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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

Sorry about that, it is just that ICE were probably breaking the law when they engaged in child separation. The parent is asking if it couldn’t simply be the case that evil things would rather be illegal then up to a company. Unfortunately we demonstrably live in a world where evil things that are probably illegal are still done by a government sanction agencies. Child separation is the thing that they do which demonstrates this. That is why I moved the benchmark.

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As I understand it, the reason for child separation is that they can't certify that the adult traveling with them is their actual parent, and given that child trafficking is a reality and much worse than potentially being temporarily separated from your parent, I can't see what other solution is at the table ?

There is also no such policy for legal asylum seekers. It’s easy to avoid.

> ICE were probably breaking the law when they engaged in child separation.

Didn't the Ninth Circuit federal court order ICE to follow this practice? See the Flores Consent Decree.

It doesn't matter if the court says it's okay - it can still be a crime internationally (which it quite obviously is in this case).

I don't see the link between:

> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

and:

"children and their parents must be housed together when incarcerated"

That clause (perhaps the entire UN declaration of human rights) seems incredibly ambiguous. Reading the whole declaration seems like it, perhaps, means protection of the specific enumerated rights of part 16 sections 1/2 which seems basically like the right for anyone to marry or not anyone they want and for that person to terminate the marriage when they choose.

ICE didn’t just separate the family units during incarceration, they also failed to reunify them on release. They also forcibly sterilized other asylum seekers which is a whole another human rights violation. The USA has also signed—though not ratified—the 1989 Declaration of the Rights of the Child which has more explicit protections. I believe this was confirmed in US courts as they quickly issued an injunction of this practice.

There is also the issue of why they are incarcerated in the first place. They have committed no crime, migration and seeking refuge is protected under international law.

The UN universal declaration of human rights is written to be easily accessible and understood by the general public. And given that it was written 75 years ago I think they did a good job. I actually recommend everyone to read it entirely in your native language, as it has probably been translated into it and will only take a few minutes. A beautiful document indeed.

The important thing here though is not how rigorously defined these rights are, but the spirit of the law is clearly saying that the family is a fundamental unit of society. Separating the family unit is a failure to uphold that principal.

Is there evidence for that forced sterilisation claim? I found this Guardian story but it only details an allegation, which hardly cuts it for such a serious crime: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/17/ice-hy...

I must admit it sounds like the stuff of paranoid fantasy.

Update: this from Channel 4 seems reasonably calm and balance. I had to hunt through a lot of clickbaity headlines to find it: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-were-mass-...

> I must admit it sounds like the stuff of paranoid fantasy.

For a country with a documented history of disrespect for bodily autonomy it seems entirely in line with expected behaviour to me.

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