Originally Posted by
Flytolive
WHAT WAS SAID
“The Obama administration, the Bush administration all separated families at the — They absolutely did.”
— The secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, in a news conference on Monday
This is misleading.
While previous administrations did break up families, it was rare, according to former officials and immigration experts. The Trump administration, by contrast, has knowingly enacted the practice that some officials have characterized as a deterrence against illegal entry.
In 2005, President George W. Bush introduced Operation Streamline, which, like the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, referred for prosecution immigrants illegally crossing the border. Unlike the Trump administration, the Bush administration made an exception for parents with children.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security could not provide data on how many children were separated from their parents in previous administrations.
Jeh Johnson, Ms. Nielsen’s predecessor under President Barack Obama, said in a recent interview with NPR that it was possible that families were separated, “but not as a matter of policy or practice.”
“I can’t say that it never happened,” Mr. Johnson said. “There may have been some exigent situation, some emergency. There may have been some doubt about whether the adult accompanying the child was in fact the parent of the child.”
Cecilia Muñoz, Mr. Obama’s top domestic policy adviser, told The New York Times that the Obama administration had decided against separating children from their parents because “the morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are.”
A 2016 report from the American Immigration Council details the stories of children detained with one parent, but separated from the other. One woman was detained with her children and separated from her nephew, who was transferred to the care of a foster family.
But neither the Bush nor Obama administration had a policy that had the effect of widespread family separation, said Sarah Pierce of the Migration Policy Institute. “Nothing like what the Trump administration is doing has occurred before,” she said.
I don't know why you keep posting this same quote to "prove" family separations never happened under previous administrations when the quote you are posting states in black and white (see bolded parts of your quote) that family separations did happen under previous administrations, just not to the same extent. If you believe family separations are so horrible, it wouldn't matter if it was one or a thousand, right? And the crazy thing is that the separations that happened under previous administrations happened for the exact same reasons they happened under Trump; the only difference is that Trump was more hard-nosed in his enforcement of immigration laws already on the books, which falls under the fourth bullet point below (or the third numbered point):
"Fact
DHS does not have a blanket policy of separating families at the border. However, DHS does have a responsibility to protect all minors in our custody. This means DHS will separate adults and minors under certain circumstances. These circumstances include: 1) when DHS is unable to determine the familial relationship, 2) when DHS determines that a child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or 3) when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution.
Familial Relationship – If there is reason to question the claimed familial relationship between an adult and child, it is not appropriate to detain adults and children together.
Human Trafficking and Smuggling – If there is reason to suspect the purported parent or legal guardian of human trafficking or smuggling, DHS detains the adult in an appropriate, secure detection facility, separate from the minor. DHS continues to see instances and intelligence reports indicating minors are trafficked by unrelated adults, posing as a “family” in an effort to avoid detention.
Safety Risk – If there is reason to suspect the purported parent or legal guardian poses a safety risk to the child (e.g. suspected child abuse), it is not appropriate to maintain the adult and child together.
Criminal Prosecution – If an adult is referred for criminal prosecution, the adult will be transferred to U.S. Marshals Service custody and any children will be classified as an unaccompanied alien child and transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services custody."
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