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Mistreatment of immigrants deeply ingrained in US establishment: Analyst

Political analyst Daniel Patrick Welch

The mistreatment of undocumented migrants by the administration of US President Donald Trump is part of a general policy deeply ingrained in the American establishment, an American political analyst and writer says.

Daniel Patrick Welch made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Friday while responding to a statement by Trump that migrants should not choose traveling to America if they are unhappy with the conditions that await them at detention centers.

“The problem is that his narcissism mask -- the important fact -- or it allows the so-called opposition to mask the important fact that it’s not about Trump that these are the policies, this is America; he is just making it worse and much more visible,” Welch said.

The analyst pointed to US slavery, genocide, the internment of Japanese during World War ll, Jim Crow laws and mass incarcerations as a “systemic violence that has spanned the world for as long as the US has asserted its existence.”

Welch also referred to cages built for migrants during former President Barack Obama as “the most finely-tuned exploitation machine the world has ever known,” and said Obama handed the keys over to Trump who had the audacity to fill those cages.

Over the past few weeks, Trump has come under fire from Democratic lawmakers and civil rights activists who paid visits to some detention centers along the southern border with Mexico, where migrants are locked up in overcrowded buildings and suffer from inadequate access to food, water and other basic commodities.

"If Illegal Immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detentions centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!" Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.             

"Our Border Patrol people are not hospital workers, doctors or nurses," the Republican president said earlier in another tweet. "Great job by Border Patrol, above and beyond. Many of these illegals (sic) aliens are living far better now than where they ... came from, and in far safer conditions."  

Moreover, the US Department of Homeland Security's inspector general released photos of detention centers in Texas' Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday that were crammed with twice as many people as they were meant to hold.

The Trump administration has insisted on pushing ahead with its harsh anti-immigration policies, which includes keeping thousands of asylum seekers in custody while they pursued their cases. 

Trump has made his hard-line stance on immigration an integral part of his presidency and has promised to build a wall along the US-Mexican border to curb the flow of migrants from Mexico and Central America.                                                                             


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