Tag: Trump family separation policy

U.S. to begin reuniting migrant families separated under ‘cruel’ Trump policy, DHS secretary says

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Four migrant parents who were separated from their children at the U.S. border by the Trump administration and sent home alone will be allowed to return to the United States this week, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Monday.

The reunions will start a process expected to stretch on for months and possibly years as separated parents are ferried back to the United States from around the world.

More than 1,000 families remain separated, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The parents were deported alone, mostly to Central America, in 2017 or 2018. Their children have since grown up with relatives or other guardians across the United States. Continue reading.

Trump Cabinet officials voted in 2018 White House meeting to separate migrant children, say officials

“If we don’t enforce this, it is the end of our country as we know it,” said Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to officials present at a White House meeting.

WASHINGTON — In early May 2018, after weeks of phone calls and private meetings, 11 of the president’s most senior advisers were called to the White House Situation Room, where they were asked, by a show-of-hands vote, to decide the fate of thousands of migrant parents and their children, according to two officials who were there.

President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller led the meeting, and, according to the two officials, he was angry at what he saw as defiance by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

It had been nearly a month since Jeff Sessions, then the attorney general, had launched the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, announcing that every immigrant who crossed the U.S. border illegally would be prosecuted, including parents with small children. But so far, U.S. border agents had not begun separating parents from their children to put the plan into action, and Miller, the architect of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was furious about the delay. Continue reading.

ACLU says 1,500 more migrant children were taken from parents by the Trump administration

Washington Post logoThe American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Trump administration separated 1,556 more immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border than has previously been disclosed to the public.

The majority of the children were ages 12 and under, including more than 200 considered “tender age” because they were under 5 years old.

The ACLU said the Justice Department disclosed the final tally — which is in addition to the more than 2,700 children known to have been separated last year — hours before a federal court deadline to identify all children separated since mid-2017, the year President Trump took office.

View the complete October 24 article by Maria Sacchetti on The Washington Post website here.

Doctor Says Detention Centers For Migrant Children Resemble ‘Torture Facilities’

The conditions at the Trump administration’s detention centers for immigrant children are so awful that one doctor compared them to “torture facilities,” according to an ABC News report.

Dolly Lucio Sevier, a board-certified physician, visited two so-called baby jails to check on the condition of hundreds of infants, toddlers, and children being detained. Lucio Sevier, along with lawyers representing the children, inspected one of the facilities after a flu outbreak sent five infants to the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital.

All the children showed signs of trauma, Lucio Sevier concluded. When they arrived, they found children sleeping on cold concrete floors, bright lights shining 24 hours a day, and unsanitary conditions. For example, teens said they had no access to wash their hands, and mothers were not able to wash bottles for their infants.

View the complete June 24 article by Dan Desai Martin on the National Memo website here.

Enraged Trump attacks Obama for separating children: ‘I’m the one that stopped it’

President Donald Trump charged his predecessor with separating families and putting children in cages, but insisted he was the one who stopped it.

The President is lying, as the AP and ABC News have previously reported.

The Trump administration, under Stephen Miller, created the “zero tolerance” policy of separating families at the border and caging children with the direct intention of deterring people from Central America attempting to come to the United States. He called it a “simple decision.”

View the complete April 9 article by David Badash of the New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

GOP fears Trump return to family separations

President Trump will be picking a new fight with Senate Republicans if he decides to renew his past policy of separating families detained at the border as a way of stopping the wave of immigrants.

Trump is expected to select a hard-liner to replace Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was ousted on Sunday — reportedly after she resisted returning to the policies that led to children being taken from their parents at the border.

The family separations created deep unrest among congressional Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, and Senate GOP sources warn that if Trump taps a hard-liner to replace Nielsen, it could lead to a brutal confirmation battle.

View the complete April 8 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

The Trump Administration Has Deported 471 Parents Separated From Their Kids At The Border

The American Civil Liberties Union has been leading an effort to contact deported parents to try to reunify them with their children.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed in a court filing Wednesday that the government deported 471 migrant parents separated from their children at the US–Mexico border without first giving them the option to reunify.

It was the first concrete number from the government about the number of parents deported without their children during the spike in family separations in 2018. In court filings last summer, the Justice Department indicated the number was upward of 400, but the numbers continued to change as new information came in and as reunifications began under a federal court order.

More than eight months after a judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunify separated families, information has continued to trickle in about the scope and aftermath of family separations. More than 2,800 children were separated from a parent crossing the border and placed in US custody, and it was clear early on that hundreds of those kids had a parent who had been deported. In Wednesday’s filing, the government offered an exact number.

View the complete March 6 article by Zoe Tillman on the BuzzFeed website here.

Jeff Merkley requests FBI perjury investigation into Kirstjen Nielsen

Sen. Jeff Merkley is requesting that the FBI open a perjury investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

At issue is testimony before Congress about family separations at border

Sen. Jeff Merkley is requesting that the FBI open a perjury investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, based on testimony she gave to Congress in December on family separations at the southern border.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in December, Nielsen stated “I’m not a liar, we’ve never had a policy for family separation.”

Memos made public Thursday show that officials from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security were exploring family separation polices as a deterrent for illegal immigrants a full year before that testimony.

 

DNC on Report that Thousands More Children Were Separated From Their Families at the Border Than Previously Reported

DNC Chair Tom Perez released the following statement after the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Inspector General reported that the Trump administration likely separated thousands more children from their families than previously believed:

“The cruelty and incompetence of this administration knows no bounds. Just when we thought the family separation nightmare at the border couldn’t get any worse, we find out that Trump has been lying about the full scope of the humanitarian disaster he created. What will it take for the rest of the Republican Party to wake up and take a stand against this president’s inhumane policies? Democrats believe that families belong together, and we will keep fighting to reunite all children who have been separated from their parents.”

Trump’s false claim that Obama had the same family separation policy

Administration officials have pointed to “the law” as the reason why undocumented children are being separated from their parents. But there’s no such law. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“Obama separated . . . . . . . . children from parents, as did Bush etc., because that is the policy and law. I tried to keep them together but the problem is, when you do that, vast numbers of additional people storm the Border. So with Obama seperation is fine, but with Trump it’s not. Fake 60 Minutes!”

— President Trump, in a pair of tweets, Nov. 25, 2018

“Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries.”

— Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 26, 2018

“They had to use [tear gas on migrants at the border] because they were being rushed by some very tough people. And they used tear gas.”

— Trump, remarks at the White House, Nov. 26, 2018

It’s not the first time Trump tries to minimize the scope of his family separations at the border by claiming that President Barack Obama had the same policy. This claim and its variations have been roundly debunked. We gave them Four Pinocchios in June. But they’re back now, and so are we. Continue reading “Trump’s false claim that Obama had the same family separation policy”