CBP Photo via Flickr
By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams
Amid a news cycle dominated by the day-to-day chaos, antics, and scandals of the Trump presidency, new government numbers released on Thursday offered a grim reminder that the humanitarian travesty sparked by President Donald Trump’s inhumane family separation policy is still ongoing, despite the fact that it has faded into the background of corporate news coverage.
In court filings on Thursday, lawyers for the Trump Justice Department said that 565 immigrant children remain separated from their parents and held in detention facilities more than three weeks after the court-mandated deadline for reunification.
While immigrant rights activists and advocacy groups have continued calling attention to the crisis and working tirelessly to ensure that every child is ultimately reunited with their families, much of the media “has largely moved on, worn out and dazzled by other outrages,” observed Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur.
As Judd Legum noted in his Popular Information newsletter this week, “the Trump administration has been able to get away with its disinterested approach to reunification by taking advantage of the short attention spans of the public and the media.”
“This week, for example, the focus has been on a new book in which a former White House aide, Omarosa Manigault, claims that Trump is a racist. As proof, she claims there is a secret tape of Trump using the n-word on The Apprentice,” Legum notes. “Interest in the Omarosa story far exceeds interest in the child separation story, even at its June peak. This week, despite hundreds of kids still in limbo, child separation barely registers.”
Legum goes on to point to a Google Trends chart showing levels of interest in the children separated from their parents by the Trump administration’s so-called zero-tolerance policy—which a 99-year-old Nuremberg prosecutor called “a crime against humanity“—compared to interest in the Omarosa story.
As the Huffington Post reported on Thursday, “number of kids who have been reunited in the last couple of weeks can be counted on two hands.”
Two weeks ago, the Trump administration said that 572 children were still separated from their parents, which is just seven more than the number reported by the Justice Department on Thursday.
“The numbers are horrible—and it’s so important to remember that it’s not just numbers: it’s kids, torn away from their parents by Trump’s cruel policy and put in cages,” Andrew Stroehlein of Human Rights Watch wrote in response to the Trump administration’s court filings. “U.S. taxpayers have been funding this torture of children and are rightly outraged.”
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This is a shameful blot on our country. The needless cruelty = the oblivious politicians who put this in place. The children who will always remember this country with anger and pain no matter where they end up. That nothing is being done to reunite them with their parents just adds to the incredible stupidity of seperating them in the first place. There SHOULD be punishment for the perpetrators of this – and a high priority should be placed on reuniting the kids with their families.
This is the greatest sin committed in our USA. Our Country used to be looked up at when I was young in the 50s. But now it is considered one of the worst. I won’t be surprised if a war takes place in our Country. The thing is that the President and all those rich in government have safe places underground where to hide. They don’t care about the rest of us. This is how selfish our government is. I would hate to be them when they die. Because there is a higher up whom they have to answer to. Just leave it up to Him. He takes perfect care without a stick and a whip. So Trump and all his followers look out. You will get what is coming to you. You should have never messed with Gof. You are responsible for every single one of those children whom you have trained to hate you and Our once beautiful USA. Right now the priority should be to unite all those children to their God given parents.
This needs resolved now not in the hear after
The children have suffered a trauma that will have a life long impact on their emotional well being.
Thank you San Diego Free Press for keeping this story in view. America needs to be updated until every child is reunited. They all had parents when they came here. They need to be with them as soon as possible.
San Diego Free Press thank you for publishing this story. I hope you will include a daily reminder of this atrocity Until this is fixed I can not be a proud American.
TRUMP SHOULD BE JAILED AND BE IMPEACHED, THIS IS INSANE IN MODERN HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY__INSANE—-JAILED AND IMPEACHED!
Local press, please, kindly investigate the whereabouts of the millions donated to legally represent these immigrants and reunite the affected families.
Our news media has a lot to answer for – it is for every nonsensical, idiotic, dangerous comment that Mr. Trump made during his campaign. Nobody stopped him from repeating :Crooked Hillary” because if one says a thing long enough, it becomes true in some minds. Now he’s chanting “No collusion, witch hunt” and media is happy to reprint all of his nauseous tweets and live comments. What happened to the venerable New York Times slogan, “All the news that’s FIT to print?” All caps are mine.
I have been working hard to make things right again. America has lost its moral compass we can not go on allowing Trump to do what he pleases. We must vote out all these politicians and restore our dignity. Caging children and their parents is inhuman. America is no longer
the greatest country in the world. Trump made sure of that. I belong to three organizations that are doing everything possible to stop the insane caging of children and parents. Please help an organization in your area. I worry that these children are scared forever. I worry that there will be another civil war. If the protests, lawsuits and other pleas do not make an impact and people feel their backs are against a wall, they will react. Pray that
our Father above listens to all of us and intervenes soon.
Irene Chavez Please post the groups you know that are helping these traumatized families come together again! Share what you know!