The Trump administration's devotion to white nationalism comes with a steep price tag. It's not cheap to hold refugee children in detention camps, and it's not cheap to build new child detention camps as the old ones fill up. So HHS Secretary Alex Azar has informed the Senate that he plans to shuffle over a quarter billion dollars from other HHS programs to cover it.
In addition to slashing other programs for refugees, Azar and the administration are taking the axe to education, health services, and cancer research.
The rest is being taken from other programs, including $16.7 million from Head Start, $5.7 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. Money is also being diverted from programs dedicated to mental and maternal health, women’s shelters and substance abuse.
This is being done solely to support the Trump administration's insistence that we put refugee children in prison camps. Over 13,000 children are currently being held, and current facilities are already near capacity. So they're going to build more.
All of this to serve a white nationalist agenda that insists that refugee children pose such a threat to the American way of life that we cannot tolerate their presence. It was that or fight cancer, and Trump's Republican toadies made their choice.