“‘The asylum program is a scam,’ Trump said. ‘Some of the roughest people you’ve ever seen—people that look like they should be fighting for the UFC. They read a little page given by lawyers that are all over the place—you know, lawyers. They tell them what to say. You look at this guy and say, ‘Wow, that’s a tough cookie!’ He paused, gesturing like he was reading from a statement and launching into his best big-galoot voice. ‘I…am…very…fearful for my life. I am very worried that I will be accosted if I am sent back home.’ He stopped to raise his right index finger. ‘No, no: He’ll do the accosting.’ The crowd laughed, ate it up. ‘Asylum’—and here he tried out a whiny, bleeding-heart voice—’Oh, give him asylum! He’s afraid! He’s afraid! We don’t love the fact that he has tattoos on his face. That’s not a good sign. We don’t love the fact that he’s carrying the flag of Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador, only to say he’s petrified to be in his country.’ He stopped again, one more time, and held his arms out wide. ‘To confront this border crisis, I declared a national emergency.'” MoJo with a look at how Trump really talks about the border and what his policies have done to asylum programs. Donald Trump took a broken system and turned it into a machine of unchecked cruelty.

+ We now send asylum seekers to refugee camps. You can hate it. You can like it. But like family separations, you can’t deny it. This is America right now. The NYT’s By Caitlin Dickerson: Inside the Refugee Camp on America’s Doorstep. “The members of this displaced community requested refuge in the United States but were sent back into Mexico, and told to wait. They came there after unique tragedies: violent assaults, oppressive extortions, murdered loved ones. They are bound together by the one thing they share in common — having nowhere else to go.”