This tweet from the AP’s Michael Biesecker is pretty bad, right?
BREAKING @AP: Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells. https://t.co/ffw0bBcYrH
— Michael Biesecker (@mbieseck) June 21, 2018
Unfortunately for the left, this article is about a lawsuit against the shelter that includes allegations of abuse of kids that happened during the Obama administration:
Um…
…the facility opened in 2007.
And the primary allegations are from…2016.
A year BEFORE Trump became President.
Just pointing this out. https://t.co/Xc9LIfsNCG
— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) June 21, 2018
Some excerpts (emphasis ours):
The complaint filed by the nonprofit Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs recounts the story of an unnamed 17-year-old Mexican citizen apprehended at the southern border. The teen fled an abusive father and violence fueled by drug cartels to seek asylum in the United States in 2015.
After stops at facilities in Texas and New York, he was transferred to Shenandoah in April 2016 and diagnosed during an initial screening by a psychologist with three mental disorders, including depression. Besides weekly sessions speaking with a counselor, the lawsuit alleges the teen has received no further mental health treatment, such as medications that might help regulate his moods and behavior.
The shelter is denying any wrongdoing, but the AP found a separate lawsuit from 2016 — again, during the Obama administration — where a guard was fired for allegedly punching two kids. The guard sued the shelter and claimed he was fired because he was black, but the AP is using that lawsuit in the story to back up the claims of the new lawsuit (emphasis ours):
Though lawyers for Shenandoah responded with court filings denying all wrongdoing, information contained in a separate 2016 lawsuit appears to support some of the information contained in the recent abuse complaints.
In a wrongful termination lawsuit filed against the Shenandoah center, a former staff member said he worked in unit called “Alpha Pod” where immigrant minors were held, “including those with psychological and mental issues and those who tend to fight more frequently.”
The guard, Trenton Farris, who denied claims that he punched two children, sued the justice center alleging he was wrongly targeted for firing because he is black. Farris said most staff members at the facility are white, and that two white staff members involved in the incident over which he was fired went unpunished.
Lawyers for the center denied the former guard’s claims, and the case was settled in January.
Not only that, but this article looks like a retread of another AP article from December 2017 on this very same lawsuit:
“BREAKING” @mbieseck? pic.twitter.com/2n2KBYtdJu
— LB (@beyondreasdoubt) June 21, 2018
This guy is the worst:
This is why the media is the worst. This guy tweets this headline and of course it gets picked up. The allegations are horrific. However, no one reads the articles so it will be completely lost that it’s not something that just happened pic.twitter.com/yaMfZZVOVk
— LB (@beyondreasdoubt) June 21, 2018
But it appears not many people actually read the article…
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell even compared the detention center to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war:
The spirit of Abu Ghraib lives. In Virginia. https://t.co/zVo4ZT5KfF
— Lawrence O'Donnell (@Lawrence) June 21, 2018
Kathy Griffin should ask Obama about it if she’s so concerned:
Yes, LOCK OBAMA UP!
LOL. Even journalism professors won’t read the article:
Gitmo Jr. Good Lord. https://t.co/VAy8NIsqGc
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) June 21, 2018
The only dates in the article are for the Obama administration, mind you, but sure, blame Trump:
https://twitter.com/jdakwar/status/1009724994128097280
And there are many, many more blue-checks doing this:
And of course, they're torturing the kids too. https://t.co/99YPqCLhCt
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) June 21, 2018
This is what happens when your entire political narrative is grounded in the idea that some lives are worth more than others. It always led here, to brown kids in shackles.
This is America now. This is who we are. Don’t look away. https://t.co/lyJ504hZbR
— Derek Johnson (@derekjGZ) June 21, 2018
This is not over by a longshot. https://t.co/1nd2NboquV
— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) June 21, 2018
We’ll see if there are any corrections from any of these folks.
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