Donald Trump staged an Oval Office photo-op purporting to mark an end to state-sanctioned kidnapping at the southern border last summer only because, under universal condemnation, he had no choice. He’s also claimed he “didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” but reality says otherwise. Forcible separation continues, separated kids are still in custody, and Trump has promoted the border official who oversaw those separations to serve as acting Department of Homeland Security secretary.
Former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, the American Civil Liberties Union says, “was one of the three DHS officials to recommend the cruel and inhumane policy to outgoing Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, writing that the department’s best option to ‘increase the consequences for dangerous illegal crossings’ was to ‘direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.’”
Cruelty was the point, and McAleenan remains fully onboard. “According to NBC News, McAleenan has already indicated that he would be open to resuming large-scale family separation,” the ACLU reports. Trump was so enthusiastic about McAleenan that he likely violated the law to pick him, because it was the undersecretary of Homeland Security for management, Claire Grady, who was next in line to be acting DHS secretary. Grady was included in the purge led by White House aide and white supremacist Stephen Miller, clearing the way for McAleenan.
So how would the administration carry out more large-scale kidnapping at the border, in light of a court order mostly forbidding family separation? Through something the administration is referring to as “binary choice,” Vox’s Dara Lind reports, forcing parents to “either waive their children’s rights and be detained indefinitely, or waive their own rights and get separated.” More like Sophie’s choice.
While our nation’s “leaders” debate officially reviving this humanitarian crime, kids stolen from families under the “zero tolerance” policy remain in U.S. custody, months after a court’s deadline. Family separation remains a crisis. “While we are still waiting to see Trump’s nominee for a permanent head of Homeland Security,” the ACLU said, “by elevating McAleenan, the president has signaled that he seeks to create an even more brutal and lawless department.”