Errol Morris and Jacob Soboroff discuss their new film, “Separated,” which chronicles the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” immigration policy, which separated more than 4,500 children from their parents between 2017 and 2019. 1,300 children are yet to be reunited due to incomplete information on their families, because “the idea was to avoid records,” says Morris.
It’s also paywalled, but once archive.org comes back online you can find it there. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
The main takeaway is that the family separation policy was pushed by Trump and his administration incessantly. It took a while to really start because various government officials were reluctant to do it, and kept trying to placate the White House by slow walking the whole thing.
At one point, government lawyers who process asylum claims realized that the separated children were being shipped away from the local holding facility without any documentation, effectively “losing” them in the system. The lawyers figured this was just a terrible error and began processing asylum claims by the parents faster. If they could get it done within a week or so, the children would still be held in the nearby facility and could be reunited with their parents.
The white house was furious and directed the holding facility to start “relocating” the children faster, so that they’d be lost in the system before the parents could be processed.
It was in the course of executing his duty. John Roberts says you can’t prosecute him for that. And if he marches them into ovens this time you can’t prosecute him for that either. The dream of Nixon and Roger Ailes has finally come to fruition. As Nixon said…
Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal", by definition.
The coup has already occurred. And everyone collectively yawned.
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It was intentional, the goal was to permanently separate children from their families to deter immigrants and asylum seekers.
This is a LONG article, but extremely detailed with tons of interviews and documents to back it up like emails and memos obtained via FOIA requests: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/
It’s also paywalled, but once archive.org comes back online you can find it there. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
The main takeaway is that the family separation policy was pushed by Trump and his administration incessantly. It took a while to really start because various government officials were reluctant to do it, and kept trying to placate the White House by slow walking the whole thing.
At one point, government lawyers who process asylum claims realized that the separated children were being shipped away from the local holding facility without any documentation, effectively “losing” them in the system. The lawyers figured this was just a terrible error and began processing asylum claims by the parents faster. If they could get it done within a week or so, the children would still be held in the nearby facility and could be reunited with their parents.
The white house was furious and directed the holding facility to start “relocating” the children faster, so that they’d be lost in the system before the parents could be processed.
The cruelty is the point.
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It was in the course of executing his duty. John Roberts says you can’t prosecute him for that. And if he marches them into ovens this time you can’t prosecute him for that either. The dream of Nixon and Roger Ailes has finally come to fruition. As Nixon said…
The coup has already occurred. And everyone collectively yawned.