Blame the Kid

Over the last few days, the saga a 15 year old girl, Jakadrien Turner, made national headlines. At 14, Jakadrien ran away from home after her parents split up and her grandfather passed away. Apparently, the stress of the two events was too much for this young girl to handle and she ran away from her home in Dallas and found herself in Houston.

The details of what happened next are still fuzzy; however, many in the blogosphere have already made up their minds as to what happened and who’s at fault. And predictably, the nation is split between those that are compassionate, understanding, and outraged at U.S. law enforcement, and those that want to paint the girl as a free-loading drug addict, welfare queen, from yet another broken Black family.

According to one CNN article, after Jakadrien went missing, Facebook postings indicated the girl started working at a DJ club under an assumed name. Clearly, the girl wanted to get away from her home and start making a life for herself as an adult. This story should sounds familiar to millions of American families.

The National Runaway Switchboard reports, “Between 1.6 and 2.8 million youth run away in a year. Youth aged 12-17 are at higher risk from homelessness than adults. 47% of runaway/homeless youth indicated that conflict between them and their parent or guardian was a major problem. Over 50% of the youth in shelters and on the streets reported that their parents either told them to leave or knew they were leaving but did not care. 80% of runaway and homeless girls reported having ever been sexually or physically abused,”

We don’t know if Jakadrien was ever subjected to any physical or sexual abuse at home, nor should we jump to that conclusion. I do know that since her disappearance her parents and grandparents desperately worked endlessly with the police to help find their child. We also know Jakadrien worked equally hard to hide from her folks, including changing her name in order to present herself as a 22 year old woman.

Even at age 45, I can remember back to when I was 14 years old and running away from home. I spent one night sleeping in the balcony of a local church. While there was some physical abuse in my family (in the name of “tough love”), it was never bad enough for me to want to completely run away at 14. However, by the time I was 18, I walked away from home and never looked back.

Believe it or not, there is a big difference between the brains of a 14 year old, a 18 year old, and a 21 year old. Recent studies on adolescent show teen brains are going through some of the greatest changes in their lives during this period. The following two paragraphs are from a report jointly conducted by Cornel University and ACT for Youth Upstate Center for Excellence:

“Until recently most scientists believed that the major “wiring” of the brain was completed by as early as three years of age and that the brain was fully mature by the age of 10 or 12. New findings show that the greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for functions such as self-control, judgment, emotions, and organization occur between puberty and adulthood. This may help to explain certain teenage behavior that adults can find mystifying, such as poor decision-making, recklessness, and emotional outbursts.

 … In a study conducted at Boston’s McLean Hospital, psychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd and colleagues showed pictures of people wearing fearful expressions to teenagers between the ages of 11 and 17 while the teens had their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She found that compared to adults the teens’ frontal lobes (the seat of goal-oriented rational thinking) are less active and their amygdala (a structure in the temporal lobe that is involved in discriminating fear and other emotions) is more active. The teens often misread facial expressions, with those under the age of 14 more often seeing sadness or anger or confusion instead of fear.”

From a growing mountain of studies on teens, and troubled teens in particular, we know that 14 year olds are not capable of making the same rational decisions as adults. That is why teenagers can’t be held legally responsible for contracts and why we have developed an entirely separate legal system for juveniles.

As stated earlier, what happened next in Jakadrien’s case is still a mystery. However, we do know that she was picked up for shoplifting and provided police with her false identity. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Jakadrien, that name belonged to a 22 year old illegal immigrant from Colombia, who just so happened to have warrants out for her arrest.

Houston police then handed Jakadrien over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who fingerprinted Jakadrien but didn’t get a match. Nonetheless, Jakadrien, was then moved in mass with other ICE detainees through the system, and before she could bat her eyes found herself in Colombia.

Political Science professor at Northwestern University, Jacqueline Stevens explains  how quickly this can happen:

“Often in these situations they have these group hearings where they tell everybody you’re going to be deported… Everything is really quick, even if you understand English you wouldn’t understand what is going on. If she were in that situation as a 14-year-old she would be herded through like cattle and not have a chance to talk to the judge about her situation.”

