Trump Is Gaslighting You About Migrant Kids At The Border

Thousands of kids have been taken from their parents at our borders and the administration is lying about it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening to stuff mom never told you. Now today we're
going to dive into a topic that I've sort of
been to admit kind of tuning out a little bit

(00:27):
um for my own kind of mental health. I found
myself sort of tuning out the news because it's massively,
massively depressing. But you know what, that is a huge privilege.
Not everyone has the ability to just sort of tune
out news, but it does not necessarily affect them personally.
And I kind of checked back in and everything is

(00:48):
on fire and things are horrible. That's a pretty accurate statement. Yes,
So we wanted to dive into one of those topics,
which is the crisis at our borders, which is really quickly.
One thing to know is that we're recording this on Wednesday,
and while we were putting together notes, there was sort
of breaking news on that front just really early this morning.

(01:08):
So by the time you listen to this, things could
be different. It's very much a situation that's in flux.
So if you listen to this and say, oh, they
didn't mention this new thing that happened, it probably happened
after we've recorded So the first thing to know about
this situation is that it is hella confusing, and I
feel like that's probably by design. Yeah, I would agree.
Press and lawmakers are having a hard time getting access

(01:29):
to detention centers and thus are having a hard time
reporting on it. When CNN went there, they were not
allowed to take pictures or bring camera and the only
images that were allowed were the ones provided by the
Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, so you can imagine what
that's not necessarily providing the full picture of what's happening.
And you've actually seen interesting cases of folks who have

(01:49):
worked for these centers and for DHS who are leaking
video from inside or audio from inside. On the Rachel
matt Ol Show, a former employee end up getting this
audio of one of the officials at one of these
centers telling a bunch of children in Spanish. You know,
don't talk to reporters about your situation. We're trying to
help you. We really want to unite you with your family.

(02:12):
If you talk to reporters about what's going on, you
could be on the news, and who knows how long
you'll be here, you know, which is a pretty thing
to tell a bunch of kids who one are really
confused already and too aren't with their parents if they're
miners that are really not able to be, you know,
making these kinds of decisions kind of stuff. Yeah. Absolutely.
Another thing making it confusing is that the administration is

(02:33):
being super unclear about everything to the point of downright
lying and gas lighting. Yes, if you listen to our
episode on gas lighting, you know that myself had plenty
of others feel like they're being gaslighted by this administration.
This is a situation where it's a very clear like
when you actually sit down and look at all of
the things different high ranking people and this one administration
have said that our contradictory that are flat out untrue.

(02:56):
When you look at all of them side by side,
you feel like you're losing your mind. You feel like
where it's one of those situations where you are we
are really being gasolt on a national scale. There's no
other way to put it. So here are just some
of the things that this one administration have said so
far about this policy. Trump blamed Democrats on the policy
of separating families at the border. He tweeted, separating families

(03:16):
at the border is the fault of bad legislation passed
by the Democrats. Border security laws should be changed, but
the Dams can't get their act together. So he's saying, Okay,
this policy exists, but it's the Democrats fault. They have
maintained that there was no policy of separating families at
the border. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristen Nielsen tweeted, we
do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.

(03:38):
This misreporting by members, press and advocacy groups must stop.
It is irresponsible and unproductive. So you know what policy,
policy does not exist, and Democrats did it right. Yeah,
So they said that they were using separating families at
the border as a way of deterring immigrants from coming
to America. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly has
said this, and Jeff Sessions have said this. They've started

(03:59):
on vid you, so you know they've sat it, We've
seen it with our eyes. They've maintained that separating families
at the border is actually biblically mandated. Jeff Sessions said
this during a speech. According to The Hill, Session cited
scripture while defending this policy, saying I would cite to
you the Apostle paud is clear and wise command in
Romans thirteen to obey the laws of the government because
God was ordained them for the purpose of order. Um.

(04:22):
He said this at a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Stephen Colbert did a piece on this on that specifically
where he went on to read Romans ten, which it continues,
love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to
a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Yeah,
but that particular piece of scripture does not justify intense cruelty.

(04:42):
So you just didn't ignore it, right, Yeah, And other
people have pointed out that scripture was also used to
justify slavery. Yeah, we should like, what are we using
the scripture to justify I mean, yeah, the whole the
whole thing is a farce. Yeah. Separating families at the
border is be use as a negotiation tool. Trump tweeted
Democrats can fix their forced family break up at the

(05:05):
border by working with Republicans on new legislation. It seems
to be what he's suggesting there is that these children
are being used as a kind of bargaining chip to
get his wall, which is pretty disgusting. Another thing that
he has said is that his hands were tied and
that he could not overturn this policy by an executive order,
that he needed Democrats and Congress to get their act
together to do anything at all. His hands were tied.

