12/19/18 12/19/18 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! well in theeel very father does not feel well in either because the girl died in front of him. -- she died and he cannot do anything. amy: democratic lawmakers are demanding answers after a seven-year-old guatemalan girl dies in border patrol custody in

new mexico. we'll speak with clara long of human rights watch and historian greg grandin who asks, "who killed jakelin caal maquin at the was border." >> it reveals the drivers and dynamics that have been pushing for immigration out of guatemala, out of southern new mexico, out of honduras into the united states. on a skill that was on his biblical in proportion. amy: than roughly 140 children are still separated from their families in u.s. custody more than four months after a judge ordered the trump administration to reunite them. we speak with a harvard psychologist who started up addition demanding -- petition demanding the media ramp up its coverage of the crisis. then we look at the rising number of cambodian immigrants

being deported by the trump administration. many of them came to america as refugees decades ago. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. the senate has approved a bipartisan bill that would roll back sentences for federal prisoners, including mandatory life terms for third-time offenders, as well as nonviolent drug users and those convicted of firearm crimes. senators approved the first step act on a vote of 87-to-12 tuesday after it received the backing of groups across the political spectrum, from the conservative koch brothers to the american civil liberties union. the house is poised to take up a companion bill, which is likely to pass. president trump has pledged to sign it into law. the first step act also ends sentencing disparities for convictions of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, a

distinction long led to deep racial disparities in prison terms. the bill only affects federal prisoners, who make up less than 10% of the more than 2 million u.s. prisoners. the bill is a major priority of senior white house adviser and presidential son-in-law jared kushner, whose father spent time in a federal prison. in washington, d.c., a federal judge has delayed sentencing michael flynn, president trump's former national security adviser, after expressing disgust that flynn lied to federal investigators. he acknowledged he lied about his meeting with the russian abbasid or during the 2016 presidential campaign. in an extraordinary two-hour hearing, u.s. district judge emmet sullivan blasted flynn for his conduct, pointing to an american flag inside the courtroom as he said -- "arguably, you sold your country out." judge sullivan is african -- judge sullivan offered to

hold off on sentencing flynn if he agreed to continue to aid federal prosecutors with special counsel robert mueller's probe and other criminal investigations. flynn agreed to the deal, delaying any sentencing until at least march. the court seized flynn's passport and ordered him to remain within 50 miles of washington, d.c. at the white house, press secretary sarah huckabee sanders deflected questions about flynn's court appearance, saying only that the white house is concerned that flynn lied to the fbi. >> that is something for the court to make that determination and we will let them do that. amy: president trump's charitable foundation will be dissolved under court supervision, under an agreement reached tuesday with new york state's attorney general, who says the trump family used the charity as a virtual piggy bank for self-dealing. prosecutors said the donald j. trump foundation gave little or no money to charity and instead served to advance donald trump's business and political ambitions, including illegal coordination with trump's 2016 campaign. the charity was also used to settle lawsuits against trump family businesses and even to purchase a $10,000 portrait of

donald trump hung at one of trump's golf resorts. among those who gave money to the trump foundation were pro-wrestling moguls vince and linda mcmahon, who became the charity's biggest contributor with $5 million in donations. trump later named linda mcmahon as head of the small business administration. tuesday's settlement includes a 10-year ban on donald trump running a nonprofit organization. his three oldest children will be each barred from working for any charity for one year. the white house appeared to back away tuesday from its threats to shut down the federal government unless lawmakers grant president trump at least $5 billion to expand the wall on the u.s.-mexico border. white house press secretary sarah sanders said trump will seek other ways to fund an expanded border wall after members of trump's own republican party balked at the prospect of furloughing hundreds of thousands of workers just before christmas. trump previously said he would be proud to shut the government over the border wall.

congressional leaders now say they're likely headed toward agreeing to another short-term spending increase that will see the government funded into the new year. in the next session of congress when democrats take control of the house. a honduran mother photographed last month fleeing tear gas fired by u.s. border guards near the port of entry between tijuana, mexico, and san diego, california, with her children, has applied for asylum in the united states. maria meza, a 39-year-old honduran woman, was captured in a reuters photograph that went viral in november. it shows meza rushing her two young daughters to safety as a cloud of tear gas spreads nearby. the photo drew international outrage and highlighted the plight of thousands of migrants living in squalid encampments in tijuana, awaiting their turn to apply for asylum in the u.s. -- a right enshrined in international law. on tuesday, meza and her five children were allowed to apply for asylum, but only after democratic congress members

