Donald Trump’s decision to rip children from the arms of immigrant parents at the U.S./Mexico border has been met with nearly universal condemnation—“this is a moral and legal abomination,” wrote one conservative columnist—so of course, because everything bad is always someone else’s fault, he blamed Democrats for his administration’s actions:
In one of several misleading tweets during the holiday weekend, Trump pushed Democrats to change a “horrible law” that the president said mandated separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. But there is no law specifically requiring the government to take such action, and it’s also the policies of his own administration that have caused the family separation that advocacy groups and Democrats say is a crisis.
Some might call “misleading” a “lie,” and in this case the lie is Trump trying to pin barbaric actions on a nonexistent law. This policy of taking children away from their parents and then rubbing salt on the wounds by prosecuting them is the creation of the Trump administration, and absolutely no one else despite his frantic tweeting:
As he detailed the “zero-tolerance” policy during a pair of appearances May 7, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stressed: “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”
“My decision has been that anyone who breaks the law will be prosecuted,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in Senate testimony earlier this month. “If you’re a parent, or you’re a single person, or you happen to have a family, if you cross between the ports of entry, we will refer you for prosecution. You’ve broken U.S. law.”
Fact check: the administration is also separating families who have followed U.S. law by seeking asylum at U.S. ports of entry. One asylum-seeker identified as “Mr. U” entered with his 13-year-old son at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, only to be detained in California as his son was shipped off to Illinois. “All I can remember is how much my son and I were both crying when they took him away,” he said.
What the administration is doing is using children as pawns to wage war on the right to petition for asylum at the border. As the American Immigration Council (AIC) notes, “individuals … who present themselves for inspection by CBP at a port of entry are entering the U.S. legally, in compliance with U.S. immigration law.” Now the administration is attacking this enshrined right as “Democrat loopholes,” and using kids and fear as a deterrent to stop other families fleeing violence and persecution:
White House chief of staff John Kelly explicitly described this as a “tough deterrent” to families crossing, though he denied this was heartless, claiming that the children will be put into “foster care or whatever.”
“Or whatever.” Is the “whatever” an internment camp vaguely disguised as a military base? Or maybe the “whatever” is a detention facility in Illinois, where a 7-year-old Congolese girl was locked up, alone, with her mom in a facility hundreds of miles away in California. “Ms. L” had passed her initial asylum screening after fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo last year, but then officials took the girl into a separate room. It was then that Ms. L heard her child’s screams:
“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.”
Parents who have had their kids taken from them now say they have no idea where they’ve been taken to, or when they’ll see them again. In Texas, public defender Miguel "Andy” Nogueras said 10 of the 92 immigrants who appeared in immigration court were parents, and all were separated from their kids:
The status of children is a constant theme. After Nogueras told the group that that the judge "knows many of you have been separated from your children and want to reunite," a man with graying hair raised his hand.
"I have a question about my son: Is he going back with me to my country?" said Calixton Ramon-Mateo, a Guatemalan who had pleaded guilty to crossing illegally with his 9-year-old.
Nogueras didn't have an answer. Neither did the judge or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who had escorted the group to court.
A despicable policy so barbaric, that even Trump is trying to disown (but not end) it. “What’s notable about this new spin,” said the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “isn’t just that it’s flatly false on its face. It’s also that, by making this claim, Trump and the White House are basically admitting that their own policy is a moral abomination.”