[Not sure if this belongs here. It IS politics, but please move if in the wrong place.]
LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration intentionally separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the southern border in the spring of 2018, an aggressive attempt to discourage family crossings that caused lasting trauma and drew widespread condemnation.
What is only now becoming clear, however, is that a significant number of U.S. citizen children were also removed from their parents under the so-called zero tolerance policy…
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In many cases, the U.S.-born children were placed into foster care for lengthy periods, and some have yet to be reunited with their parents, lost in the system nearly five years after the separations took place.
“We don’t even know where these parents are today, and whether or not they know where their children are,” said Paige Chan, executive director of the nonprofit Together and Free, who has been working with a federal task force charged with tracking the whereabouts of separated families.
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Some 5,500 foreign-born children were already known to have been separated from their parents under the policy. The separations usually lasted for a matter of weeks, but in some cases they lasted years.
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Foreign-born children were being returned more readily to their parents, immigration lawyers said, because they were being held in government shelters and could quickly be transported to their parents’ locations without going through the state bureaucracies of foster care systems.
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The American kids were mostly put into state foster-care systems where the federal government can’t easily track them.
This story is long-gone from the headlines, but it is one more action from the trump administration tsunami that has left permanent damage in its wake.
It wouldn’t be solace, but if those kids lost their parents to disease, a car crash, or even murder they would stand at least chance of someday coping with it. But their parents were taken from them by men with guns, and they don’t know if they’ll ever see them again. Children stolen from their mothers. This is a sin the country has committed.
This never got nearly the exposure it deserved, even if it did get some exposure.
The United States of America stole children from their parents and then lost the children in the system.
It is almost literally unbelievable that this country did this horrendous thing. I can’t even put myself in those parents shoes – my mind reels away from it. I think someone included this crime against humanity in the why people hate Trump list.
Entering the US without proper documentation is, AIUI, a misdemeanor. By this reasoning – and I know it’s not yours, @carnivorousplant – we should take away children from people who are accused (not even convicted) of petty theft, DUI, battery and disturbing the peace. That’ll sure discourage people from attempting those!
Yes I do. One of the cruelest things that can be done.
This is single issue to me and brought Trump out of politics into the realm of an evil being. Now such atrocities have been committed in the past, including the Native American reschooling camps and many other places, most recently Ukrainian children taken by Russia. For me a lot (everything) comes down to the heart, the intent behind it, and with Trump it’s hard to miss the cold calculating callousness of his acts, especially when it was brought to light what was happening. There was no reason to take them, and less of a reason to abuse them, and no excuse for losing where they were from.
I do wish that we would make it a priority as a nation to find and reunite them with their families and aware them citizenship if they want it. It doesn’t make up for the evil committed but does show that the US has good caring people along with one evil bastard.
This was one of the worst things America has done in recent years. In my understanding, Biden’s administration has done a good job of reuniting the ones they can so far. But IMO, Biden should have appointed a “family reunification czar” or something like that, and have them give recurring press briefings, providing weekly or even daily updates on how many families have been reunited and how many are still waiting to be reunited.
Given how little regard was given to keeping track of the seized children, cynical me has always wondered how many of the never returned were sold to adoption agencies, or to human traffickers.
Um… actually, if you’ve studied how the US has often treated the Natives it’s not a new thing so, from my viewpoint, quite believable. Horrible, but believable.
The hope is that those awful things were done long ago and we would never do such a thing these days, considering how much progress we’ve made. Which clearly isn’t true.
My history was definitely redacted. Don’t be me started on how terrible my history of the South and slavery was.
Anyway, didn’t we all hope we were past those terrible bad days? Especially with all the news coverage all the time. Didn’t matter, they did it right out in the open.
Very instructive link, thank you. This bit at the end caught my attention:
Comparisons between Trump and Obama on immigration usually focus on deportations of unauthorized immigrants living in the US. Trump has been rapidly expanding enforcement, but the numbers are still comparable to Obama’s first term. (Obama holds the record for deporting more immigrants than any president, with more than 2 million deportations over eight years — though he scaled back enforcement in the last two years of his administration.) (Source)
I am afraid it was those politics, as well as the massive use of killer drones and the saving of the bankers that made Trump so much more likely. Obama could get away with so much, he was so cool. But the consequences are still there. It shows how superficial society and politics are, but people feel the unease anyway and not knowing how to deal with it end up with Trump and the like. Wonder what unsatisfied people will come up with next time. I see that there is no perfect solution, but that they (we?) consistently choose the worst solution buggers me. Politics by spite.