jimmy gomez and nanette barragan intervened on her behalf. the lawmakers camped out overnight with meza's family and other migrants on u.s. soil near the otay mesa port of entry, surrounded by metal barriers and border guards in riot gear. this is congress member gomez. you can.s. policy is turn your self in at any port of entry. they have to process you. what we're seeing, they are saying they don't have the capacity. but that doesn't seem to be the case. no one has been allowed in. we're here to make sure they're following u.s. law and international law. amy: meanwhile, democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about the conditions that led to the death of seven-year-old guatemalan indigenous migrant jakelin caal maquin in u.s. custody after she was detained at the u.s.-mexico border earlier this month. on tuesday, several lawmakers

toured the lordsburg border patrol station in new mexico where the girl was held shortly before she became ill, dying after her fever spiked to nearly 106 degrees. this is houston congressmember al green. >> what i saw in this facility is unbelievable and unconscionable. animals would not allow to be treated the way human beings are being treated in this facility. amy: we'll have more on the death of jakelin caal maquin after headlines. in california, the yemeni mother of a dying two-year-old child was granted a state department waiver from president trump's travel ban tuesday and will see her son one last time before her boy is expected to die. the toddler, abdullah hassan, is in an oakland, california children's hospital with a rare , brain disease.

both abdullah and his father, ali, are u.s. citizens, but the mother shaima swileh is a yemeni citizen living in egypt. swileh is from one of five majority-muslim countries -- iran, libya, yemen, syria and somalia -- whose citizens are barred from entering the u.s. under president trump's executive order. her little boy is now in a coma. in media news, more than a dozen companies have pulled advertisements from the program "tucker carlson tonight" after the fox news host said that immigrants make the u.s. "poorer, dirtier, and more divided." carlson made the comment on his prime-time show last thursday. >> we have a moral obligation to admit the poor, they tell us, even if it makes her own countrymen poorer, dirtier, and more divided. amy: following an uproar over the comment, companies including land rover, ihop, pacific life insurance, ancestry.com, and "just for men" have pulled ads from carlson's show. fox news has accused left-wing groups of censoring carlson's program and noted that the

advertisers have only shifd their sponsorship to other fox news programs. "the new york times" reports facebook gave intrusive access to users' personal data to dozens of other silicon valley companies, exempting them from facebook's privacy rules even as it misled its users into thinking their data was protected. "the times" investigation found companies like microsoft, spotify, netflix were given access to far more facebook users' data than even cambridge analytica -- the british pr firm that collected the data of 87 million americans in a bid to sway the 2016 presidential election for donald trump. the data sharing appeared to violate terms of a 2011 consent agreement with the federal trade commission on user privacy. meanwhile, twitter says it's investigating whether state-sponsored hackers were able to gather personal data from its users. twitter says the hack cold be related to unusual traffic from ip addresses in china and saudi arabia.

the trump administration on tuesday issued a new rule banning the sale of bump stocks -- accessories that turn semiautomatic rifles like the ar-15 into fully automatic machine guns. the ban came more than a year after gunman stephen paddock used bump stocks to massacre 58 people while wounding 851 others at a concert in las vegas in . under the rule change, americans will have 90 days to destroy their bump stocks or to turn them in to aft agents. the lobby group gun owners of america promised it will sue to prevent the rule from taking effect. arizona governor doug ducey has named republican congressmember martha mcsally to serve out the remaining two years of the late u.s. senator john mccain's term. mcsally is a former air force pilot and colonel whose failed senate campaign earlier this year was backed by president trump. martha mcsally narrowly lost to democrat kyrsten sinema in november's election.

in southeast asia, a reuters investigation is found the burmese government has taking steps to make sure that 900,000 rohingya muslim refugees who fled to neighboring bangladesh will never return home. reuters cited satellite images that show hundreds of new houses are being built in villages where the rohingya once resided. refugee speaking from a sprawling encampment in bangladesh. our future is full of darkness. we are not sure whether we will be able to go back or not. if the government gives us back our rights, then we can go back. we have already left our country four times. it is not fair. we want to get back our rights as burmese citizens. we do not want to stay in this country. amy: in china, a new associated press investigation has found the chinese government forcing minority uighur muslims to work in manufacturing and food industries. much of the forced labor is

