Full Program

Part 1

We begin with what appears to be a cynical move by President Trump disguised as an act of compassion in reversing his policy of separating children from their parents at the southern border. The former Commissioner of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service under President Clinton, Doris Meissner, joins us to discuss how Trump’s executive order is designed to do away with the consent decree known as the Flores agreement which Doris signed in 1997 that protects immigrant children in federal detention, placing them in the least restrictive conditions for no more than 20 days with guarantees of food, water, medical treatment in facilities subject to inspection. Working on two tracks through the courts to undo the Flores agreement and via the Republican bills in the House which Trump has loaded up with money for his wall, it is unclear whether Trump will have the children join their parents in jails or the parents join their children in detention. But what is emerging is the grim prospect of indefinite detention for these families and a mendacious raid on the treasury for politically-connected contactors to build prisons and detention facilities for growing numbers escaping violence in Central America who could instead be given ankle monitors and be housed with relatives pending their appearance in immigration court.

Part 2

Then we examine our immigration prison system about to be gifted with a bonanza of pork-barrel by Trump and speak with Christina Fialho, the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Freedom for Immigrants, a non-profit advocacy group seeking to abolish immigration detention. She joins us to discuss her article at The Los Angeles Times “Don’t stop with family separation. End the whole immigration prison system” and describe conditions inside the existing facilities that are about to be overrun with more detainees held for indefinite periods.

Part 3

Then finally we look into plans by the Trump Administration to merge the Department of Labor with the Department of Education and speak with Seth Harris, a Distinguished Scholar at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations who served over four years as Deputy U.S. Secretary of Labor and six months as Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor. We discuss what Seth describes as a “solution in search of a problem” and Minority Chair of the Senate Education Committee Senator Patty Murray’s response that Mick Mulvaney’s plan is “unrealistic, unhelpful and futile”.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing outrage at the Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of separating children from their immigrant parents at the southern border who have made a dangerous journey to the U.S. from Central America seeking political asylum. We first speak with Doctor Julie Linton a pediatrician in Winston-Salem North Carolina who is the Co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Immigrant Health Special Interest Group and the lead author of the 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics policy on detention of immigrant children. She joins us to discuss the medical issues involved in ripping young children away from their mothers in terms of the consequences for mental health and childhood development. We also examine the effects of detention on the physical health of these immigrant children since many of these make-shift facilities have been hidden from the public and the press as plans are underway to create tent cities on the grounds of Federal Prisons, some in the desert where temperatures soar above 100 degrees.

Part 2

Then we look further into the medical aspects of childhood trauma the infliction of which has become national policy as a result of the cynical pandering by Trump, Sessions, Kelly and Miller to their anti-immigrant base with Trump tweeting out an outrageous charge that the Democrats don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants like MS-13 to pour into and infest our country because they are seen as potential voters. Dr. Dawn Garzon-Maaks, a clinical professor at the Washington State University College of Nursing and President of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners joins us to discuss how these traumatized infants and children crying out for their mothers cannot be comforted by those holding them in detention, adding insult to the injury being done to them by Trump in the name of the American people.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Ken Bensinger, a journalist with The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and BuzzFeed News whose latest book, just out is, “Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World's Biggest Sports Scandal”. With the World Cup underway in Russia we discuss Ken’s article at The New York Times “Did Russia Steal the World Cup” and investigate the corrupt deal which got Russia the World Cup in the first place and the role of Christopher Steel of the infamous Steele dossier in bringing down the criminal reign of FIFA boss Sepp Blatter.