(05:27):
He said, I hate the children are being taken away.
Trump told reporters on June fifteen, the Democrats have to
change their law. It's their law. When he was pressed
on using executive action, he said, I can't do it
through executive order. But obviously that was a lie, because
on June he did exactly that, signing an executive order
to keep parents and children together in detention. More on

(05:47):
that later, but pretty clearly that's there's just a lie.
There's like, there's like no other way to put it.
He said one thing, and then his own behavior illustrated
that thing, that he was on camera saying it was
not true. The Washington Post has a great video rundown
of just a slice of some of the contradictory statements
coming out of this administration. I want to focus on

(06:09):
the American families who have been permanently separated from their
children because of the sanctuary cities and open borders that
Hillary Clinton so strongly supports our Department of Homeland Security
personnel going to separate the children from their moms and dads. Yes,
I am considering in auder to deter I am considering

(06:32):
exactly that. I hate it, but that's a Democrat bill
that we're enforcing. If I included things from just you know,
spokespeople who are not in the administration, this whole segment
would be about showing how much they lie. But I
only specifically chose statements public statements from actual Trump administration officials.

(06:52):
And this is how unclear it's being. And so when
I was just compiling this, by the end of it,
I felt dizzy. It was like, what is our policy?
Is there a policy? It? Like? Is it? Basically you're
saying there is no policy, But if there is, it's
a Democrats fault and it would be a really good
bargaining tool if there was, And actually it would be
biblically mandated if we had one, but we don't have one.

(07:13):
And if we did have one, Trump could not get
rid of it by executive order, but he did, so
you can get a sense of why this is a
dizzying situation. Yeah, it reminds me of the narcissist prayer
that you brought up in the guest. Yeah, pains me
to say this. This is such a good example of
gas lighting from our administration. I mean, I'm someone who
pays pretty careful attention to the news generally when I'm

(07:35):
not making a conscious effort to check out of it,
and I feel like I don't have a lot of
clarity about what's going on. And so imagine your average
person who is, you know, a casual observer of the news.
We don't have a situation where it's easy to understand
what's going on in your own country, and that's a problem. Yeah, absolutely,
So what's really going on? There are a couple of

(07:56):
things that we can we can tell you. These are
are sort of if we go back to the aus
lighting up the stud this is my gas light where
I know this is a number because I saw it
on an official statement. You know, I know this is
happening because I saw a picture of it, right, Yeah,
your facts that you can refer back to your journal entry. Yeah,
we know that at least two thousand two children were

(08:17):
separated from their parents between May five and June nine
as a result of Trump's policy exactly. So one question
that I've seen sort of floating around a lot is
why is this happening? And I want to make it
clear that a lot of folks have this narrative of
people who cross our borders they're doing so because they're
fleeing economic oppression. And so for a long time that

(08:38):
was definitely true that your average person crossing the border
was a man who was looking to find work to
send money back home. But because of really really violent
situations in Central America, places like Hondores, places like a Salvador,
now you have people who are fleeing with their entire family.
So the situation is really really changed. Many people are

(09:00):
fleeing intense violence, gangs, and political turmoil in Central America.
And this is really sounds like a terrible situation for
people who have children, boys of a certain age when
they become you know, tan eleven twelve, a lot of
them are really targeted and pressured by gangs to join
their gang, and if they don't, it could have really
really violent outcomes. And parents sometimes have to work extra

(09:22):
to get money to provide security for their kids if
they want this to be a situation their kids avoid.
It's also bad for girls and places like call Salvador
and on Honduras, because they're targeted at an early age
to either be sexually abused or to become gang members.
According to the Atlantic, the eventual fate of a girl,
whether she's left alone, harassed into joining a gang, or
forced into becoming a sex slave, depends entirely on local

(09:43):
leaders or palabrero's who run the local cells or clicks
of two of the largest gangs, MS thirteen and Barrio eighteen.
And it really just sounds like a terrifying situation for
people who have children. I'm reminded of this really beautiful
um worse on Shire, a poem she writes, no one
puts their children on a boat unless the water is

(10:03):
safer than the land. And that just really hits home
for me, because I think we need to remember that
fleeing economic oppression, to me is valid. But a lot
of times people are fleeing really serious life or death situations.
They're not coming here for fun. When you talk to
so many of them, they say, if if I could
have the choice to stay home, you don't think I would. Yeah, yeah,

