The widespread separation of families at the southern border under the zero tolerance policy in 2018 didn’t end because Trump administration officials felt like ending it. It ended because of the combined forces of mass public outrage and a federal judge’s nationwide injunction, which ordered reunification of all families within 30 days.
But the House Judiciary Committee said in an expansive report released last week that as an unprepared administration was scrambling to meet the judge’s deadline (it didn’t, by the way), Custom and Border Protection’s (CBP) top official was plotting how to go around the federal judge’s court order in order to continue ripping families apart.
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The House Judiciary Committee found that as federal agencies including Health and Human Services (HHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were attempting to reunite children and parents that the administration had ripped apart with no intention of ever reuniting, then-CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan was just days after federal judge Dana Sabraw’s order “looking for ways to continue family separations,” the report said.
“On June 29, 2018, CBP headquarters asked all Border Patrol chiefs and deputies to identify how many parents could be prosecuted and quickly reunited with their children in CBP custody each day,” investigators found. “In other words, CBP thought it could technically comply with the court order by separating families for only short periods of time.” Studies have shown that even short periods of detention can have long-term effects on children.
The 21-month-long investigation also found that hundreds of complaints involving family separation, more than 860, were made to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), including some involving abuse against detained children. “Complaints to CRCL reveal multiple cases of minors being mistreated in CBP or ICE custody,” the report said, “including an 8-year-old who was reportedly kicked or hit with a shoe by CBP officers when he was sleeping in an apparent effort to wake him up.”
Other findings from the report reveal that this despicable cabal of criminals began plotting family separation just days after impeached president Donald Trump’s inauguration, and that when they did begin “piloting” the policy, they failed to inform HHS agency Office of Refugee Resettlement that it would be carrying out this crime at the southern border.
“Accustomed to caring for migrant children who arrive unaccompanied at the border, ORR leadership did not initially question the reason for the growing number of children entering into their custody during the summer of 2017,” the report continued. But even after leaders raised alarms after seeing a massive number of separated children being sent to the agency, “ORR was not informed of the ongoing pilot program for at least three months after its initiation.”
The federal agencies that carried out this policy, including the Department of Justice, have remained defiant, the report said.
“Unfortunately, only one department, HHS, meaningfully cooperated with the committee’s investigation,” investigators said. “Although relevant DHS and DOJ emails, memos, and documents were released publicly through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests or leaks to the press, these departments provided little pertinent documentation directly to the committee. Despite this lack of cooperation, the documents that were provided or otherwise made available to the committee are revelatory.”
Hundreds of children from that “piloting” in 2017 remain separated due to the administration’s intentional cruelty, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden pledging to create a federal task force to address this crisis, which could be of huge assistance to groups and advocates on the ground that have been tasked by the court with family reunification.
“While we may never know the full extent of the damage inflicted by the Trump administration’s family separation policy,” the report concluded, “it is evident—as a result of this investigation and public reporting—that it was driven by an administration that was willfully blind to its cruelty and determined to go to unthinkable extremes to deliver on political promises and stop migrants fleeing violence from seeking protection in the United States.”
These children and parents need justice—and that begins by voting the officials who inflicted this lifelong trauma on them out of office.