Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley reportedly “expressed alarm” at a claim from Department of Homeland Security officials that migrants are supposedly “renting babies” in order to ease their crossing into the U.S., so naturally, as one of the top Republicans in the Senate, he asked for evidence and perhaps more information about the well-being and whereabouts of these children, right? Nah.
“I can't believe that this actually happened, that the people down there in Central America or Mexico are renting babies to get across the border, then sending the babies back and renting them again to come back across the border,” Grassley told Politico, parroting DHS officials’ claim, and then repeating it in the second half of his sentence for good measure just in case we didn’t get it the first time.
“Grassley,” Politico continued, “said DHS officials made the claim at the GOP’s weekly Steering Committee lunch. He said he did not request additional evidence but expressed alarm if it is true.” As noted, this schtick about “fake families” with “recycled kids” largely started with former DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen and has been repeated since by the Trump administration. But as attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted, “As far as I can tell DOJ hasn't filed a single trafficking indictment related to so-called ‘fake families,’ despite DHS very public yelling about this alleged crisis for months now.”
Officials could easily erase any doubts by showing the receipts and turning any and all evidence of these so-called fake families over to Congress and to the public, but that would undermine an agency that already has a history of pushing anti-immigrant propaganda, wouldn’t it? There is no evidence to show that “fake families” are an epidemic, but officials are using the claims they created as justification to DNA test families at the border anyway. An ICE official claimed that “the information collected in the DNA test will not be stored or shared,” but ICE isn’t exactly the most trustworthy agency.