Campaign Action
More than 80 days past a federal judge’s reunification order, the children are still not with their parents. Monday, October 15, marks 81 days since Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to reunite the thousands of migrant children who were kidnapped from the arms of parents at the southern border, yet 136 kids continue to remain under U.S. custody.
Of those 136 kids, three are age 5 or under, according to the most recent numbers available from the administration. The parents of 96 kids have already been deported. Of those children, two are age 5 or under. It may have fallen off the front pages of newspapers, but family separation remains a crisis.
This, much like the record number of migrant children overall jailed by the U.S., is a crisis of the administration’s own making. Trump officials chose to make family separation at the border official policy, contrary to Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen’s numerous—and shameless—lies. During a peaceful protest in front of her home last week, advocates chanted “families belong together” in front of a cot holding stuffed animals.
“Every night Sec. Nielsen gets to go to sleep with her family, in the safety of her home,” tweeted Helen Brosnan of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, one of the demonstrators at the action. “You know who goes to sleep alone, traumatized, and scared? Children ripped from their families at the border. How does she sleep at night? We showed up at her house to make sure she doesn’t.”
We need a Democratic Congress that will hold Kirstjen Nielsen accountable. Help GOTV by signing up to write letters to unlikely voters in key districts.