Tag: family separation

Trump digs in on false claim that he stopped Obama’s family separation policy

“President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it, you know it, we all know it. I didn’t have — I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation. … President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it, okay?”

— President Trump, in remarks at the Oval Office, April 9, 2019

This is a Four Pinocchio claim, yet Trump keeps repeating it when he’s pressed on family separations.

Repetition can’t change reality. There is simply no comparison between Trump’s family separation policy and the border enforcement actions of the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

The Facts

The Obama administration rejected a plan for family separations, according to Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top adviser for immigration. The Trump administration operated a pilot program for family separations in the El Paso area beginning in mid-2017.

View the complete April 10 article by Salvador Rizzo on The Washington Post website here.

House Democrats will subpoena Trump administration over family separations

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday voted to subpoena the Trump administration over documents related to the policy of separating children from families at the southern border.

This will be the first subpoena issued since Democrats took control of the House and promised to hold President Trump accountable. The vote was bipartisan, with Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) voting with all the Democrats.

Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said the committee has been asking the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services (HHS) for information for seven months.

View the complete February 26 article by Nathaniel Weixel on The Hill website here.

THE LATEST: Trump Defends Family Separation Policy & Confirms He’s Considering Doing It Again

This weekend, Trump defended his family separation policy that led to at least 2,500 children being forcibly separated from their families. Trump also confirmed that he is considering a new policy to tear even more families apart. Here’s the latest:

Trump confirmed that he is considering a new family separation policy.

Washington Post: “President Trump confirmed Saturday that he is considering a new family separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border because he believes the administration’s earlier move to separate migrant children from parents was an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.”

Continue reading “THE LATEST: Trump Defends Family Separation Policy & Confirms He’s Considering Doing It Again”

THE LATEST: Families Suffer Continued Trauma From Trump’s ‘Unconscionable’ Family Separation

Hundreds of children remain separated from their families because of Trump’s cruel policy. Even after families are reunited, they continue to suffer from trauma. That is why the United Nations’ human rights chief recently denounced Trump’s family separation as a human rights violation and called it “unconscionable.” Here’s the latest:

The UN’s top human rights official denounced Trump’s family separation policy as a human rights violation and called it “unconscionable.”

The Hill: “The United Nations’s new top human rights official is calling the Trump administration’s family separation policy ‘unconscionable.’ Michelle Bachelet in her first speech on Monday denounced the practice as a human rights violation.” Continue reading “THE LATEST: Families Suffer Continued Trauma From Trump’s ‘Unconscionable’ Family Separation”

Want to Know More About … Family Separation

Mika Brzezinski: “Ivanka Trump Says That It Was A Low Point For Her When The Separations Of Children From Their Family Were Happening Under Her Father’s Administration, Through Her Father’s Policy.”

[Morning Joe, MSNBC, 8/3/18; VIDEO]

John Heilmann: “But Also A Low Point For The Administration, As To Suggest That It’s Not Like It’s Something That Happened To The Administration As Opposed To Something That The Administration Inflicted On These Children. A Low Point For The Administration. Like The Weather.” Continue reading “Want to Know More About … Family Separation”

‘Deleted’ families: What went wrong with Trump’s family-separation effort

The following article by Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein and Maria Sacchetti was posted on the Washington Post website July 28, 2018:

Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody after the Trump administration scrambled to reunite separated families under a court-imposed deadline. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunify migrant families separated at the border, the government’s cleanup crews faced an immediate problem.

They weren’t sure who the families were, let alone what to call them.

Customs and Border Protection databases had categories for “family units,” and “unaccompanied alien children” who arrive without parents. They did not have a distinct classification for more than 2,600 children who had been taken from their families and placed in government shelters.

View the complete article here.

‘This is it for you. You’re fu**ed.’: Inside Trump’s abuse of migrant kids at an old Walmart

The following article by Alan Pyke was posted on the ThinkProgress.org website July 23, 2018:

From holding cells nicknamed the “hielera” or icebox, to the supposedly friendlier housing at “Casa Padre,” migrant kids describe a hellscape of cruel guards, sickening food, and psychological torture.

A security guard checks cars at the entrance to Casa Padre, a former Walmart, now a center for unaccompanied immigrant children. Over 2,300 immigrant children wereseparated from their parents. Credit:  Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Children are being cussed out by guards and subsisting on meager rations of beans, crackers, and tortillas that leave them feeling ill in a converted Walmart in south Texas.

The new reports of harsh physical conditions, humiliating psychological abuse, and basic deprivation come from children held at the so-called “Casa Padre” facility in Brownsville, Texas, almost a month after President Donald Trump took symbolic steps to quash public outcry over his family separation policy aimed at punishing and deterring migrants.

The children and parents who swore out hundreds of affidavits to attorneys appealing the United States government’s treatment of migrants have mostly fled violence in Central America. The conditions in which they find themselves today in the world’s richest and most powerful country shock the conscience — and almost certainly violate the conditions of the legal settlement that’s bound American officials in treatment of minors in immigration detention for decades, lawyers say.

View the complete article here.