Trump Is Considering Separating Immigrant Children From Their Mothers
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is considering a change in policy that would separate immigrant mothers from their children at the U.S. Mexico border, locking up the women while leaving their kids parentless, Reuters reported Friday.
The heartless policy change would put children, whom psychologists believe already experience significant trauma from border crossings, into U.S. “protective custody,” while their mothers sit in prison.
The new so-called president’s vitriolic stance is a sudden shift in the United States’ attitude toward those seeking refuge. While President Barack Obama was sometimes called the “deporter-in-chief” by immigration activists, his administration worked to keep immigrant families together. Under the Obama administration, parents who were arrested at the border were often released after booking and before deportation proceedings began.
While Mr. Trump is taking yet another opportunity to turn his back on tired and weary masses escaping violence in the world, his terrifying proposal is yet again raising logistical questions about the competency of his administration.
It isn’t yet clear how the department, under the direction of Mr. Trump’s Chief Pick Gen. John Kelly, could even handle the influx of arrested immigrants, the news wire reported, given their struggle attempting to handle the relatively fewer detainees up to this point.
“You are talking about a pretty rapid increase in the detention population if you are going to do this,” migration policy expert Randy Capps told Reuters. “The question is really how much detention can they afford.”
There already wasn’t enough room in federal prison for deportees, so the Trump administration tried to order state prisons to keep them, even after their sentences had ended. A federal judge ruled that order illegal today.
It’s the second time in a week that Mr. Kelly has been seen slamming the door in suffering peoples’ faces. Last week he called for immigrant parents — who risk their lives trying to help their children across the border and away from violent and impoverished Central American states — to be prosecuted.
Under this policy proposal, children who did nothing wrong except being born in the wrong place at the wrong time will face severely damaging psychological repercussion at the hands of our nation, per a Reuters interview.
Implementing the new policy proposal “could create lifelong psychological trauma,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director at the National Immigration Law Center. “Especially for children that have just completed a perilous journey from Central America.”
The developments under Mr. Kelly appeared to continue the theme of deception carried out by Trump cabinet members. During senate confirmation hearings, Mr. Kelly appeared to disagree with much of Mr. Trump’s hateful and ignorant positions against those seeking refuge in the United States.
Like so many things that administration officials have told Congress in recent weeks, that position now appears to be a lie.
