Hey, OT, what say you about Trump's policy of family separation? Isn't
this enough to discount him from ever being elected for anything? Seriously
man, you support this crap so tell us how it is anything less that outright
evil? And yes, I call this policy evil. I was separated at birth.. I know the
consequences.. so, tell us how can you support someone that does this?
Donald Trump’s defense of family separation indicates the immigration
policy could return if he wins the election in November 2024. The policy
sought to deter illegal immigration by separating parents from their children
near the U.S.-Mexico border and prosecuting mothers and fathers. The
eventual public outcry led the Trump administration to stop the practice.
However, Donald Trump wanted to reinstate the policy during his presidency
and said after leaving office that separating parents from their children is an
effective deterrent. Despite a legal settlement, there is reason to believe
family separation could return in a second Trump term.
Donald Trump’s Defense Of Family Separation
In an interview with Univision in November 2023, Donald Trump said, “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. And we did for a period of time family separation, and
others have, too, by the way.”
Trump added, “But, you know, it’s a little bit different with us. But we did
family separation. A lot of people didn’t come. It stopped people from
coming by the hundreds of thousands because when they hear family
separation, they say well, we better not go. And they didn’t go.” Analyzing
monthly apprehensions data for FY 2018 does not show family separation
“stopped people from coming” or was an effective deterrent.
As The Hill reported, “Trump repeated his assertion that family separation
was a practice implemented during the Obama administration, though
multiple fact-checkers have debunked that claim.”
After family separation ended, Trump wanted to bring it back, helping to
explain why he continues to defend the policy.
“Throughout the remainder of his presidency, Trump pushed to relaunch
family separations,” reported Caitlin Dickerson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for
her reporting on the issue for The Atlantic. “‘The conversation never died,’
[former DHS Secretary] Kirstjen Nielsen told me, recalling a series of
discussions that took place at the White House and on Marine One. ‘I
started saying, ‘Sir, we really can’t reinstate it. Nothing has changed. We
still do not have the resources. It will result the same way. The system didn’t
get fixed.’ ”
Trump became incensed because, despite employing harsh policies, illegal
immigration rose significantly during his time in office. Apprehensions at the
Southwest border, a proxy for illegal entry, increased by more than 100
percent between FY 2016 and FY 2019 (from 408,870 to 851,508),
according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis. With the
onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Border Patrol encounters
declined. However, Border Patrol encounters on the Southwest border
increased from 16,182 in April 2020 to 69,032 by October 2020, a 327%
rise.
Government data do not support Donald Trump’s statements that he left the
“most secure” border in history. Illegal entry, based on border arrests, was
lower in July 2024 than during Donald Trump’s last month in office. It was
also lower in Barack Obama’s last full year as president. Yearly
apprehensions between 1957 and 1965 never exceeded 50,000, far lower
than the 75,316 Border Patrol encounters along the Southwest border in
January 2021.
The Story Of Family Separation
In 2017, White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller advocated separating
parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border. He believed this
would deter illegal immigration. Many people were coming from Central
America and requesting asylum. DHS Secretary John Kelly opposed the
policy and kept serious consideration off the table. The policy received new
life when Kelly left DHS to become White House chief of staff, and Miller ally
Gene Hamilton joined the staff of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Stephen Miller and others persuaded Sessions and DHS Secretary Kirstjen
Nielsen to implement a policy of family separation.
“Trump administration officials insisted for a whole year that family
separations weren’t happening,” writes Caitlin Dickerson. “Finally, in the
spring of 2018, they announced the implementation of a separation policy
with great fanfare—as if one had not already been under way for months.”
In April 2018, Attorney General Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance
policy.” The memo directed federal attorneys to prosecute every individual
accused of unlawful entry. Separating parents from their children became a
primary objective of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. In a later
press appearance at the border, Sessions declared, “If you are smuggling a
child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you
as required by law.”
In addition to what critics would later label a disregard for children and
families, the policy ran into insurmountable logistical problems.
Trump officials pushing the policy made no contingencies for dealing with
thousands of separated (and, according to specialists, often traumatized)
children. “We did not find evidence that DOJ leadership had discussions
about the zero tolerance policy or family separations with Health and
Human Services prior to the announcement,” according to a DOJ inspector
general’s report. HHS could not safely house the children separated from
their parents and failed to keep track of them so that families could later be
reunited.
