During a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday, the acting Department of Homeland Security secretary said that “fewer than 1,000 juveniles have been separated from their parents crossing the border this fiscal year,” like that’s something to be proud of.
“Under current practice governed by both executive and court orders, along with operational guidance, separations of parents and guardians and the children they cross with are rare,” claimed Kevin McAleenan, saying that separations “are undertaken in the best interests and safety and welfare of the child.”
But only in the Trump administration’s twisted thinking can 1,000 separations be “rare,” because that’s still roughly a third of the number of children that were kidnapped from their parents under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy last year, and of those nearly 3,000 kids stolen, 30 remain in U.S. custody, more than a year after a court order.
Border officials have continued to separate hundreds of families by exploiting a clause in that order that allowed a child to be removed if they were considered to be in danger. McAleenan references some sort of “operational guidance,” but advocates have said border officials have been tearing families apart with no input from actual child welfare experts, instead falsely accusing some parents fleeing gangs of having gang ties.
Nor does the number cited by McAleenan “include children who come with older siblings, or aunts and uncles and grandparents and are separated under longstanding policy meant to guard against human trafficking,” PBS reports. “McAleenan said Congress would need to amend laws to allow border officers more discretion in order to keep those groups together.” Interesting when the Trump administration chooses to be bound by Congress and when it chooses not to be bound by Congress.
Nonbiological parents are equally valid guardians for children, and border officials can make the decision to keep them together, but instead they’re tearing them apart just as they tear apart children who are coming with their biological parents. It’s never been about “the best interests and safety and welfare of the child,” as McAleenan has claimed; it’s been about the cruelty. Family separation remains a crisis.