During the last Trump-Biden debate, the moderator asked about the children separated from their parents. Trump said they were brought across the border by “coyotes,” and that they had never experienced such clean and pleasant surroundings. Biden expressed great remorse for the children who were wrenched from the arms of their parents (not “coyotes”) and left alone.
In my view, this cruel policy of separating parents from their children at the border should be prosecuted as a crime against humanity. International courts should press charges against Trump, Pence, Sessions, and anyone else who was responsible. The parents were deported, and the children were locked up, some of them in cages. Some of them were infants. Contrary to Trump’s claim in the debate, the Obama administration deported families; it did not separate the children from their parents and keep the children while the parents were deported.
The purpose of Trump’s inhumane policy was to discourage immigration by frightening them. The children were separated 2-3 years ago; private groups have been searching for their parents. The Trump administration has stood in their way and claims the parents don’t want the children they lost by force.
Now we know that 545 children are stranded here, and no one knows who or where their parents are. Some of these children are babies who do not know their names. Biden said it: this was “criminal.” Biden was right. The criminals should be prosecuted.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think bring raised by actual coyotes would be preferable to bring raised by Trump and Pence
Being raised
Trump is the first president in a century who did not own a dog. He made fun of people who do. The man has no empathy, no brain, no heart, no soul, no dog.
Writing as a card carrying cat person, I take great offense! Or maybe this explains me too? 😹
Greg,
I have a dog (Mitzi) and a cat (Dandelion).
But, I confess, at heart I am a dog person.
Cats mystify me. They never want to please me.
They expect me to please them.
The opposite of a dog, who lives to please.
OMG. That’s so beautifully put, Diane!
Dandelion is such a great name for a 🐈
But I’m a dog person too.
I lost my dog Honey a little over a year ago to coyotes (the real kind). And I’d still rather be raised by coyotes.
He is casually known as Dandy.
He comes when he is called.
But his full name is Dandelion.
A cat that comes when you call it’s name is pretty good. My brother’s family had a cat that was 15 and I don’t think it even knew it’s name or at least it never let on that it did.
I used to call it Katze, which is German for cat, but it never responded to that either.
My cat, Mica, used to sleep on my dog’s, Borcsa’s, belly. While cats have pride and dogs don’t, cats also try to please you in their own way: they bring you dead birds and leave them at your door step. If they love you much, they may live them on your bed. 🙂
I have been sickened by trumpsy dumpsy’s separation of children from their families/parents. What a monster trump is.
My stomach turns whenever I think about this most heinous crime.
I suspect some of those missing children are dead or being trafficked. Wherever those children who are still alive (if barely alive) are, they are at risk and being harmed by evil people who are trump enablers. Sickening. Criminal. Disgusting.
Trump and his enablers are responsible and they should ALL be in jail for this most horrible crime.
Literally makes me want to throw up. I guess “building cages” separates childrent…not people. Perhaps we should subscribe to that logic with gun control as well.
Absolutely! Spot on, Diane! These criminals–Trump, Sessions, Miller, etc.–should be tried before the International Court of Criminal Justice.
Trump and Sessions cooked up this family separation policy to deter families from crossing the border. It was an inhumane policy that has been condemned by civil rights and social justice groups. The shocking scope of this blunder is hard to process. I feel that Biden should have gone for the jugular on this issue. Biden did respond, but he should have hammered Trump. I think the Democrats did not want to draw too much attention to the fact that Obama detained and deported many people at the border. While this is true, a relatively small number of families were separated under Obama more by circumstance than policy. It was never reported that Obama did not keep track of families and children. https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/falsehoods-about-family-separations-linger-online/
I would like to know why the government is not putting resources into finding families. The federal government made the mess, and they should remedy it. Why are private charities with scant resources doing this?
With dna testing, they could easily match children to parents who had inquired.
It would be very quick and pretty cheap too.
I agree. I have seen video of the volunteer groups that are knocking on the doors in remote areas of El Salvador and Honduras. DNA could be a useful tool for sure.
The hard part is getting the parents to come forward. The rest is easy.
These parents very much want their children back They have no resources to get them back. Many of them spent most of their money on their ill fated trip. They often live in remote, mountainous areas with maybe only radio that connects them to the outside world. Volunteers ride on motor bikes and go farm to farm to try to locate families. If the family has moved, there is not a reliable way to find them. The central government is broken, and the most reliable source of information is the Catholic Church. I have taught many students from Central America. We very often could not even get school records from these countries. Finding people is a challenge. Some parents may be deceased as the murder rate is high in countries where the drug gangs rule. We have no idea of what it is like in these countries. What I know is via students that have shared their stories with me.
I don’t doubt that they want their children back, but I also have a feeling that many of them are afraid to come forward.
If one child were kidnapped from his or her parents, that would be a grave, grave crime, but this!?!?!?!??!!!!!! It’s unfathomably evil.
