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Kidnapper-in-chief Donald Trump continued to—surprise!—lie in his defense of his administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy that kidnapped thousands of migrant children from parents at the southern border, claiming in that hot mess of a 60 Minutes interview that the policy "was ... the same as the Obama law. You know, Obama had the same thing."
That, friends, is bullshit. For the millionth time, this was a policy authorized by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, and a policy so universally reviled not just here, but around the world, that Trump was forced to walk it back in an Oval Office publicity stunt. It was all smoke and mirrors, because family separation remains a crisis.
Now administration officials are reportedly thinking of reviving this policy that was supposedly rescinded but never really went away, with Trump declining to confirm anything to 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl, saying that “you can't say yes or no. What I can say is this: There are consequences from coming into a country, namely our country, illegally." But apparently no consequences to continuing to violate a federal judge’s reunification order.
In reality, what he’s really looking at is Republicans having nothing else to run on this November except anti-immigrant fearmongering orchestrated by the ghoulish Stephen Miller. Plus, for these lowlives, reviving family separation—or at least putting out the idea of reviving family separation—isn’t just election strategy to rile up the base, Trump officials like Miller would do it because they like the misery of tearing brown kids from their screaming mothers.
Trump also used this interview to defend family separation as a deterrent, claiming that “when you allow the parents to stay together … then what happens is people are gonna pour into our country.” More lies, because, for one, “family detention and separation don’t deter migrants from coming,” Vox’s Dara Lind reports.
What really is happening is that Trump has a record number of migrant kids in detention, almost all of them unaccompanied minors. Many have fled violence and other traumatic situations in their home countries, and are oftentimes trying to reunite with family members in the U.S. Meanwhile, a new Amnesty International report has found that officials separated more families than they admitted to, while other asylum seekers were blocked entirely from entering the U.S., in violation of our law.
There is indeed an immigration crisis happening, but it’s not children or vulnerable families. The immigration crisis is toddlers being forced to appear in court alone. The immigration crisis is officials trying to coerce a detained five-year-old little girl into signing away her rights. The immigration crisis is hundreds of migrant youth being shipped, under the cover of darkness, to a prison camp in the Texas desert. The immigration crisis is private companies being paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the federal government to abuse children. The immigration crisis is some separated children never seeing their parents again.
Those are our immigration crises, and they’ll continue unless we do something about it this November.