Soon after Jakadrien found herself deported to Colombia, a country in which she didn’t speak the language and knew nothing of the culture.  However, this creative young kid in no time founds herself working in a Bogotá call center and partying with the locals. Next we know, Houston police finds her posting on Facebook, where she admits to smoking marijuana and being pregnant,  just Jakadrien turned 15 years old.

Now that Jakadrien has returned to the U.S, the blame game is on. In reviewing this article, I looked at the comment threads of both right-wing and left-wing leaning websites. The line between who is at fault by the two political sides are fairly distinctive. For the most part, the left-wing is blaming ICE and other law enforcement agencies for not doing their job. Essentially arguing that once ICE discovered the fingerprints didn’t match the 22 year old Colombian woman, they needed to follow up. Had they, they would have discovered the girl didn’t speak Spanish and was completely ignorant of the history and culture of Colombia.

On the other hand, the right-wing blames the child and her family. Researching this article, I’ve read dozens of comments which have called Jakadrien everything from a drug addict, thief and a whore, (Remember we are talking about a 14 year old girl) to those that claim her whole story was set up by her “lazy” “welfare” reliant grandmother (who just so happens to have a full time job). According to some right-wing theories, the family sent Jakadrien into the ICE system just to see if she would be deported, in order to then sue the U.S. government and sell books. The whole conspiracy theory can be found on dozens of sites, including some of the so called “liberal” news sites like MSNBC. Just check the comment thread on this link. You will have to open the hidden comments to find this conspiracy theory, along with other racist accusations and remarks.

Professor Jacqueline Stevens has actually studied the problem of the illegal detention and deportation of U.S. citizens and says in recent years the problem has increased. The following is an excerpt from an interview Stevens gave with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of  DemocracyNow! Stevens provides us with the statistical data to better understand what happened to Jakadrien:

“I did research in the southern Arizona area to look at the rate at which people who had been detained in that area were found—had their deportation orders terminated by an immigration judge because they were determined to be U.S. citizens. And I found that between 2006 and 2008, 82 out of the over 8,000—the 8,007, I think—files that I considered showed these cases that were terminated because the people were found to be U.S. citizens. That area has 10 percent of the nation’s detainees. And so, I think it’s, you know, reasonable on the basis of that research and additional research, including interviews with immigration judges, ICE agents and people who have actually been deported, to extrapolate that figure. There was also a study that was done by the New York City Bar Association in 2009, and they found that 8 percent of the people that they interviewed in the Varick detention center appeared to be U.S. citizens. So, I think there’s a systemic problem in this country of ICE detaining and, in addition, deporting U.S. citizens”.

There are those that are quick to blame Jakadrien, her parents, and grandparents for this unfortunate ordeal. They seem to show no understanding of what it is like to raise a teenager. They are quick to attack her and her family, labeling them a bunch of lazy losers, who have fantastically designed this elaborate plan to deport their 14 year old daughter in order to push a book deal and sue the government. There is absolutely no basis for such angry race laden claims. However, that is how some will justify the governments failings in the case of Jakadrien Turner.

They will blame the parents because the kid ran away, even through millions of kids from all sorts of families (good or bad) run away. Even worse, they will blame the kid, whose brain is not even fully formed and may very well be running away from a bad family. They will blame her for shoplifting and lying about her name and age. And in doing so, they will be ignoring the facts that children actually lack “self-control, judgment and emotions” which explains “certain teenage behavior that adults can find mystifying, such as poor decision-making, recklessness, and emotional outbursts.”

In addition, those that wish to blame the kid will ignore that fact that, according to Professor Stevens, 10% of the nation’s immigration detainees are actually U.S. citizens, that can sometime languish in U.S. immigration prisons for months and in some cases years, we can see a “systemic problem in this country,”

Who is to blame? Unlike some, I will not put too much blame on a troubled 14 year old girl. Yes she ran away from home. At the time, her family was going through a divorce and death. In Jakadrien’s case, we have no evidence of the sexual or physical abuse in the family which is common in most runaways. We do know the family worked tirelessly to find their lost daughter. We also, in spite of the false and ugly accusations about the parents and grandparents, the family is not a lazy family that relies on welfare. To me, those accusations seem completely unfounded and appear to be racially motivated.