occurring inside vast internment camps in northwest xinjiang province, where up to 2 million muslims are being held captive. the ap found some of the forced labor went toward manufacturing products for the north carolina-based apparel company badger sportswear. in october, china acknowledged the existence of the uighur camps, saying they are part of efforts to counter extremism. they called him reeducation camps. and in germany, workers at amazon warehouses have gone out on strike during the busy christmas shopping season. this is amazon worker markus wolf. workingnt better conditions and respect for our work, which would mean extra money for vacations and christmas -- something we deserve. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. juan: and i'm juan gonzalez. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. we begin today's show with the mounting outrage over the death

of a seven-year-old indigenous guatemalan girl in border patrol custody, as lawmakers demand answers for the conditions that led jakelin caal maquin to die after being detained at the u.s.-mexico border. maquin died on december 8, two days after she and her father presented themselves at the u.s.-mexico border alongside 161 other central american asylum seekers. she had been held in detention for more than eight hours when she began to have seizures. border patrol agents brought the girl to the hospital after her body temperature spiked to over 105 degrees. the seven-year-old died of dehydration, shock, and liver failure at an el paso hospital less than 24 hours later. democratic congress member joaquin castro is now calling on the head of customs and border protection to resign for failing to properly disclose the girl's death. cbp chief kevin mcaleenan testified before congress three days after jakelin died in

border patrol custody but did not mention her death in his testimony. amy: a group of democratic lawmakers retraced jakelin's steps on tuesday, touring the lordsburg border patrol station in new mexico where she was held shortly before her death. this is houston congressmember al green. >> what i saw in this facility is unbelievable and unconscionable. allow animals not to be treated the way human beings are being treated in this facility. this is a humanitarian crisis that is being treated as a law enforcement circumstance. the humanitarian crisis has got to receive the attention that it merits, and i place the blame where it belongs, the tone and tenor of this starts at the top

stop the president of the united states of america. amy: that is houston congressmember al green. for more, we are joined by two guests. here in new york, we are joined by greg grandin, prize-winning author and professor of latin american history at new york university. his forthcoming book "the end of , the myth: from the frontier to the border wall in the mind of america." his latest piece in the nation, "who killed jakelin caal maquin at the u.s. border?" and in oakland, california, we are joined by clara long, senior researcher at human rights watch. she wrote an article earlier this week for the human rights watch blog on jakelin caal maquin's death. welcome both of you to democracy now! we're going to begin with you, clara. this story of what happened to this little indigenous guatemalan girl who traveled up from guatemala, mainly by bus with her dad, comes over the border, a remote area of new mexico, put in cbp custody, customs and border patrol yesterday.

she is put on this bus pulls very quickly, she gets extremely sick. she is vomiting. her father tells, according to reports, cbp. describe this journey as you understand it. all, ik you, first of think in independent and impartial outside investigation is urgently needed. what we have now are facts as they have been reported. as you say, she got on a bus. we understand that at that point, she began to vomit into spiked a very high fever -- and spiked a very high fever. the bus continued on its way wells border patrol station to another location in new mexico that was a bit closer to medical care. but even there, when she arrived, receiving -- received emergency care and was ultimately transferred via helicopter to a children's

essentially did not recover from this really serious health crisis. in this case, i don't think we yet know what has happened. the family has asked the media to stop speculating about the cause of death until an official autopsy report comes in. what has been shocking to me is the first statements from the government said that this little girl had not eaten for several days. the family said that is not true. foodad had access to during the journey. already keeport of in mind is the context. there is a great op-ed in "the daily times" yesterday by a former border patrol agent who said essentially that. we don't know what happened in found in aand with

research, but what we do know is this agency has a culture of indifference and neglect and of abuse of migrants. juan: clara long, you are right that we still do not know all of the facts of what happened here, but this'll issue of the fact that -- this whole issue of the fact this was an indigenous migrant who not only did not speak english, but his primary language was not even spanish. it was a mayan language. could you talk about the whole issue of the same time the government is attempting to interdict and detain all of these migrants, there are resources available to even be able to communicate with those who are coming over is severely lacking. >> right. that is a legitimate challenge, to be able to deal effectively with language diversity. what we have seen a lot in our research, especially about the process of asylum-seekers, the border patrol purports to

conduct very important interviews, like these health ,creenings or asylum screenings in spanish with people who do not speak that language will stop essentially, there is the regard for being able to communicate effectively with asylum-seekers. that is completely of a piece with what we understand is accepted practice in the agency, and it is usually problematic. amy: forget spanish for a minute. apparently, he was forced to sign on the border something verifying her health in english. >> correct. yeah. right. which is even that much farther afield from what is true communication. testimony that you mentioned that he did not comply with this legal obligation to inform congress of a death in custody, of a child no less, also said something very telling, which is the cbp

