The Trump Administration’s decision to separate families at the border was one of the most morally reprehensible immigration policy decisions in recent memory. According to a Semafor exclusive, Trump will defend his cruel family separation policy in a taped Univision interview set to air tonight.
Transcripts of the interview obtained by Semafor show Trump praising the policy and saying, “When you hear that you’re going to be separated from your family you don’t come. When you think you’re going to come into the United States with your family, you come.”
Trump continued to defend his policy by saying, “We did family separation. A lot of people didn’t come. It stopped people from coming by their hundreds of thousands because when they hear family separation, they say, ‘Well, we better not go.’”
The zero-tolerance policy was announced in April 2018; however, it was later revealed that the administration secretly began family separation the previous year. Under a pilot program conducted in the El Paso, Texas area and along other parts of the southern border, Trump’s administration began separating families long before the practice was made public.
The children were taken from their parents, who were unable to track or reunite with their children because the Trump administration failed to create a system to facilitate reunification. By late 2017, the Trump administration was separating families along the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, including families arriving through official ports of entry.
Trump’s policy was responsible for the removal of over 1,000 children from their families. Parents were unable to track or reunite with their children because the Trump administration failed to create a system to facilitate reunification. According to court filings made by the ACLU, three years after the pilot program was enacted two-thirds of the parents deported couldn’t be located.
According to Vox, between October 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018, at least 2,700 children were split from their parents.
Before running for president, MAGA acolytes Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley supported the Trump policy:
- In 2018, DeSantis effectively voted against an amendment that would have ended the Trump administration’s policy of separating undocumented migrant children from their parents at the border. The underlying legislation was the so-called GOP immigration compromise bill.
- After the United Nations publicly denounced the practice and declared the U.S. should “immediately halt” family separation, then-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley defended the administration’s policy by attacking the UN and claiming, “[n]either the United Nations nor anyone else will dictate how the United States upholds its borders.”
“The Trump administration ripped thousands children away from their parents, lied about it, and lost track of many of them without any plan to reconnect families. Before they were junior varsity candidates for president, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis supported this repugnant approach to immigration policy that shouldn’t be defended, celebrated, or replicated in the future. None of them can be trusted to implement a humane or sane immigration policy as president,” said American Bridge 21st Century Presidential Campaigns Communication Director Brandon Weathersby.
Published: Nov 10, 2023 | Last Modified: Nov 13, 2023