On the other hand, we also do not know why ICE did not follow-up and do a further background check on Jakadrien, after the prints didn’t match. It might be argued that this was just an isolated incident where one poor girl simply slipped through the cracks. However, considering Stevens’ evidence, deporting American citizens has become a systemic problem. Perhaps the one good thing to come out of Jakadrien’s story, other than she being returned to the U.S. is the fact that her story is highlighting ICE’s egregious deportion of American citizens.

Tim Donnelly: Racist or Rule of Law Man?

Tim Donnelly - photo by Kevin Scanlan

Originally published in the Daily Censored for Project Censored

Nationwide, Republicans have elected extremists, whose radical agenda is now becoming apparent. It should come as no surprise that the most radical of Republicans are those that garnered Tea Party support.

In California, one such radical extremist is newly elected Assemblyman of the 59 District, Tim Donnelly. Donnelly’s history should have been a tell tale sign of his extremism. In the early 90’s, Donnelly and his wife, a woman of Filipino heritage, moved to Twin Peaks, California. Twin Peaks is a beautiful area located just outside Lake Arrowhead. At the time, the community was mostly white. However, over the next decade or so the Latino student population doubled, to approximately 20 percent.

According to an in-depth article on Donnelly by the LA Weekly, when an 11 year old Latino boy allegedly sexually harassed a white girl of his same age, Donnelly became so outraged he began spreading malicious rumors about the boy and his family. Using his internet site, Donnelly wrote of how the boy “molested” and terrorized at least 11 girls. Donnelly claimed these details came from the Education Department report, when in fact the unsubstantiated rumors came from the girl’s mother. Donnelly also claimed the boy’s parents were illegal immigrants, although that too was never proved.

Soon after, Donnelly heard on talk radio Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen Project, call for volunteers to help monitor the Arizona boarder for illegal immigrants. Donnelly found his calling. Within days of hearing Gilchrist, Donnelly had packed up his guns, kissed his wife goodbye, and headed off to Tombstone.

Donnelly quickly befriended Gilchrist. Donnelly decided that the best way for him to help the Minutemen would be put himself in front of the cameras and reporters. He continued to spin his embellished tales about Latinos raping women. He even began to insert himself into the fabricated stories. Here for example is how Donnelly described one night out in the Arizona desert:

“I thought the wailings we heard at night were the coyotes barking at the moon,” he told The Washington Times. “I didn’t know until later that those sounds were the cries of women being raped in the Mexican desert, some less than 100 yards away from the border. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. It’s something you never forget.”

However, Donnelly wasn’t even there. He had originally heard the story from another Minuteman supporter who gave no evidence to support such claims. Nonetheless, Donnelly became a bit of a Minuteman darling. In California, he formed his own Minuteman chapter, which has grown to be the largest chapter in the country.

During these years, Donnelly’s mentor, Jim Gilchrist, had befriended Shawna Forde. To help raise money for the Minutemen, Forde and two accomplices planned an armed robbery of a Latino household which Forde believed was selling drugs. Two Minutemen, pretending to be U.S. Marshalls shot up the front door of the house, broke in, and demanded $12,000. After taking the contents of the family lockbox, Forde’s accomplices shot and killed the man and his 9 year old daughter.

The Minutemen movement has a well documented history of racism. In September, 2008, David Niewert, published an investigative piece on the Minutemen, financed by The Nation Investigative Fund and published in The American Prospect. Niewert points out that while Gilchrist and company have spoken out against the racist elements in their movements, they continue to flirt with known white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups:

“While Considering that the Minutemen were largely built on the sort of nativist appeals long favored by racist organizations, it’s no surprise that racist and white-supremacist elements have been entwined with the movement since its inception. Gilchrist and Simcox both made loud noises about weeding out racist members, though in reality their “background checks” were mostly shams and covert white supremacists were silently tolerated. But even the stigma against overt racism appears to be disappearing among their organizations’ successors. One border-watch group, headed by a former Minuteman Project official named Laine Lawless, went so far as to indulge in an e-mail exchange with a neo-Nazi organization offering tips on how to harass Latinos the old-fashioned way: steal from them, beat them up, mistreat their children, make death threats. This behavior has started to infect the main Minutemen organizations themselves. The MMP’s official Las Vegas chapter, Americans4America, recently co-hosted an anti-immigration strategy session with officials from the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens.”

The Council of Conservative Citizens have also been welcomed to Tea Party gatherings, alongside the Koch bothers funded Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party Express rallies. And so has Tim Donnelly. In this video, provided by LA Weekly, Donnelly stands in front of a Tea Party Express bus and promises if elected, “I am not going there to reach across the aisle and make friends. I am going there to reach across the aisle to the enemies of freedom and annihilate them and pound them into the ground and take back our power…I’m sorry, I don’t worship at the altar of global warming and rabid environmentalism…We don’t stop until Americans are back in power.”

Donnelly has warned on his internet site, “It is not a stretch to picture a revolt in Los Angeles, whose population is comprised of over 50 percent illegal aliens.” He has also written: “The facts are incontrovertible that allowing an illegal invasion of the United States will destroy the American Southwest, and very probably wipe out the freedoms we American Christians enjoy, as Muslim Extremists blend in with the so-called ‘innocent’ illegal aliens, and eventually proselytize them.” For these comments, and others, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has listed Donnelly an extremist with a dangerous ideology. SPLC describes Donnelly as, “an antigovernment “Patriot” who grossly exaggerates the criminality of undocumented immigrants (who studies have shown are on average much less criminal than native-born Americans).”

As a newly elected assemblyman, Donnelly’s first order of business has been to introduce an Arizona-style immigration bill. According to the Sacramento Bee:

“Donnelly’s bill would, among other things:

• Ban public officials and agencies from restricting the enforcement of immigration laws or the sharing of a person’s immigration status.

• Make it a misdemeanor to be present on public or private land while in violation of federal immigration laws. The crime would escalate to a felony if the suspect is in possession of dangerous drugs or lethal weapons.

• Prohibit employers from knowingly or intentionally employing an illegal immigrant.

• Require employers to verify the employment eligibility of employees through a federal program, called E-Verify.

• Make it a misdemeanor to transport, harbor, shelter or conceal a person that you know is an illegal immigrant.

• Make it a misdemeanor to encourage or induce someone to enter the state illegally.”

Donnelly’s bill just died in committee. However he has vowed to reintroduce it. Donnelly has already caused a bit of a stir amongst our states Latino population, and those that support loosening up current immigration laws. Some have pointed to Donnelly’s and the Minuteman movement’s affiliations to known racist organizations. They support their position by pointing to Donnelly’s own statements, where he has embellished stories in order to drum up fear and false impressions about Latinos and Muslims.

Donnelly, on the other hand, says he is only concerned with the rule of law, as he interprets it. Donnelly often points to his Filipino wife as proof he is not a racist. It is clear Donnelly believes in his “rule of law” rhetoric. Whether racism plays a part in Donnelly’s world view or not is hard to tell. His own words and actions seem to indicate that racism and bigotry does play a part. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that some of the groups he has associated with have openly expressed dangerous, racist ideology. And that fact, by itself, should tell people something about Donnelly’s motivations.

 

UPDATE:

April 7, 2011;

Yesterday, I published a brief editorial on California’s Tea Party/Minuteman assemblyman Tim Donnelly.  The article links Donnelly to both the Tea Party and the Minuteman Project, the vigilante boarder patrol organization. The article also questions the racist and bigoted ties to the two organizations.

Today I received an email from Jim Gilchrist:

“There they go again.”  This column is so full of untruths and misinformation I can understand why this abominable propaganda never made it to the mainstream media.

