CHILDREN/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “In May, when the outrage over the separation of migrant children from their parents was beginning to boil, President Trump’s secretary for Homeland Security shrugged off accusations that it was a ‘form of state terror.’ After all, she said, ‘We do it every day in every part of the country.’ On this point, the secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, is right. Family separation is a fact of life in the United States, happening hundreds — if not thousands — of times a day. ‘In the United States,’ she said, ‘we call that law enforcement.’ Advocates for criminal justice reform have argued that Americans appalled at the treatment of immigrant families at the border should realize that prosecutors and the police routinely separate children from their parents. It happens when parents or children are arrested, it happens when incarcerated women give birth — it can even be triggered when a pregnant woman fails a mandatory drug test, or when a child skips school. It comes with no warning, sometimes in the middle of the night. Unlike with the more than 2,300 migrant children that the government has taken from their parents since the crackdown, American parents may not be faced with the fear that the government has lost track of their sons and daughters altogether. But experts say cleaving families apart is still damaging.”
-Shaila Dewan, “Family Separation: It’s a Problem for U.S. Citizens, Too,” The New York Times online, June 22, 2018