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The human costs of the Trump administration’s government shutdown continue to get more devastating by the day. The ongoing reunification of children stolen from families at the southern border, ordered as a result of a court case led by the American Civil Liberties Union, is “on pause right now,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports, “because the agencies involved are affected by the shutdown.”
Trump’s shutdown has already been affecting tens of thousands of cases in immigration court, but not even kids are being spared from this cruelty, apparently. “Before the shutdown,” MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff tweeted, “over one month ago, 161 kids were still waiting on reunification.” Their detention comes as a devastating government watchdog report finds that far more children were stolen under the policy than previously admitted by officials.
While the administration eventually said that more than 2,500 children had been kidnapped under the 2018 policy, the Office of the Health and Human Services Inspector General confirmed last week that officials were separating families long before that. Investigators think that thousands could have been stolen, but “how many more children were separated is unknown by us and HHS,” the OIG said. Nor does the OIG know for sure how many of those kids were eventually reunified with their families, or if they were at all.
This is a crime against humanity that the ACLU is intent on pursuing. “Attorneys with the ACLU said that they are not willing to wait for answers about how many kids were taken overall and where all of those kids might be,” Maddow continued. “They tell us, never mind the shutdown, they are ready to ask a court to intervene, again, now.”
The “bombshell report reveals the true scope of this horrific policy: that thousands of children were forcibly removed from their parents before the policy was made public and the fate of these children is still unknown,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said. “No one has been held accountable for this humanitarian disaster at our Southern border … DHS Secretary Nielsen should accept responsibility for this outrage and resign.”
Tuesday, Jan. 22, marks 180 days past the federal judge’s reunification deadline, but children stolen from families at the border under the “zero tolerance” policy are still in U.S. custody. Children stolen from families before the policy are … no one knows, exactly. Family separation remains a crisis.