Because the Trump administration was created to show us exactly what the devil looks like, in 2018 they issued a “zero-tolerance” border-crossing policy that separated migrant children at the southern U.S. border from their parents and enslaved them in cages. Then it turned out that the administration had been separating migrant children from their families since 2017 using a pilot program.
The Trump administration did so with no filing system, no logs, no Microsoft spreadsheet, no notes taken on the back of an envelope like Spades scores. Nothing. And now they have no idea where or even how to track down the parents of 545 children, according to a filing Tuesday from the American Civil Liberties Union, NBC News reports.
The policy was later ended by executive order and the 1,000 parents separated from their children under the pilot program had already been deported, yet their children were still in America. A federal judge in California had to order that the parents be found. The ACLU and pro-bono lawyers were given the task of finding the taken children’s families.
“It is critical to find out as much as possible about who was responsible for the horrific practice while not losing sight of the fact that hundreds of families have still not been found and remain separated,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project told NBC News. “There is so much more work to be done to find these families.
“People ask when we will find all of these families, and sadly, I can’t give an answer. I just don’t know,” Gelernt said. “But we will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes. The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives.”
And this happened because the Trump administration is totally fucked up and devoid of a soul. Also if this were 545 white kids….We already know.
From NBC News:
The ACLU and other organizations that are part of a court-appointed “steering committee” learned that more than 1,000 families were separated in 2017 based on data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, the committee has been able to contact the parents of more than 550 children and believes about 25 of them may have a chance to come back to the U.S. for reunification.
Gelernt said some of the families that have been contacted have elected to keep their children in the U.S. with family members or sponsors “due to fear of what will happen to their child if they return” to their home countries.
The group Justice in Motion is physically searching for the separated parents in Mexico and Central America. “While we have already located many deported parents, there are hundreds more who we are still trying to reach,” the group said in a statement. “It’s an arduous and time-consuming process on a good day. During the pandemic, our team of human rights defenders is taking special measures to protect their own security and safety, as well as that of the parents and their communities.”
I’m sorry Trump supporters, I couldn’t hear your shouts for four more years of this heartless fuckery over the cries of kidnapped babies.