Trump considers reinstating family separations at the border
By
Meenakshi Jagadeesan
10 March 2019
According to a report in the Washington Post Friday, the Trump administration is considering reinstating a version of the “zero tolerance” family separation program it implemented in May as part of its ongoing war against immigrants. In the most widely discussed proposal, parents who cross the border will be detained with their children for 20 days, at which point they will be forced to chose between being deported together or being detained separately.
This sadistic policy, likely devised by Trump’s aide Stephen Miller, has a distinctly fascistic character. The proposal to force parents to chose between separation and deportation to war-torn, violence-ridden Central America constitutes a form of emotional torture.
The government is employing the language of the extreme right, linking the mass detention of children with “tough-on-crime” rhetoric aimed at falsely presenting immigrants as a threat to public safety.
In an email statement to the Post, deputy White House Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said, “Career law enforcement professionals in the U.S. government are working to analyze and evaluate options that would protect the American people, prevent the horrific actions of child smuggling, and stop drug cartels from pouring into our communities.”
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told Politico, “There is currently a crisis at our southern border as we encounter rising numbers of adults who enter the country illegally with children. Catch-and-release loopholes in the law incentivize illegal border-crossers to take this dangerous journey because they are unlikely to face consequences for their illegal conduct and in fact will almost certainly…