Calling family separation the “true national emergency,” the House Oversight Committee has voted to subpoena the Trump administration for documents that House Democrats have been seeking for months. “When our own government rips children from the arms of their mothers and fathers with no plans to reunite them,” said Chair Elijah Cummings, “that is government-sponsored child abuse.”
Democrats are demanding officials hand over documents on the thousands of kids who were stolen from families at the southern border, including where these kids were jailed and what efforts, if any, were made to return them to their parents. The subpoenas, targeting the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services, are “the first issued in the new Congress as Democrats have promised to hold the administration aggressively to [ac]count,” the AP reports.
The committee’s Republicans, now in the minority, objected, saying the committee should first examine documents it already has on hand. This is bad-faith nonsense, because Republicans have had since last spring to conduct their oversight responsibilities when it comes to family separation, and they have failed at that job. Now it’s just a question of what happens next. “If officials don’t comply, the committee and eventually the full House could vote to hold the department in contempt, setting up a potentially lengthy court battle.”