What is even more evil is that this means absolutely nothing to tens of millions of people who claim to be American. Congressional Republicans are first in line.
It is completely irrational to lessen in one’s mind the egregiousness of such behavior because it was perpetrated using the means of a state. It’s not OK because Nazis in uniform under direction by fascists do it.
It’s still precisely the same action.
From the US Dept of Justice:
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. 103-322, § 60003(a)(6), effective September 13, 1994, reinstated the death penalty for kidnapping and provided an effective mechanism for utilization of the death penalty punishment provision where the death of any person results. Federal prosecutors are advised to consult the Death Penalty Protocol as detailed in JM 9-10.000 whether they intend to request permission to seek the death penalty or permission not to seek the death penalty. With respect to kidnapping, or conspiracies to kidnap, taking place prior to September 13, 1994, the penalty was “imprisonment for any term of years or for life.” See Pub. L. 92-539.
It doesn’t suddenly become not kidnapping when the President and the Attorney General do it.
When the President does it, it is not illegal.
We learned that from Richard nixon.
And When anyone in the White House does it, it is also not illegal.
We learned that from Ronald Reagan.
And when any of the President’s friends, family, business acquaintances , lawyers, guinea pigs, spiders, etc do it, it is also not illegal.
We learned that from Donald Trump.
Hmmm. I see a pattern here. . . .
There’s not much left to learn.
I hasten to add that I do not support the death penalty. But kidnapping. . . , this is a most serious crime, especially if done on an industrial scale.
Can we have a betting pool as to how long before a pro-Trump troll posts that President Obama “made” Trump do it? Remember how they posted that HRC “made” Trump tell his racist supporters he had a copy of Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate for 6 years?
That was exactly Trump’s response to Biden. “Who built the cages, Joe?” he asked.
Yes, it’s a right wing talking point like all the other right wing talking points that are posted here to defend President Trump by people who claim they supported Bernie Sanders but now claim that Bernie Sanders and AOC are big liars who should never be trusted. They never supported Bernie. If they did, they would not be posting over and over again that everything Bernie says now is a lie and they’d rather have Trump than support any Democrats that the untrustworthy Bernie Sanders and AOC support. They would rather have Trump – the guy who wants to lock up AOC, than a democrat.
And we got a new slogan out of it last night…..AOC + 3. Guess this is his 2020 version of “lock her up”? Trump is the kind of person that you never want one of your kids to bring home for family dinner.
AOC tweeted AOC + 115, the number of co-sponsors of the Green New Deal.
What’s the meaning of this AOC+3 ?
Mate,
I think that is a reference to the “squad”, AOC “plus” the 3 other women who all were elected to Congress in 2018. AOC, plus Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib
President Trump tries to demonize them all, and it’s scary how some of his supporters threaten them.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/falsehoods-about-family-separations-linger-online/
On Twitter, Trump lovers are deriding Democrats for not knowing that “coyote” is a slang term for smuggler.
So we are supposed to believe that poor Mexicans pay smugglers to dump their kids, many of whom are infants, in the Arizona desert for a better life in America?
They are as crazy as their lunatic leader, who should have clarified that –if he even thought it himself.
Over 70% of the unaccompanied minors are age 15 or older. It is only the desperate that send children younger than that with a coyote. Most of today’s migrants are not from Mexico. They are from Central America.
It’s not like it’s ok to separate kids from their parents who are in high school.
I’m sure they don’t all end up in Arizona either. It was hyperbole to address outrageous hyperbole.
Regardless of where they come from or the ages of the kids, I find it very hard to believe that so many parents who are struggling financially would scrape together the funds in order to pay for such an uncertain future for their children. And if they just wanted to get rid of them, it would be a lot cheaper to abandon their kids themselves somewhere in the wild of a nearby country with a porous border.
Oh the irony-
A wealthy Trump donor said he doesn’t like white couples who, “choose not to repopulate and allow our wonderful country to be backfilled with rubbish from the desperate and criminal population of the Third World.”
It’s right wing policy that is responsible for the low birth rate of Americans. Concentration of wealth created the financial precariousness that results in Americans having fewer children. Trump’s religious base wants to force women to have children as evidenced by the recent anti- abortion screed signed by 30 countries that are authoritarian (Russia) and/or conservative.
I do not understand the number 545. According to this 1 year old report, 5400 kids have been separated from their parents.
https://nypost.com/2019/10/25/over-5400-children-separated-from-their-parents-at-border-since-2017/
I do not understand how it is possible that the details of these separated children were not responsibly documented in an official government organisation. Where is the video footage and logs at the time from the buildings interview and holding rooms? If this information was deleted then individuals should be prosecuted as well as the president the day he leaves office for instigating mass child abduction for nefarious reasons. Maybe the case could be crowdfunded until all the children are reunited.
Add Stephen Miller to the mix!