This week, reports of children being snatched from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border revealed the utter inhumanity of President Donald Trump administration's treatment of undocumented immigrants. Trump, however, has placed the blame on Democrats. And the American people simply aren't having it.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Democrats are the blame for the policy that allows ICE agents to rip children away from their parents, and suggested that the only solution was to build a wall along the border. He also accused Democrats of "protecting" members of the notorious MS-13.
"Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS."
This was not the work of Democrats. These are the instructions laid out by the Trump administration.
Trump's own policies dictate that anyone crossing the border illegally should be criminally prosecuted, even those seeking asylum. Children are to be placed in military holding facilities, the Office of Refugee Resettlement policy states. In recent days, the public has learned that nearly 1,500 migrant children have gone missing since being in the custody of the United States. Some accounts say that immigration officials released children into the hands of human traffickers.
Equally horrifying are comments from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who told NPR a few weeks ago the policy of separating parents from children is a "tough deterrent ...The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever."
Vanity Fair's Emma Stefansky noted the differences between Trump's policies and those of previous administrations.
"In the past, the Office of Refugee Resettlement traditionally placed unaccompanied minors—that is, children who cross the border without a parent—in government-run detention centers. If a parent and a child came together, they would be processed together. In recent months, however, the Trump administration has begun forcibly taking children from their parents—some as young as one year old—and warehousing them in facilities far away from their parents, as if they had crossed the border alone."
The president's false claim that this is somehow the fault of Democrats has sparked enormous outrage on Twitter. "#WhereAreTheChildren" is now one of the hottest trending hashtags on Twitter.
Actress Alyssa Milano wonders how ICE agents are able to sleep at night.
Others pointed out that Trump's policy is a violation of the 1948 Geneva Convention, which includes "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" as a form of genocide.