installations on the border are inappropriate for the humanitarian crisis that the united states is dealing with here. i think people should be taking exactly thinking about what the congressperson mention in the clip that started the segment. why should this little girl be in a jailike system in the first place? the united states can do it better. it can do it from a humanitarian perspective, receiving people with dignity, screening them, making sure they are well taken care of. it treating people like criminals will lead, unfortunately, to these kinds of outcomes. amy: you also have the head of congressfying before days after she died, but not mentioning that this little seven-year-old died in u.s. custody. >> right.

it seems very likely that that is in direct violation of the law. essentially, congress told dhs, we want to your about any debt in your custody within 24 hours. that did not happen in this case. me, reallys -- to serious questions about whether this agency is even under the rule of law. does it even -- what laws does it think applies to it and its operations? >> juan: i want to bring in greg grandin. your reaction when you heard of this case and the research that you have done in terms of guatemalan migration in general? >> i did a little research in the past on the region where jakelin was from. majors with one of the mayan groups in guatemala. if you wanted to a history of 20th century displacement caused

by political repression caused by the expansion of extractive capitalism caused by one after another failed washington policies, you can do no better than look at the history of this group. the end of the 19 century tended to be in the northern highlands of guatemala. the coming of cofee capitalism and its by u.s. banks began pushing and basically stealing, dispossessing massive amounts of land, turning them into agricultural laborers or pushing them down into the low lands, so the caribbean or to the rain forest where they settled new communities. and they are they ran into -- they got caught up in other forms of extractive capital -- logging and oil and african palm. this is a region that is caught in the vortex of global capitalism. a lot of the policies -- we could talk about the drug policy

, which has devastated these communities. and emphasis on african palm, biofuels have devastated these communities. up to the beginning of the 21st century, the expansion of the radius of migration. these are now people -- she was from a community that was recently created, a refugee thatnity in the low lands was fleeing from repression and violence from an earlier cycle of extraction and political terror. it is all caught up in the history that a lot of listeners of democracy now! will know, the overflow -- overthrow in 1954 in guatemala, cia's first full spectrum coup which has consequences on any number of levels, including lead into a 36 year civil war, genocide against mayan indians. and her people, her community for an enormous amount of violence in that genocide.

there are ways in which her death, the death of a seven euro girl, just turned seven a couple of days before she crossed the united states, kind of encapsulates this history, not of humanitarian crisis that is largelcaused by washington, not washington has to respond to it in a better way -- it is largely caused by not just -- and not just the trump and administration. this has deep, deep history in u.s. relations with central america. amy: i would like to turn to homeland security secretary kristjen nielsen's comments about jakelin's death. she was interviewed friday on "fox and friends." >> this is a sad example of the dangers of this journey. this family chose to cross illegally. what happened here was they were about 90 miles away from where we could process them. they came as such a large crowd that it took our border patrol folks a couple of times to get them all. we gave immediate care.

we will continue to look into the situation. again, i cannot stress how dangerous this journey is when migrants choose to come here illegally. amy: that is kristjen nielsen. this is repeated over and over by the trump administration saying, it is the families putting their children in danger by simply making this journey. talk about the extremity of what these families face. >> the trump administration is vile. this history predates the trump administration. the co-author of my piece that lotmentioned has learned a about this, the way since starting in the 1990's, pretty much concordant -- responding to the signing of nafta, the clinton administration began militarizing the border. forcing migrants into the desert. this was intentional. said we couldal use geography as an ally, meaning we could use the torments of the desert in order

-- as it turns to keep migrants out. .hat did not happen the desperation, largely caused by economic policies like nafta am a continued to force ofplaced hundreds thousands, millions. all of the militarization of the border did was raise the cause and ended seasonal migration. it changed the nature of migration. once you did not make it to the u.s., your captured. you could not go back and forth. you had to stay here. increasingly, the demographic profile of the markets change. you can with your family. rather than a worker would go work and come back and work. so in some ways, the military did not stop migration. it actually created a captive undocumented, vulnerable population of tens of millions of people in the united states. that is one aspect of this interlocking set of policies

