Trump’s team STILL rips kids from families after claiming they had stopped
- Jun 17, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 18, 2024
June 18: On This Day In 2020
Two years had gone by since the Trump Administration’s infamous family separation program had “ended.” In the face of nearly universal, international condemnation, Trump had publicly rescinded his policy in June 2018.
But OTDI 2020, The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the practice had essentially never ceased. (Similar outrage had been voiced six months earlier, but apparently fell on deaf ears). Loopholes and lax oversight allowed them to continue implementing that shameful, abusive scheme all along. Eager to expand the supposedly-canceled practice, the authorities sought to increase the number of families they could separate by referencing foreign police and military databases. So the government was able to kidnap - as some called it - more than 1,000 children after the nation thought the practice had finally ceased.
Trump’s policy led to cruel, inhumane conditions: For example in Clint, just outside El Paso, some 250 infants, children and teens were locked up for 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation. Trump’s U.S. government fed them uncooked frozen rice. And they didn’t bathe them or give them a clean change of clothes…for weeks.
Egregious human rights violations: In another case, a 5-year-old girl from Honduras was pressured into signing away her rights after being separated from her grandmother.
Also, it was uncovered that Trump's team had even started taking the kids just months after taking power, even before the policy had been officially unveiled.
Btw, the Trump Administration never reunited many of these children with their parents.
Dive Deeper
The Southern Poverty Law Center traces the history of "Family Separation," even after it supposedly ended
The New Yorker tells the story of Helen, the 5-year-old Honduran girl
Summary: Trump secretly continues Family Separation policy