(10:24):
of course they would. You know, people are coming with
very young children, and they know that they're making a
very dangerous and tough decision to cross our borders, and
no one would do that with a baby, with a
baby under five unless they didn't have a choice. Yeah,
I read that. People have been trying to figure out,
I mean, whether this works at all as a deterrent
separating families of the border, and most everyone that they've

(10:47):
talked to is said, that doesn't even factor into your
mind when you make the decision I have to flee
from my life, in my family's life. You're not thinking
beyond that. You're thinking, this is a dangerous situation and
I have to get out of it. And no one
is going to make that. Yeah, no one's going to
make that choice, that dangerous choice, unless they feel like
there is no other option. Right. I know there's someone

(11:08):
out there thinking, why don't they just call the police?
What don't they just do that? That's not an option
in a lot of these places. All these places they
have such political turmoil that there really isn't a lot
of action or recourse you could take. Right if a
local gang is saying you need to pay me x
amount of money every week or I'm going to kill
you in your family, and you don't have that money,
you don't have options to to do anything else, and

(11:29):
so it just seems unimaginably cruel and not compassionate to
not allow folks who are fleeing very serious life or
death situations to do so. Sign Note I would also
add that some of these places, I would argue, the
reason why they have such political turboil and distabilities actually
because of US foreign policy intervention. And so it's kind

(11:51):
of like, oh, you're gonna make it so that my
country is not a stable or safe place to live
and then bar me from getting out of that situation,
which to me is just unfathomable. Yeah, and to make
matters worse, earlier this month, Jeff Sessions barred domestic violence
and gang violence as reasons to seek legal asylum in
the United States. So previously, if you were actually fleeing,

(12:13):
you know, violence, incredibly you could come to the United States.
That was that was how we did business. And honestly,
Jeff Sessions, this move of barring domestic violence victims from
speaking legal asylum in the United States just let's be clear.
People will die at the hands of their abusers because
of that choice. Like there's no other way to say it.
People will die, and it will be. That policy is
going to get people killed for sure, no doubt about it. Yeah,

(12:36):
I know, I heard a report from someone. It already has.
They've some reporters have like followed back to see what
happened to people who are turned away, and it already has.
Here's a good summary based on a box piece. Let's
say you're fleeing a dangerous country like Honduras. You could
go to a U s port of entry like a
border checkpoint and claim asylum, which is legal. But if
you cross the border not at a point of entry,

(12:57):
it's a misdemeanor. If you're caught doing this, officials interview
you to make sure you have quote credible fear if
sent back to your home country. This is to determine
whether you are eligible to go in front of a
judge and seek asylum. About three and four people are
deemed credible. So before Trump's zero tolerance policy, those who
were deemed to have a credible fear would be put
on a track to seed immigration judge who would figure

(13:18):
out whether or not they could be granted asylum. Again,
it used to be if you were fleeing violence, domestic
violence or gang violence, that kind of thing. You could
be granted asylum in the United States at that point
if you actually are fleeing violence. The US has to
keep asylum seekers because federal international law says they can't
just support people back to places where they would face danger.
And before Trump's zero tolerance policy, families generally would be

(13:41):
kept in detention together while they waited for the results
of these proceedings. Now, some families were released and told
to come back for a court date. Others were kept
waiting at attention for up to twenty days, and if
they had not seen a judge by then, they were
released and told to return for a court date at
some point during the future. If you recall, during the
Obama administration, this was sometimes called catch and release. It
was a policy of sort of okay, come back, we'll

(14:04):
figure it out later. And Trump really vowed to sort
of end this this policy. Yeah, and here are some
of the things that are different about Trump's approach. Instead
of first figuring out whether you should be granted asylum,
the administration's first step is now to deal with the
other matter at hand, the misdemeanor for a legal entry.
Upon being apprehended by border patrol, you are set aside

(14:26):
to be detained by U. S. Marshals and sent to
a federal jail to await trial. And this is where
the separation happens. Because a child can't go with you
to federal jail, he or she is taken from you
and put under the supervision of the Department of Health
and Human Services. And this is where you have those awful,
awful pictures of children in cages. And for a while,

(14:47):
there was no set process for how these kids would
be reunited with their parents. Now, just early this morning,
a couple of hours before we were in the studio,
eight judge sort of made a ruling that families had
to be reunited after thirty days. It's just a brand
new thing. We'll talk more about that in just a bit,
But for the majority of this conversation, there was not
a process in place for how kids would be reunited

(15:08):
with their parents. In detention centers, a lot of immigrants
don't have phone access, and sometimes it's taken parents months
to track down their kids. Additionally, some parents are being
deported without their children, and advocates say that some children
are being deported without their parents, and it just sounds
like a really convoluted situation where parents are not being
kept abreast of what's happening with their kids and vice versa. Yeah,