that have just been catastrophic for north america. juan: clara long, human rights watch issued a report earlier this year talking about the inhumane jail-like conditions that many of these, especially the asylum-seekers, migrants who crossed the border or the asylum-seekers are being put in. could you talk about what you would see as a better solution given the significant numbers, the increases that have been occurring of migration? how would the government better be able to handle this come in your opinion, or should be able handle it? >> first, i would say the government has thrown in enormous amount of resources at controlling and cracking down, militarizing as greg said, the border. those resources could be better deployed. i have been as several of these border jails this year even. they are very cold, highly

air-conditioned. children are kept in concrete cells with basically nothing to sleep on many times, you know, inadequate access to clean water, cold, small amounts of ramen, often through that people cannot eat. this sort of feeling that they can't ask for anything or they will be punished. the abusive behavior by agents is widespread and systematic. i would add also, you have large groups like the one that jakelin crossed in that are perhaps increasingly crossing between ports of entry exactly because they cannot gethrough ports of entry. the policy started under the obama administration, metering people going through ports of entry. we have been hearing about this as congress before going down to tijuana to walk people across the border and ensure that cbp

accepts them. that should not be necessary. under u.s. law, there is a way to go to the port of entry and turn yourself in and ask for asylum. what the trump administration is set across the entire border is that it won't accept more than a couple of people a day. that has resulted in huge backlogs, which i caused people to cross increasingly remote and harsh places. a serious question about whether this is even legal, what the trump administration is doing. when democracy now! was on the border, we saw people that were there day after day after day. in the last few days, congress border.were on the they got maria up with her family, who famously was tear children theg her other day, one of the honduran immigrants. they had to take her in and demand hour after hour, help for something like seven to nine

hours before they could come in. an interesting fact, the federal judge in the washington, d.c., case who just delayed the sentencing for trump's former national security advisor michael flynn, has played a major role in challenging president trump's policies. emmet sullivan, african-american judge who was first named by reagan and george h.w. bush and then president clinton, expressed outrage when he learned the trump administration had used an airplane to spirit away a migrant el salvador and mother and her daughter who were fleeing persecution in el salvador. the woman was fleeing domestic violence. john sullivan ordered the government, turn that playing around either now or when it lands, turn the plane around and bring those people back to the united states. it is outrageous come he said. he even threatened to bring criminal intent proceedings

against then u.s. attorney general jeff sessions if she was not returned. greg grandin, the opposition has been going on for a long time, is the significance of what happening? >> first, the border patrol is a rogue agency, since it's foundation in the 1920's. arguably the most abusive agency and never had anything equivalent the cia had in the 1970's with a church committee report or rockabilly committee rockefeller committee report. this is the front line of some of the worst elements of u.s. culture, was for missy, racism. -- white supremacy, racism. there's a report in the 1970's and 1980's of abuses in the border patrol that are as bad or worse than anything we are reading about here. this is a long, long history of predates the trump administration. on the one level, it is enforcement, border enforcement,

and the brutality and the way that brutality and violence feeds into the nativism in this country, which has now found political expression in donald trump. it is more structural, economic and security policies that washington has been promoting -- especially since the 1990's economic liberalization, which has destroyed systems farming in these regions, the promotion of mining and other extractive industries, biofuels which have turned things like the valley , into warmy and live zones were people are fleeing. of the local as proportions. the mayor of the town where jakelin is from said in the last couple of months, he's the word "exodus." he said hundreds of him was have left. they cannot feed themselves. there's no money and no food. the border mention

patrol. yet the size of the border patrol continues to skyrocket. >> from carter through reagan through bush one and bush two and obama and clinton, the idea was you would get security first and have some kind of one-off amnesty. schumer agreeing that security was the number one issue. nobody has been talking about in amnesty now. now the bipartisan buy into the notion that the border has to be ofled is one of the sources the moral crisis in this country. amy: i want to end with ruben garcia, the director of the shelter in el paso, texas, where jakelin's father is now staying. garcia read from a statement issued by the attorney for jakelin's father. >> the family is seeking an objective and thorough investigation and are asking that investigators will assess this incident with a nationally recognized standards for the

arrest and custody of children. jakelin's father took care of sure she had sufficient food and water. she and her father sought asylum as soon as they crossed the border. she d not suered from lack of water or food prior to approaching the border. amy: that is ruben, speaking at fatherse where jakelin's took refuge. we will continue to follow the story. clara long, thank you for being with us, senior researcher at human rights watch. and greg grandin prize-winning , author and professor of latin american history at new york university. we will link to your piece in the nation, co-authored with elizabeth oglesby "who killed , jakelin caal maquin at the u.s. border?" we will speak with a harvard psychologist who started a petition demanding the media ramp-up coverage of the crisis like it does when americans are held hostage overseas.