Unfavorable press coverage rather than moral qualms about harming
children ended the policy. In June 2018, when “ProPublica published leaked
audio of separated children crying for their parents inside a government
facility. . . . it made clear that the targets of the Zero Tolerance policy were
not criminals, but children,” writes Dickerson. “Throughout the seven-
minute recording, a little boy speaking through a low, wobbly sob repeats
‘Papá, papá,’ over and over. ‘I want to go with my aunt,’ one little girl tells
agents. Over their cries, a detention official can be heard joking with the
children.”
Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to criticize the policy, and it
resulted in Trump officials stopping family separation. As of February 2023,
a DHS task force identified more than 3,924 children separated from their
parents during the Trump administration, with nearly 1,000 children still not
reunited with their families, reported Reuters. Overall, government records
indicate more than 5,500 children were separated during the Trump years.
How Family Separation Could Return
Ignoring orders from judges to implement family separation and harsh
actions connected to mass deportation could become an essential element
of a second Trump administration’s immigration policies. While critics have
focused on Trump implying he deserves an unconstitutional third term,
disregarding judicial orders, at least selectively, appears more likely to
happen.
Caitlin Dickerson reported, “As time went on, Trump became further
incensed about the number of people crossing the border, proposing more
and more outlandish ideas to stop it from happening, many of them
preserved in the senior DHS official’s notes: The president once ‘ordered
Kelly to tell Nielsen to, ‘Round them all up and push them back into Mexico.
Who cares about the law,’ one entry says.”
Other Trump administration officials are likely to back Trump if he decides to
defy judges. Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston writes about an
interview J.D. Vance gave in 2021. “Mr. Vance said that if he could give Mr.
Trump one piece of advice, it would be this: ‘Fire every single midlevel
bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with
our people. And when the courts—’cause you will get taken to court—and
when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson
did, and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
Galston adds, “The quote’s provenance aside, by citing it Mr. Vance reveals
an apparent contempt for the authority of the judicial branch of
government.”
Vance’s advice could be tested on family separation. In December 2023, “A
federal judge . . . banned the separation of families at the U.S. southern
border to deter migrants from entering the country as part of a settlement
to a Trump-era lawsuit,” reported Axios. “Under the settlement, a policy
similar to the one the Trump administration implemented will be banned
until December 2031.”
Analysts point out Trump officials could enact a new version of family
separation by arguing they are carrying out a different policy from the one
banned in the settlement. They could also ignore the judge’s order.
Former government attorneys point out that federal agencies have used
noncompliance with judicial decisions to attain desired national policy,
including immigration policy. The term is “agency nonacquiescence.” A 1981
Yale Law School article discussed how the Immigration and Naturalization
Service engaged in nonacquiescence to achieve its preferred policies on
adjudications. DHS, in a Trump administration, could employ it to achieve its
immigration enforcement objectives. “Agency nonacquiescence may arise
after a court sets aside agency action because the court disagrees with the
agency’s interpretation of law,” according to a 2023 Congressional Research
Service report. “The agency must determine whether it will conform its
future actions to that court’s interpretation of law—acquiescence—or
whether it will continue to apply its preferred interpretation in future actions
—nonacquiescence.”
Some have argued that Trump officials could not effectively carry out mass
deportation because of safeguards that provide individuals with legal
recourse in immigration proceedings. That assumes the president and his
closest allies are willing to be frustrated or constrained by judicial orders on
an issue Trump has discussed in nearly every campaign speech for the past
year. David Bier of the Cato Institute agrees that the Trump administration is
unlikely to allow the law or judges to stop it from enacting restrictive
immigration policies.
In his July 2024 speech before the Republican National Convention, Trump
boasted of diverting military funds to build a wall at the border during his
administration, even though a federal court ruled in June 2020 that Trump’s
action was unlawful. “Most of the nearly $10 billion that the Trump
administration diverted from the armed services to build barriers on the
U.S.-Mexico border will never be seen again, Pentagon and congressional
officials confirmed,” reported Roll Call in May 2021.
The Supreme Court largely immunized U.S. presidents from criminal
prosecution for “official acts,” and a president retains expansive authority to
issue pardons. Republicans in Congress are unlikely to vote to impeach and
remove Donald Trump from office. Denying entry to and deporting
immigrants are the former president’s top policy priorities. Family separation
could return if Donald Trump wins the November 2024 election.
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