This Fight Isn't Over: Immigrant Families Torn Apart by Trump's Policy May Never Be Reunited
This Fight Isn’t Over: Immigrant Families Torn Apart by Trump’s Policy May Never Be Reunited
. . Trump today was forced to reverse his administration’s so-called zero-tolerance immigration policy at the U.S./Mexico border after massive outrage across the country and across the aisle left Republicans more fearful than ever of losing their majorities in Congress. The Trump administration has repeatedly attempted to pin the blame for its own border crisis on its political opponents, calling on Congress to reverse a policy that Trump could have reversed with a simple phone call. Feminists weren’t fooled then, and they cannot relent now. All told, thousands of children are now being housed like prisoners and held by federal agents—and some will never see their parents again.
Activists at a rally for immigrant youth. (Karla Cote / Creative Commons)
“We must keep up the outrage,” Katherine Spillar, Executive Director of Feminist Majority, told Ms. “We must keep fighting for these children and families.” FM launched an action earlier this week demanding that members of Congress reject two Republican-sponsored compromise bills that leveraged the lives of migrant families in order to secure funding for a multi-billion dollar border wall, urging them instead to support legislation like Dianne Feinstein’s Keep Families Together Act that would prohibit these practices from ever being instituted along the border again. “I never thought I would see the day when children are literally used as pawns for a pointless, wasteful, racist wall,” Eleanor Smeal, FM President, said at a press conference today in Washington, D.C. in support of the Keep Families Together Act. “It’s a disgrace and it must end today.” Last week, Smeal risked arrest at a similar rally demanding an end to family separation practices along the border.
Trump’s policy forcibly separated over 2,000 children, some as young as three months old, from their parents. In one case, federal agents seized a toddler from a mother while she was breastfeeding. Now in the custody of the state, they have been housed in overcrowded detention centers and tent cities, with as many as five children living in oversized cages and spending nearly 24 hours a day indoors. The conditions facing these children were denounced by children’s advocates, feminists and human rights activists and even the UN Commission on Human Rights.
White House officials and allies were quick to praise Trump for reversing his own atrocious policy—but according to the New York Times, the Trump administration will not be attempting to reunite children and parents separated at the border under it. Rewire immigration reporter Tina Vasquez announced on Twitter that the ACLU, which is suing over the Trump administration’s policy, “is primarily suing not just over the act of family separation, but because there is no process in place for family reunification.” According to her, ACLU attorneys declared that “they are not trying to get the kid[s] back.”
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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2018/06/20/fight-isnt-immigrant-families-torn-apart-trumps-policy-may-never-reunited/