21 June 2018 - Trump Signs Order Reversing Family Separation Policy
President Trump Signs Executive Order to Keep Immigrant Families Together
Alana Abramson (Time Magazine, 20/06/2018)
In a sudden reversal, President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order designed to keep together immigrant families who have been detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, while also retaining his administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
“I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “At the same time, we are keeping a very powerful border, but continue to be zero tolerance.”
Trump’s executive order would keep most families together under the Department of Homeland Security, except in cases where an adult may pose a threat to a child. (Read the full executive order and an explanation of it here.) “You’re going to have a lot of happy people,” Trump said as he signed the order.
Without Trump administration plan to reunite families, burden falls to NGOs
Olivia Solon (The Guardian, 21/06/2018)
Donald Trump may have signed an executive order to end the separation of families at the southern border, but his administration is not making any special efforts to immediately reunite the 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under his “zero tolerance” policy.
The lack of action has created an additional burden for groups that provide legal and social services to immigrants, flooding non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with cases.
Babies in warehouses: This is what the GOP has come to
Jennifer Rubin (The Washington Post, 20/06/2018)
The blood of decent Americans was already boiling because of the pictures and audio of children being separated from their parents at the border. Then came the Associated Press article Tuesday evening:
Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.
Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.
Trump admin seeking help to fight media coverage of family separations
Tal Kopan (CNN, 20/06/2018)
The Trump administration is seeking additional help to combat negative media coverage of the practice of family separation along the border.
In an email obtained by CNN, Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, put out a call to all of its field offices asking for additional press staff to come to headquarters for 60 days to help address media reporting on the issue.
The mission will be to "push back on factually inaccurate reporting in the media" and look for reports in the press that contain "glaring inaccuracies," the email says.