The problem with the concept of "human rights" is that they operate like any other human social contract. They do not represent incontrovertible laws of nature; they represent normative oughts projected onto reality that must be enforced (or not) by humans themselves. In short, "human rights" exist only if we decide they do and they are not rights, they are privileges we grant to ourselves or others. Their application is thus inevitably uneven, discriminatory, and patchwork.
As global systems undergo greater destabilization, the application of human rights will become more and more uneven. Who does and doesn't deserve the privileges that human rights bestow will be reduced in scope. The adjusted scope gets based on in-group/out-group power dynamics, with marginalized groups being the first to have the privileges revoked. This story is a case example of this in action.
However, this is the United States we're talking about. While we're hardly immune from the destabilizing forces of this century, we're pretty darned well off. There's simply no excuse for us to fail in providing the privileges that human rights grant to all within our borders. So that means there's something else going on here. This isn't a case of the nation being unable to grant human rights privileges to these people due to social, ecological, and economic hardship as a country. Would have to dig into this more to find the full story, and frankly I don't trust Yahoo News as a reputable source. However, I'd place a solid bet on it relating to the fact that the same people who complain about "handouts" to the needy are perfectly okay giving substantially larger handouts to the wealthy and corporations... *cough*
