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You know it’s bad when conservative host Hugh Hewitt—who has called Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric “very, very sophisticated” and his stupid wall “beautiful”—at first seems to come off as sort of a voice of reason in the room, but then you realize it’s because he and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III are the only two people in the room.
In an interview with America’s most racist Keebler elf, Hewitt said he was “disturbed” by the administration’s policy tearing kids from the arms of immigrant parents at the U.S./Mexico border, saying that “I don’t think children should be separated from biological parents at any age, but especially if they’re infants and toddlers”:
HH: Is it absolutely necessary, General, to separate parents from children when they are detained or apprehended at the border?
JS: Yes. What’s happening is we are having more people coming bringing children with them entering between the ports of entry, between the ports of entry illegally, and they’re not, you cannot give them immunity. That’s an offense. We believe every person that enters the country illegally like that should be prosecuted. And you can’t be giving immunity to people who bring children with them recklessly and improperly and illegally. They should never do that. And so those children are being well taken care of. Within 72 hours, they’re taken to the Health and Human Services to be sure they’re properly cared for. And those persons will have, the adults will be prosecuted like the law requires.
First of all, petitioning for asylum at a U.S. port of entry is a legal act, enshrined in U.S. law, yet the Trump administration has horrifically dismissed this as a “Democrat loopholes.” There is no law forcing Trump and Sessions to separate families. This is their policy, period, and one they’ve chosen to enact as punishment.
Sessions also claimed kids are sent to an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facility “within 72 hours,” but NBC News reports that “as of Sunday, nearly 300 of the 550 children currently in custody at U.S. border stations had spent more than 72 hours there, the time limit for immigrants of any age to be held in the government's temporary facilities.” The reason being, ORR facilities are nearing capacity with detained kids.
Hewitt continued, asking if it was “necessary to separate the children.” Sessions replied that “well, most are not infants. Most are teenagers, although we do have a number of younger ones now.” But numerous lawsuits and accounts from immigrant rights advocates on the ground have detailed family separations involving young kids and babies as young as 53 weeks old.
Hewitt also asked Sessions if he’s visited any of these facilities, which he said he hadn’t, but added that “I believe for the most part they’re well taken care of.” Let’s check in with the 10-year-old Texas girl with cerebral palsy stalked and detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after emergency surgery last year:
An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) tells Broadly that government officials have now twice blocked 10-year-old Rosamaria Hernandez from two follow-up medical visits with her primary doctor and surgeon following her emergency gallbladder surgery last week. Rosamaria’s doctors recommended that she be discharged to relatives and allowed to recover at home after the procedure, but Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents ignored the advice of medical professionals and have instead kept the girl, who has cerebral palsy, locked up in a Texas detention center for unaccompanied minors. The child’s “doctors, lawyers, and family have maintained that her health and safety are in danger at the facility where she's been detained … the government has yet to comply with multiple requests for the child's release.”
The border stations kids are initially being held in are already bad enough. “Meant only as the first stop for children detained at the border,” NBC News reports, they “often lack adequate bedding or separate sleeping rooms for children.” Additionally, adults can also be held in these cells. "It would place these children at risk of harm if they are housed with adults without the proper privacy that children should have,” said Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).
“Sometimes, we take them to places from the border to Denver, to Chicago, to Islip, New York,” Sessions continued. “We transport them to the place they want to go. Many of the children are taken in that fashion. It’s really an amazing thing.” Folks. “Amazing,” he actually said. Was it “amazing” when a 7-year-old Congolese girl was torn, screaming, from her mom last year?
“Ms. L” had passed her initial asylum screening after fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo last year, but rather than detain them together, officials separated them, detaining the mother in California and “S.S” in Illinois. “When the officers separated them,” the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) said at the time, “Ms. L. could hear her daughter in the next room screaming that she did not want to be taken away from her mother.”
This is his policy, and even the white supremacist in chief seems to have some recognization about how barbaric it is, as evidenced by his ongoing attempts to pin it on Democrats. But this policy is owned by the Trump administration, and it is the disgrace of our nation.