Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
"Quantity counts,"
SO putting 5 year-olds in cages is OK, as long as you do it less than a maximum number of times?
Off the top of your head, without looking, do you have any idea how often Obama did it, and how often Trump did it? I bet you don't. Yet somehow, you know Obama did it an acceptable number of times, but Trump exceeded that number. Funny how that always works out for you.
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Quantity referred to the smoke around Trump and his associates but since you asked.
No, I have time, I'll look it up for you. I've looked at the issue before.
It's really not that hard to understand the difference.
BUSH
President George W. Bush began the trend of a "zero tolerance" approach in 2005 with Operation Streamline, but during his administration, exceptions were generally made for adults traveling with minors.
OBAMA
U.S. President Barack Obama made changes to immigration policy, releasing parents and focusing on deportation of immigrants who committed crimes in the U.S. Attempting to cope with the 2014 American immigration crisis, a surge of refugees fleeing violence in Central America, while complying with the 1997 Flores v. Reno Settlement Agreement consent decree by keeping families together, under Obama the Department of Homeland Security built family detention centers in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Texas.
In 2015 Obama introduced the Family Case Management Program which, according to the fact sheet about the program, specifically prioritized "families with certain vulnerabilities, including pregnant or nursing family member; those with very young children; family members with medical/mental health concerns; families who speak only indigenous languages; and other special needs" to offer an alternative to being held in detention centers while awaiting the court to process their asylum claims, which often takes years.
Jeh Johnson, who served as homeland security secretary under Obama, said he did not separate children and parents despite the enormous surges of unaccompanied minors and families that came across the border in 2014 fleeing Central American violence.
"In three years on my watch, we probably deported or returned or repatriated about a million people to enforce border security. One of the things I could not do is separate a child from his or her mother, or literally pull a mother from his or her arms," Johnson said on MSNBC last week. “I just couldn’t do it.”
Obama’s top domestic policy adviser, Cecilia Muñoz, said the Obama administration did consider a similar policy, but determined it heartless.
"The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” Muñoz told The New York Times in an interview recently. "I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are."
TRUMP
The Trump administration family separation policy was an aspect of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policy. The policy was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. It was adopted across the whole U.S.–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018.
Under Trump's policy, federal authorities separated children from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails, and the children placed under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Trump administration separated 1,995 children from 1,940 adults from April 19 to May 31, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday, a period in which the "zero tolerance" policy was in effect.
President Donald Trump rescinded the policy June 20, 2018, after a public outcry about it. The Department of Health and Human Services initially reported caring for 2,654 children after Trump's order.
But the department’s inspector general reported Thursday that Customs and Border Protection’s El Paso sector had begun implementing policies that separated families in July 2017.
Under a federal court order, HHS eventually identified 2,737 children that were cared for after Trump’s order.
“However, thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court, and HHS has faced challenges in identifying separated children,” the 24-page report said.