in charge of half the attacking force. In the wee hours of June 2, they attacked their assigned plantations.
Tubman later recalled that when the signal to attack was given, she saw enslaved people running to escape toward the Union boats at the riverside, with women carrying their babies and children and whatever supplies they could take along, including chickens, pigs, and pots of rice. The enslavers tried to chase them down, firing guns on them, reportedly killing one girl. We’ll hand off the narrative here to History.com, and add that we’d watch this movie:
As the escapees ran to the shore, Black troops in rowboats transported them to the ships, but chaos ensued in the process. Tubman, who didn’t speak the region’s Gullah dialect, reportedly went on deck and sang a popular song from the abolitionist movement that calmed the group down.
More than 700 escaped slavery and made it onto the gunboats. Troops also disembarked near Field’s Point, torching plantations, fields, mills, warehouses and mansions, causing a humiliating defeat for the Confederacy, including the loss of a pontoon bridge shot to pieces by the gunboats.
After the raiding gunboats docked in Beaufort, South Carolina, the first press report of the raid didn’t name Tubman, but it did say that the raid was led by a “She-Moses” under the command of Montgomery, and that the raid came off without a single injury to the Union forces. A later report in a Boston newspaper named Tubman as the hero; the editor was a friend of hers. At least 100 men freed during the raid joined the US Army.
Illustration via Library of Congress.
For all the news the story made at the time, Tubman didn’t get paid, and even after the war her petitions to receive a soldier’s pay for the raid were turned down, because women simply weren’t allowed in the Army, you silly goose. She later received a military pension on behalf of her late husband, a Union soldier, but not for herself. But when she died in 1913, she was buried with military honors; the US Army’s Military Intelligence Corps also inducted Tubman into its Hall of Fame in 2021.
Prior to the war, in 1858, abolitionist and eventual insurrectionist John Brown met Tubman and nicknamed her “General” for her courage. That was made official by Gov. Moore’s Veteran’s Day proclamation Monday, naming her a one-star general in the Maryland National Guard.
After Moore read the official order promoting Tubman, he presented the proclamation to Ernestine “Tina” Martin Wyatt, Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, as a representative of Tubman’s family.
Thank you again for your service, General Tubman. Now if we can just get you on the $20 bill to replace that racist fuck-knuckle Andrew Jackson. (Snip)
November 14, 1910 Eugene Ely performed the first airplane takeoff from a ship. His Curtiss pusher flew from the deck of the U.S.S. Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia.By January he would execute the first (takeoff and) landing on a warship, the U.S.S. Pennsylvania. Captain Washington I. Chambers of the Navy Department had been interested in the military uses for the seven-year-old invention. Naval flight training started shortly thereafter. More of the whole story
November 14, 1954 “Ten Million Americans Mobilized for Justice” began a campaign to collect 10 million signatures on a petition urging the Senate not to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin). The motion of censure against Senator McCarthy was for obstructing a Senate committee and for acting inexcusably and reprehensibly toward a U.S. soldier appearing before his own committee. McCarthy had used his Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee to publicly denounce thousands as subversive, especially within the federal government, many without any justification. The political views of most were painted as treasonable and conspiratorial, rather than differing political views. The petition effort fell about nine million signatures short. More on Joe McCarthy
November 14, 2000 Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, simultaneously co-chair of George W. Bush’s Florida presidential campaign organization and the public official responsible for the conduct of the election itself, certified Governor Bush’s fragile 300-vote lead over Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Katherine Harris Florida Judge Terry Lewis gave Harris the authority to accept or reject a follow-up manual recount from some counties where the count was open to question. Harris rejected the manual recounts.
There is a link within: Laugh Out Loud ~ Hurricane Season May Not Be Over Yet for Florida, (I’m not laughing because Scottie, Ron, and likely readers are in FL, but this is some info for preparation.) The linked page uses Accuweather, who I personally disdain because when they’re timely is when they borrow the info from the National Weather Service, in this case, here. This is no disparagement of Ten Bears, who gives superlative information, especially on the subject of climate, environment, and weather. Anyway, because it’s about FL, there are those links, and below is the blog entry, which is its usual excellence. Recall I mentioned a while back that many links are “Easter eggs”; there are some of those within.
On the plains and in the vales of Oklahoma, Grew a flower of the Tyrian hue, The color that is loved by the Redman, That tells him light and life, And love are true.
Long ago it flamed in beauty on the prairies, Lighting reaching vistas with its glow; Ere advent of the whiteman and his fences, Told the care-free, roving hunter He must go.
The throng, the herd, and greed have madly trampled Prairie, woodland, valley, and the height; Crushed the feath’ry flower and rudely blighted Its pride and life and beauty, And its light.
Today ’tis found in silent glades and meadows Where by twos and threes it greets the May. Like the scattered braves who loved its color, It has passed, been trodden out Along the way.
As the oriflamme it flaunted through past ages Went to gladden the fairness of the earth; So the greatness of the Indian will linger In the land that loves them both And gave them birth.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
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
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.
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.”
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
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.
Mary Winsor
Aurelia Browder
Maya Ying Lin
Scottie's Playtime 