(15:28):
and a common refrain that you'll hear when this this
whole thing comes up, is well, Obama and Bush separated
families too, and that's awful. But Trump's zero tolerance policy
is what makes it different. While past policy also attempted
to dissuade illegal border crossing, the zero tolerance part of
this is new. The Obama policy made exceptions for families

(15:50):
crossing the border with children to avoid separating them. According
to figures obtained by The Washington Post, only about cases
between two thousand ten and two thousand and sixteen were
referred for federal prosecution per CNN. Under both Obama and
his predecessor, President George W. Bush, tens of thousands of
illegal immigrants were prosecuted via operations streamline, so as Politofacts reports,

(16:12):
most parents traveling with children were exempted. So yeah, that's
really a key difference, which is that there were exceptions made.
You know, I don't. I want to be clear. I
was a big, big, vocal critic of Obama's immigration policies,
and I think a lot of people on the left
were and so, but I do know that Obama's administration
was legitimately facing an increase of immigrants coming through our borders,

(16:35):
and so I think they implemented policies that I was
very vocally against in order to deal with that. The
Trump administration is dealing with no such influx of immigrants,
and they are really kind of running wild with this
immigration apparatus that the Obama administration really did set up.
And so, to be clear, Obama's immigration policies are what

(16:56):
helped create the roadmap for where we are today, and
Trump is really sort of running with that. I've heard
people say things like Obama built this apparatus and then
gave the keys to a madman who was Trump. During
the Obama administration, a federal judge in California ruled that
Obama was violating a twenty year old case known as
Flores when it kept families detained for longer than twenty days.

(17:16):
The Trump administration has used the Florest settlement as the
backbone for separation policies today. So that's our a lot.
I mean, it's infuriating, that's a lot it is, but
that's sort of what's going down. Yeah, let's get more
into the conditions and what they're like for the kids
who are being detained. But first let's take a quick

(17:37):
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor. So to me, one of the saddest things.
I don't know why this this particular nugget really stuck
with me, but one of the saddest things I found
about the situation is that parents a lot of times

(17:58):
are being sort of missed lead about what's going on
with their kids, and they don't find out until it's
too late. According to federal defenders, some border patrol agents
are straight up lying to families about how long they're
being separated and why. A federal defender told Washington Posts
Michael E. Miller that parents were told their children were
just being taken away briefly for questioning. Liz Goodwin of
the Boston Globe sites a defender saying that in several cases,

(18:21):
children were taken by border patrol agents who said they
were going to give them a bath. As the hours passed,
it's suddenly dawn on the mothers that the kids were
not coming back. I can't imagine what that would be like, having,
first of all, a stranger taking my kid and saying
I'm gonna give your kid a bath. Already that would
be bad enough, but then waiting as these hours go by,
and realizing I might not see her again, she might

(18:42):
not be coming back. Yeah, it reminds me, and I
do hate when people just bring up the Nazis all
the time. But I did visit Auschwitz when I was
in Germany, and you kind of have this expectation, you
know it's gonna be miserable, you know, the kind of
kinds of things you're gonna see. But the room that
I broke john and started crying in was the room
where it had all of the suitcases children had packed.

(19:05):
Then they were excited because they were told like, you're
going to kind of go to this fun like you're
gonna get away and go to somewhere nice, and just
suitcases as far as you could see of kids who packed,
and it's just horrendous, heartbreaking, it is. Yeah. So so
I want to say two things about that. Artists have
done a photography series of photographing all of the things

(19:26):
these kids bring. Because when you show up at these centers,
they take your belongings. So if you come with like
a teddy bear or like a doll. They take that
from you. And there's something so heartbreaking about the things
a migrant child brings when they're making this dangerous journey
for their lives and then knowing that someone took that
from them. You know, it's something something about that is
so powerful to me. And again, what you said about

(19:48):
this idea that the kids were excited, that reminds me
so much of all of these gig holes in the
media saying things like, oh, it's basically a summer camp.
It's no different than when you go to boarding school.
It's like people saying, oh, they get to watch movies,
they get to play games. They're not what their parents
their kids like. You could take me from my parents

(20:10):
and take put me on a Caribbean cruise. If I'm
not with my mom and I'm a kid, that's that's
a problem. And the fact of the matter is if
it's a summer camp and send your kids there, That's
what I want to say. If it's a summer camp,
then I would like Laura Ingram to send her daughter there.
If it's if it's so nice, I'm such a nice experience. Yeah,
And just the uncertainty and not knowing it would be

