ICE Border separations

[Emma Byrne]

I know it's man made rather than natural, but I keep reading media coverage of the many people trying to help parents locate their children after separation :

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/19/families-border-separations-trump-immigration-policy

'"What we’re finding is that there is no mechanism, no policy, for communicating or even finding the parents once the child has been separated,” said Megan McKenna, Kind’s senior director of communications and community engagement.

'McKenna said when parents and children were separated, they each got individual case numbers that their mother, father, daughter or son did not have access to.

'On the chance that these numbers would be sequential, Kind advocates started putting educated guesses into the case tracking system in the hopes it would lead them to parents they were seeking.

'“You just play around: maybe the child’s number ends in five, so the adult’s number could end in six,” McKenna said. “So you put that in the system and see if you get a hit. Or it could be the other way around." That tactic has worked in some instances, but not often enough to be a solution.'

It seems as though person finder would be an incredibly useful tool, helping reunite families.

[katie.murp...@gmail.com]

I agree, this is the right tool. We need to the immigration lawyers to use this technology. I’ve found contact info for lawyers through some news stories.

I think we need to organize volunteers to do outreach and upload info, if that’s possible. I think the kids info is confidential, but the parents are a start.

[Lee S]

So, last I checked personfinder does not (by design) have a lot of support for moderation or security.  For short lived disasters the priority is on ease of use and rapid spread of information.  In the past this has become an issue over the course of a disaster as the 4chans of the world decide to amuse themselves at the expense of people in crisis, but you could usually count on a couple of weeks of good usage before that started.

Unfortunately, in this situation, there will likely be a need for longer term usage, combined with a high likelihood of *deliberate* targeting by bad actors of all stripes.  Unless we have a way to run the system in a reduced access mode, it would be better to work with a system that has been designed for this use case.

[SKYSCAN]

For the scale and worldwide emotional opposition to children being separated from parents in a wholesale fashion during a peacetime effort to deal with illegal immigration is more Ike a hidden threat (try to enter, your children will pay the price) and deterrant.

In a non-political, factual manner to list a way for reunification of families (also being cautious not to put children in more danger by someone other than family claiming guardianship—requiring some basic proof or even DNA or some better idea I can’t describe but also doesn’t hinder process of bringing families together.

Actor George Takai related it to the Japanese internment
camps set up throughout the upper mid-west at least they kept families together.

But I somehow doubt this will happen here on
personfinder, it’s been used for only a few times barely worth mentioning compared to several events that were a lost chance to help rather verify it functioned for something really important...which is...?