stay with us. ♪ [music break]

amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez. juan: it's been more than four months since a judge ordered the trump administration to reunite all families that were separated at the u.s.-mexico border. but 140 children are still separated from their parents in u.s. custody. it is believed that 30 children will never be reunited with their parents. despite this, family separation is no longer in the daily headlines. we turn now to a group hoping campaign launched by a coalition of human rights groups and mental health professionals trying to change this by calling on major u.s. news media outlets to begin dramatizing the growing

number of days that migrant children have been forcibly separated from their families. the coalition, led by harvard psychologist dr. paula caplan, was inspired by the late cbs news anchor walter cronkite. during the 444-day iran hostage crisis that ended january 20, 1981, cronkite ended his broadcasts by stating how many days the 52 hostages had been held. is, monday,e wa it january 19, 19 81, the 443rd day of captivity for the american hostages in iran. this is walter cronkite, good night. amy: well, for more, we are joined by dr. paula caplan, who leads the coalition that created -- asking the media to ramp-up coverage of family separation. she is a clinical and research psychologist associated method was instituted harvard university. dr. caplan, welcome to democracy now! explain what you are demanding in this petition.

>> we are demanding that the media all over this country keep this huge problem from this ongoing trauma and emotional violence against all of these children and their parents by separating them, we want to keep that in the public eye. the story of this little girl who died is tragic, but it is sort of like this will shootings. it gets to the point where if we don't have daily reminders of what is going on, then people forget about it. it just goes out of their minds. i am a grandmother. i have five grandchildren. and when i imagine what would it be like for any of these children suddenly to be taken and from their parents whether or not you can expend of them in words what is happening in their language, the fact is that when you are ripped away from your parents, the world is not safe for you anymore, it does not make sense, you don't know what is happening, if you will ever see your parents

again, you don't know why this is happening. did you do something wrong? did your parents? the trauma being inflicted on these children and their parents thatsting every signaled a one of these children is kept art from their families. the trauma is compounded. it takes a long, long time to get children to be able to start trusting their own perceptions, to start believing again if they are reunited with their parents -- which some of them never will be, apparently. it takes a long time for them to start trusting parents their love them and the separation had nothing to do with the absence of any wishes or any love on their parents part. this is vicious. it is a venomous thing to do to children and their parents. we heard the president of another country had made this kind of order to separate children from their parents and

to keep them apart for the most political of reasons, we would say this is some sort of dictator that has ice water in their veins, who is not thinking about the human cost. professor kaplan, this whole issue of the use of psychotropic drugs, not only on the children, but also on the unaccompanied minors who are being held in detention as a class-action suit while earlier this year on the government's use of drugs to basically modify the behavior of these children? >> this is unconscionable. it has been shown over and over through really solid research that psychotropic drugs are dangerous. they always help a few people, but overwhelmingly, more often, they cause harm. when you give these psychotropic

drugs to children, to babies, to children, to babies, to teenagers whose brains are still developing, whose bodies are still developing, the drug companies will even tell you when they are honest -- which they sometimes have been about the effects of these drugs, they will tell you that in an individual case, there is no way to predict what kinds of effects this is going to have. so this is driving young people -- drugging young people to control them. this is a totally unethical, immoral, unprofessional use of psychotropic drugs. and at the best of times, with other people, that sort of thing needs to be done only after everything else has been tried and only under very careful supervision. and the fact these people are being injected with apparently little supervision and for no decent reason is really

unimaginably horrible. that has to stop. i am so glad to hear about this lawsuit. it is so easy. it is like with the school shootings. you hear one and, oh, there's another one. at first you are horrified. howmany people were killed? terrifying. after a while, it disappears from needed coverage because it keeps happening. so a dozen human rights organizations and organizations focusing on trauma and emotional and physical violence have come together with a number of dozens of individuals, signatories. we issued this press release on human rights day calling for the media to do what walter cronkite did. that had tremendous impact. remember whenh to he was doing this. every night you could not stop thinking about these people who

were being held hostage. we need for the media to take this very small step in keeping these concerns and these dangers to the well-being, to the emotions and the trust of these their parents. we need to keep it in front of the public. amy: i don't think most people realize there are still 140 kids not reunited with their parents or family members. ivanka trump was recently interviewed. she said the low point of the presidency of her father, she felt for her, was when the children were separated from their parents. well, they still are. 140 still are. i want to go to a human rights watch video that features our previous guest clara long and dads who were deported while the children remain here.

