Donald Trump has built his presidency by demonizing immigrants. Pushing an extreme anti-immigrant agenda that has been a hallmark of his administration. From calling Mexican immigrants rapists, to his Muslim ban, to his decision to end the DACA program and abandon Dreamers, Trump has peddled hate in the same way he once peddled steaks, a fake University, and a reality TV show.
But this hate is not entertaining, nor is it harmless marketing. Rather, it has become increasingly destructive and cruel. Nowhere is this more evident than in the administration’s decision to rip children from the arms of their mothers in a disgusting new policy tearing apart families at our border.
{mosads}In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy requiring the prosecution of all immigrants—including those seeking asylum—referred by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for illegal entry. Under this new policy, which is designed to deter even people with a legitimate claim to asylum under both international and American law from attempting to enter the country, parents are arrested and criminally prosecuted and their children taken away from them. These children may be taken many hundreds of miles away – and there is no system to reunify them with their parents after the parents’ criminal cases are resolved, often in just a few days.
This is an affront to American values. It is a blatant end-run around legal protections for children and families that developed over decades – including through federal court decisions. Under one such case, Flores v. Reno, DHS must use special care when detaining families with children, and it must generally release such families while they wait for their immigration proceedings to play out. By taking their children from the parents, however, the government can essentially deny these court-ordered protections. This is the true purpose of Trump’s decision. It is cruel, disgraceful and an affront to the due process rights enshrined in our laws and established by our courts.
Since the zero tolerance policy was announced, DHS has taken nearly 1,000 children from their parents. They include an 18-month-old Honduran child ripped from his mother’s arms, and two sons, aged 4 and 10, taken from a Salvadoran woman given only five minutes to say goodbye. This policy has been met with tremendous alarm, including from the American Pediatrics Association, which explains that the policy will have significant adverse impact on many children’s cognitive abilities.
President Trump’s asylum policies have been aided and abetted by the Republican majorities in Congress. The Judiciary Committee, on which I serve as ranking member, has not engaged in any oversight of these harmful new policies and has failed to hold a single hearing with the secretary of Homeland Security. Nor do we hear any moral outrage or public questioning in response to the headlines of families being torn apart and children separated from their parents. Instead, Republicans have proposed legislation that would increase the criminal prosecution of immigrants, restrict protections for unaccompanied children, and decimate our asylum and protection programs.
Our nation’s founders fled political and religious persecution in search of freedom and opportunity in a new land. The Trump immigration agenda destroys this legacy by targeting individuals seeking those same freedoms, and it does so by delivering the harshest penalties – parents given criminal sentences and children torn from the arms of their mothers and fathers.
We have a legal and moral obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us, which surely includes children. If President Trump’s asylum and family separation policy is allowed to continue, this country will fail to meet a critical test of its values.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is the ranking member of the House Committee on the Judiciary and has served in Congress since 1992. He represents New York’s 10th Congressional District, which includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.