06-25-2018, 12:57 PM
So, one more time, just for you Gunnar......
The very person in the Trump administration who leads the agency responsible for the detention of migrants at the border (Kristjen Nilesen) has publicly acknowledged that previous administrations did not separate children from their parents at the scale that the Trump administration did, before Trump was pressured into rescinding the child separation policy.
Her counterpart under the Obama administration (Jeh Johnson) has always acknowledged that child separation was an exception not a rule; he acknowledged it during his tenure and he's acknowledged it again recently in interviews. The goal at that time was to keep families together.
Johnson has confirmed what those of us who've followed immigration policy for years already knew; child separation at the border happened under the Obama administration when there was just cause; it was an exception when the child's safety was a concern and/or the parent was a criminal or a suspected child trafficker. It was not a policy or rule applied to all families crossing the border at unauthorized entry points.
Snip:
“Bush and Obama did not have policies that resulted in the mass separation of parents and children like we’re seeing under the current administration,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told us.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a June 18 press briefing: “The Obama administration, the Bush administration all separated families. … They did — their (Obama administration) rate was less than ours, but they absolutely did do this. This is not new.”
Nielsen went on to explain that there is indeed something new, as we wrote in another article on this topic. Under a “zero tolerance policy” on illegal immigration announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April, the administration is now referring all illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution. By doing that, parents have been separated from their children, because children can’t be held in detention facilities for adults.
DHS told us that 2,342 children were separated from their parents between May 5 and June 9. But DHS couldn’t provide any statistics on how many children may have been separated from their parents under the Obama administration.
Instead, when we asked, it pointed to numbers that show 21 percent of apprehended adults were referred for prosecution under President Barack Obama from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal 2016. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/did-th...-families/
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Under the initial Trump/Session's policy, the goal was clearly 100% prosecution for illegal adult border-crossers, including adults with children, or as close as possible thereto. Thus the name "Zero Tolerance".
100% separation of children from adults is obviously a higher scale than 21%. Also, during Obama's administration, there were big spikes in illegal border crossings by unaccompanied minors (mostly male teens). The spikes during Trump's administration have been highest in illegal crossings by adults with children (https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration).
The very person in the Trump administration who leads the agency responsible for the detention of migrants at the border (Kristjen Nilesen) has publicly acknowledged that previous administrations did not separate children from their parents at the scale that the Trump administration did, before Trump was pressured into rescinding the child separation policy.
Her counterpart under the Obama administration (Jeh Johnson) has always acknowledged that child separation was an exception not a rule; he acknowledged it during his tenure and he's acknowledged it again recently in interviews. The goal at that time was to keep families together.
Johnson has confirmed what those of us who've followed immigration policy for years already knew; child separation at the border happened under the Obama administration when there was just cause; it was an exception when the child's safety was a concern and/or the parent was a criminal or a suspected child trafficker. It was not a policy or rule applied to all families crossing the border at unauthorized entry points.
Snip:
“Bush and Obama did not have policies that resulted in the mass separation of parents and children like we’re seeing under the current administration,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told us.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a June 18 press briefing: “The Obama administration, the Bush administration all separated families. … They did — their (Obama administration) rate was less than ours, but they absolutely did do this. This is not new.”
Nielsen went on to explain that there is indeed something new, as we wrote in another article on this topic. Under a “zero tolerance policy” on illegal immigration announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April, the administration is now referring all illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution. By doing that, parents have been separated from their children, because children can’t be held in detention facilities for adults.
DHS told us that 2,342 children were separated from their parents between May 5 and June 9. But DHS couldn’t provide any statistics on how many children may have been separated from their parents under the Obama administration.
Instead, when we asked, it pointed to numbers that show 21 percent of apprehended adults were referred for prosecution under President Barack Obama from fiscal year 2010 to fiscal 2016. https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/did-th...-families/
--------------------------------
Under the initial Trump/Session's policy, the goal was clearly 100% prosecution for illegal adult border-crossers, including adults with children, or as close as possible thereto. Thus the name "Zero Tolerance".
100% separation of children from adults is obviously a higher scale than 21%. Also, during Obama's administration, there were big spikes in illegal border crossings by unaccompanied minors (mostly male teens). The spikes during Trump's administration have been highest in illegal crossings by adults with children (https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration).