Trump Blames the Democrats for Family Separation at the Mexican Border

Of course he does.

Guillermo Arias/ZUMA Wire/ZUMAPRESS.com

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President Donald Trump blamed Democrats this morning for what he called the “horrible law that separates children from there (sic) parents,” a reference to the outcry over his administration’s policy of taking children away from their parents at the border as a means to deter undocumented immigration into the US.

Trump blames the Democrats for the “horrible law”—and also accuses Democrats of defending members of the violent street gang MS-13 after criticism of his use of the term “animals” in describing them—but his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed that the policy was part of the administration’s overall strategy in trying to stop undocumented immigration at the US-Mexico border.

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said during a speech in San Diego on May 7.

Sessions added that Trump was fulfilling one of his central his campaign promises by these aggressive actions. 

“Donald Trump ran for office on that idea,” Sessions said. “I believe that is a big reason why he won. He is on fire about this. This entire government knows it.”

The government has denied that this policy is about deterrence, but John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff and the former Secretary of Homeland Security, told CNN in March of 2017 that he was “considering” the policy “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network…They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.” He reiterated the deterrent value of the policy in an interview with NPR in early May, saying that “a big name of the game is deterrence,” and that the “children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.”

Those working within the immigration legal and activism community have seen a “noticeable increase in this practice in the summer,” Katharina Obser, senior policy advisor with the Women’s Refugee Commission,” told NPR in February. 

The New York Times reported in April that more than 700 children have been removed from their parents’ custody since October, including more than 100 under the age of four. But at a Senate hearing last month, Steven Wagner, the Acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was “unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts” of 1,475 children between October and December.”

“The new practice of separating children from their parents at the border is just exacerbating an already inefficient system,” Michelle Brané, the director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission and a leading expert on immigration detention, told Mother Jones. “You’re throwing hundreds—thousands—more children into this system. You’ve actually separated them from a parent and then you give them to ORR, whose job it is to reunify them with a parent. [It] is a colossal waste of money, and is overwhelming our system, and is just plain cruel.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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