>> what we have known for decades is that there are three kinds of faces of separation. the first phase is the state of protest. we see these children inconsolably weeping and screaming for their parents. we have that haunting audio and visual from the border, where is this hope that if ice cream or weep, mom and dad will come back to me. we hear this so audibly. of next phase is the phase despair. the reports of these children not playing, not running around, not doing the things that we would expect toddlers and children to do, this kind of with drawn, collapsing in on themselves. the third is the phase of detachment. this we understand is almost kind of this aloofness that even if a child appears to be doing well, that does not necessarily correlate with what they are

actually experiencing inside. even when reunification happens, there is so much going on in this moment that the child is both filled with joy and anger and fear. the parent is filled with relief and guilt. in the same moment, there's so much happening for both parent and child. the trajectory of that affects these children. it is not just the moment of separation, but we know this carries on throughout their lives. amy: actually, that was dana sinopoli, psychologist who signed on to the petition who also penned an open letter condemning the trump administration's practice of separating children from their parents at the border. we interviewed her at the height of the crisis. now i want to turn to this video produced by human rights watch with justice in motion about parents who were deported with their kids sti there. suffering right now. my son haslready beein detentn for thremonths.

he is a baby. he is a little kid. he turned eight years old and there, locked up like a criminal. taken at yum arizona,nd i don't know where she habeen since then. are wried because she is all alone. we don't know how she is doing, she is o nobody knows. >> wn you say ey're separated,hey go inta system of shelters or detention centers. vary dely.s and impoantly, wknow the haveeen veryeries allegatis of abu and mistrement, puing sexu assat, physicaabuse, a inapopriate e of ychotrop drugs.

amy: you have been listening to a human rights video about parents separated from their children's. , as youds, dr. caplan wrap up? >> we have a petition online called "who is keeping track: a call for continuous media attention on the separation of children from refugee parents? we help everyone watching this will go & the petition and we hope that democracy now! and other media people will keep reporting on this, will have this regular clock. amy: the key is getting information and the government using information about how many children they're still holding. dr. paula caplan, thank you for being with us, clinical and research ecologist. when we come back in 30 seconds, cambodians by the dozens are

being deported after being in this country for decades. stay with us. ♪ [music break] amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez. juan: we end today's show looking at the sharp rise in deportations of cambodian immigrants from the united states, including many who have been living in the u.s. for decades after fleeing war, u.s. bombings, and genocide under the khmer rouge. on monday, an omni air flight departed from el paso, texas, with 36 cambodians who were -- on board.

they were deported to the cambodian capital phnom penh. attorneys believe it to be the largest deportation flight to cambodia yet under the trump administration. amy: deportations of cambodian immigrants are at an all-time high with nearly 150 this year, compared to 29 in 2017. these numbers are on pace to continue rising, with reported plans to remove 200 cambodians with deportation orders each year. one man, 41-year-old sear un from california, was scheduled to be on monday's flight but his deportation order was stayed friday and he remains in the country for now. joining us from berkeley, california is sear un's lawyer. , kevin lo is a staff attorney in the immigrant rights program at asian americans advancing justice-asian law caucus. he has been working with cambodians living in the u.s. who are facing deportation, and lay out this for us.

>> these people have been in the united states for many decades. they mostly came here in the 1980's at the refugee crisis in the 1970's. they were all resettled by the u.s.. at that time, u.s. resettlement of refugees was terrible. cambodians and other southeast asians were essentially abandoned in neighborhoods across the u.s. they were ignored, under resourced, left to fend for themselves. as a result of terrifying childhood growing up in these areas -- for example, one client even mentioned to me that when he was young, his dad would put him and his two sisters in the bathtub. he would tell them it was just a game they would play. it was really to avoid all of the drive-by shootings that would happen in the night. after childhoods in these temperaments, a lot of people basically were arrested in the streets, tag as gang members unfairly. after serving their sentences, ice would try to support them.

