Child Slave Labor Is Against the Law... even in a concentration camp.

[DDySiegs]

Note: I originally posted this entry in the DU lounge - It belongs in general discussion, where I among posting it.

The following is the beginning of a post on Daily Kos:

There are legal avenues to explore in regard to the treatment of children in the Trump concentration camps. (Note: I didn’t say death camps, I said concentration camps. There’s a difference.)

Now, what follows may sound like pettifoggery or a ridiculous distraction from the core inhumanity of our modern GOP… BUT, courts like to see a clearcut violation of a law. What follows are grounds for what look to me like instantaneous court orders, if lawyers in the states impacted can find plaintiffs amongst the children.


These grounds concern the use of minor children as unpaid labor in day care, but keep reading: this really is useful stuff.

1. SLAVERY:

Is the employment as childcare workers truly voluntary and not coerced? Those in favor of closing their eyes to an abuse are able to find all sorts of example of “voluntary” labor, but courts have (in better times) been pretty strict about the unequal power situations. If a child is brought from their home country to the US, ripped from their parents arms, incarcerated, and then told by a large armed man that they should take care of an even younger child… is this voluntary labor?

Oddly enough, to the best of my knowledge only the state of Colorado has outright banned penal slave labor (a citizens’ initiative won in 2018). BUT at present the DOJ claims that these children are NOT being punished for any crime. (I’m not even sure the DOJ admits that they’re being incarcerated indefinitely.) They’re just being held separated from their parents because it’s not legal to incarcerate a child with an adult accused of a crime. Thus, the kids are innocent of any crime under US law, and NON-penal slave labor was pretty comprehensively abolished by the 13th Amendment shortly after the Great War of Southern Treason.

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The children in the camps have not been duly convicted of any crime. They cannot be forced to work.

Read the rest at the following link; https://m.dailykos.com/stories/1871526

[Karadeniz]

1. Thanks...it hadn't occurred to me that the babysitting responsibilities imposed older

children constituted labor, but it should be so classified.