Laine Lawless runs her own group.  She was not part of the Minuteman Project.
Nor was Shawna Forde.

Finally, Tim Donnelly has been married for about 20 years to an Asian woman.  Don’t lie to the public with innuendos referring to him as a racist.

Neither you, nor Niewart, are credible sources of truth.  After all, the first casualty of propaganda is the truth.

Sincerely Yours,

Jim Gilchrist, President, The Minuteman Project

In Gilchrist’s email, he makes three claims which he somehow believes proves one of my sources, David Niewart, writing for The Nation Investigative Fund, is not credible, and therefore, neither and I.

So, let’s take a look at Gilchrist’s three claims.

Claim # 1:

JG: “Laine Lawless runs her own group.  She was not part of the Minuteman Project.”

DW: Quoting Niewart, “One border-watch group, headed by a former Minuteman Project official named Laine Lawless,”

Niewart writes in on his own blog: “The e-mail from Lawless, who was also an original member of Chris Simcox’s vigilante militia before it morphed into the Minuteman Project in early 2005, detailed 11 suggestions for ways to harass and terrorize undocumented immigrants, including robbery and “beating up illegals” as they leave their workplace.”

Niewart goes on to state: “Lawless was featured in numerous media reports on the first Minuteman Project campaign in April 2005, during which she patrolled side-by-side with Minuteman vice-president Carmen Mercer. Lawless also traveled to Texas to join the Texas Minutemen in October, when she was quoted in The Austin Chronicle saying she gets an “intellectual and political orgasm” from spying on pro-immigration groups. In that interview, she accused one pro-immigration activist of inserting chants of “White Power!” into an audiotape of Minuteman rallies to discredit the movement.”

That fact is, while Gilchrist may have cut off his personal ties with Lawless in June of 2005 over her emails, Lawless became, and still is an active part of the vigilante boarder patrol movement. However, it is incorrect for him to claim, “She was not part of the Minuteman Project.”  She was part of the campaigns surrounding the early months of the Minuteman Project.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/04/oh-those-merry-minutemen.html

Claim # 2:

JG: “Nor was Shawna Forde.”

DW:  I wrote in the article: “Jim Gilchrist, had befriended Shawna Forde. To help raise money for the Minutemen, Forde and two accomplices planned an armed robbery of a Latino household which Forde believed was selling drugs.”

Now, here is a conservative organization called American’s for Legal Immigration. The organization  warned on their website, in February of last year, about their members  associating with Gilchrist, due to his connection with Forde and his “continued bizarre and damaging behavior.” Here is an extended excerpt from their website:

“Jim Gilchrist’s Border Operations Manager charged with murder including the death of a 9 year old girl.  Please notify all media and candidate contacts that Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project Border Ops Director is in jail awaiting trial.

Allied Leaders, Thank you for your previous understanding and response to our advisory not to circulate the suspicious story and photos released by Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project officer, Shawna Forde. After we advised you about problems with Shawna’s credibility, story, and photos most groups in our movement stopped promoting her claims, except for Shawna’s own group and Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

Shawna Forde is the MMP ‘Border Operations Organizer’ for Jim Gilchrist according to claims we found online and appears to be a member of his inner circle, along with Steve Eichler and the few other activists who remain with MMP, despite the groups beleaguered reputation and Gilchrist’s continued bizarre and damaging behavior…”

Claim # 3:

JG: Finally, Tim Donnelly has been married for about 20 years to an Asian woman.

DW:  I wrote, Donnelly and his wife, a woman of Filipino heritage, moved to Twin Peaks, California.” And, “Donnelly often points to his Filipino wife as proof he is not a racist…. Whether racism plays a part in Donnelly’s world view or not is hard to tell.”

I also point out Donnelly’s history of embellishing  the facts and his own statements which lead many people to believe, right or wrongly, he may have some bigoted and racist tendencies. Just because someone has no racist views towards “Asians,” doesn’t mean they might not share  racist views towards Blacks or Latinos. Racism is often localized to one specific group. Racism is a complex problem, but this fact  is not that difficult to understand.