came many of these folks here as children. essentially, this is the only country that they have known, dreamers, many of the latin american youth that are here. they don't know the country their being deported to, right? >> that's right. almost all of the client of spoken to come at this point we have spoken to hundreds of cambodians who are here in the u.s.. the majority of them, if they were born in cambodia committee were born in a province that borders thailand. it is kind of a frightening thing that everyone is from there because the fact is they were right by thailand, they were able to escape to safety to refugee camps along the border. when you talk to the other half of the people, you find out they were actually born in the refugee camps themselves will stop some of my clients had been in the refugee camps for so long, that they have siblings born in each of the camps they

pass through. the relator excepted to the u.s., like i said, in the mid-1980's. kevin lo, tell us about your client. tell us about sear un. >> he and his family fled to cambodia on the back of a truck. he has this terrifying story where he says he was crying so much that his parents were in this impossible situation of possibly leaving him behind in the jungle because his crying would alert the guards that were guarding the border. luckily, someone had a little bit of rice. they passed it to him. he ate it and stops crying long enough for them to get across the border. they then spent enough years in andhhai refugee camp philippine refugee camp. he had brothers born in each

camp. he continues to live in california near san diego. in his youth, he had only one conviction. he was 19. he was driving around aimlessly of themends when two suggested out of boredom they would rob a house. sear un parked the car. his friends broke into the home, stole atb, stole a few other items, and then for his trouble, for being essentially the getaway driver, he was given $100 as a share of the spoils and $25 in gas money. he was sentenced to serve one year in county jail for residential burglary. he opted to take a felony charge because he wanted his friend who already had a strike to avoid a second one. juan: kevin, could you talk about the changes from administration to administration and how the cambodians slated for deportation have been

handled, whether it was under george bush, president obama, and now trump? especially this whole issue of getting agreement with the receiver nations to accept them? >> sure, i will start with the repatriation agreements. in order to deport someone out of the u.s., you cannot unilaterally decide to do so. you have to get the receiving country to accept them. the way countries do this is through repatriation agreements, which are essentially memorandums of understanding where the countries agree this is how we will process the people, these are the criteria. for cambodia in the u.s., they sign their agreement in 2002. prior to that, cambodians like sear who were ordered removed could actually not be sent to cambodia. they were released on orders of supervision and allowed to live their lives here. sear and many other cambodian americans here in the united states have been out for decades. they have faithfully checked in with ice every year or maybe every six months. ofterms of the escalation

their deportations, it has been pretty drastic. under obama, they were already deporting -- i give to give a sense of the figures come under obama, every year there were deported between 12 to 20 cambodians. at that rate, people were able to find time and basically with 12 to 20 people, nonprofits and advocacy's could speak with and assist the people. as soon as donald trump came to power, the trumpet ministration issued visa sanctions against cambodia. we initially thought this would not affect things that much. within a month, so by october 2017, ice had picked up around 100 cambodians and were basically preparing them for deportation. are is kind of the cycle we currently in. since october 2017, we have seen and aids every four month pickup between 50 to 100 people all across the country. amy: finally, sear un -- it

sounds dramatic, right through till monday, when dozens of cambodians were deported. how did you end up preventing him from getting on that plane? >> right, so we had initially met sear in september when he was picked up. the's situations to not be so dramatic, but because of how ice works and the immigration courts work, he only managed to get an emergency stay for him granted on friday. this was after i had filed the stay may be a month and a half before the flight. we knew everything about the flight, like when it would leave and land. on a daily basis, i would call the board of immigration appeals where we were trying to reopen sear un's order and leave them at voicemail on a daily basis. the last week before he was scheduled to leave from his family and only home behind, i called the port of immigration appeals on an hourly basis. i am not a pushy person, but i

would call them on the hour just to remind them that this father of two and soon to be three was about to be sent away. we actually even had to file a federal lawsuit in the southern district of california in order to get ice to force the bia to act on the decision. it ended up being a dramatic moment because they had already transferred my client out of the facility toe arizona. we wanted them to stop the flight from arizona to texas, but he board of the flight. midway on the flight, the ice officers received any know, took sear and told him, we're not sure what happened, but you are not going to get off itexas. situationn a weird where he watched around 30 something of his countrymen essentially get off the plane in tears, ready for deportation, and he had no idea what was going on. amy: where is he now? >> he is currently in arizona and we're hoping he will be released today. it is alsois daughter's fourth

birthday today. amy: kevin lo, thank you for being with us with the immigrant rights program at asian americans advancing justice. democracy now! has an immediate job opening. go to democracynow.org. [captioning made possible by democracy now!]

hello. welcome to nhk "newsline." the slow drip of allegations against ousted nissan's chairman continues to leak out. carlos ghosn has been arrested on allegations of underreporting his salary by tens of millions of dollars. now french media report executives s considered payin part of his compensation through another company. the plan was never carried out. they reported a former