(20:34):
so scary. You don't know what's going on. You're just
you're just in this place without your parents, and very
young babies are being taken from their parents. Three centers
in Combs, Raymondville, and Brownsville in southern Texas called tender
age centers, which have been repurposed to house the youngest migrants,
including those younger than five. The Associated Press reported within

(20:55):
three days, the children are supposed to be transferred from
immigration detention to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is
part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The
CEO of Southwest Key, which operates twenty six o r
R shelters, tells NPR the children at his facilities range
from ages zero to seventeen. Babies babies, So here's why

(21:17):
that's so bad. One former detention center worker who recently
quit because of all of these conditions, he has been
really vocal about speaking out about what's happening. He basically
said that the most part before this policy, young people
who crossed the border eight percent of the time, they
were teenagers who were doing it alone, and they sort
of knew the drill, They knew what to expect. Usually
they'd be detained for a while and then they would

(21:38):
go live with the family mem but or sometimes their
own parents. And so these were older kids who sort
of knew the drill. Now it's very young babies who
are basically traumatized. This worker says, ad e quit because
the shelter where he worked in Tucuna, Arizona, which previously
had been pretty well run and well organized and was
able to provide a at least some sort of structure
for these kids, is now just overwhelm, helmed by an

(22:00):
influx of younger, more traumatized, really babies, which is sort
of a change from how things had been up until
that point. Yeah, and when you think of just the
logistics of it, a baby is not going to be
able to speak, to tell you the names of his
or her parents exactly. Yeah. I read a I read
a really troubling and report that a girl was being

(22:23):
detained with a baby, and that she didn't know this baby,
it wasn't a relative of hers, and she was changing
the baby's diaper because it was just such a chaotic
situation that you had, like a young girl taken care
of an even younger girl because the detention center was
just that ill equipped to handle it. So this worker
who quit, He actually says that his breaking point came

(22:44):
when he had to tell two siblings, ages six and ten,
they couldn't hug each other. They called me over the
radio and they wanted me to translate to these kids
that the rule of the shelter is that they were
not allowed to hug, he says. And these kids had
just been separated from their mom, basically just huddling and
hugging each other in a desperate attempt to remain together.
He had to say, you can't hug. That would break me.

(23:05):
I would quit too. I would not I would not
be able to do that. Yeah, that's like villain movie
villain level of barbaric, like no hugging Southwest. Key says,
it as a clear policy that allows touching and hugging
in certain circumstances. So who knows, I mean. The American
Academy of Pediatrics has said the practice of separating children
from their parents at the border can cause the children

(23:27):
quote irreparable harm, which, of course it's traumatic. Babies, particularly
baby babies, like every kid I think to be with
their parents, but babies being taken and put in a shelter,
I mean, baby jails. How will we come to this? Yeah,
if you haven't heard it already, Propablica obtained this audio
of baby's wailing and it's just unbearable. Let's take a

(23:50):
quick listen. If that doesn't kind of move you to

(24:11):
wanna take action and help these kids, Yeah, it's it's
it's almost hard to talk about for me. Someone who
was seemingly unmoved by this. This audio is Homeland Security
Secretary Kristin Nielsen. Protesters in d C stood outside of
her house and played this audio very loudly to sort
of drive home the message that hey, this is what
you're this is what you're doing. The Associated Press visited

(24:32):
one site and described a large, dark facility with separate
wings for children, adults, and families inside an old warehouse
in South Texas. Hundreds of children weight in a series
of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had twenty
children inside scattered about our bottles of water, bags of chips,
and large foil sheets intended to serve as blankets. That

(24:55):
doesn't sound like a summer camp to me. Yeah, there
was no situation like that in any of the summer
camps that I went to. I'm very curious what kind
of summer camps. Laura Ingram went to that this sounds like, yeah, yeah, seriously,
this turned into a whole other, frankly silly debate about
whether or not the kids were being kept in cages.
It is not in dispute that children are being kept
in chain link structures, but the administration bristled at the

(25:16):
word cages because we're in that much of an Orwellian
nightmare right now. Yeah, that whole debate that was a
blip in the new cycle of well are they cages
or are they chain link structures? I could give a Like,
I was so horrified. Some of the conversations that have
dominated the new cycle on this issue have made me nauseated.

(25:39):
Me are they actually cages? Is it civil to kick
somebody out of a restaurant? I could give a Kids
are in real, real bad situations. The fact that we've
kind of even allowed this conversation to even be slightly
dominated by these frankly the silliness is in enrages me
to know, and it makes it boils my blood. Yeah.

(26:00):
Another thing that boils my blood of the policies, especially
cruel to children's special needs and when Abundant on Fox
News bought up a ten year old girl with Down
syndrome who was taken from her mother at the border.
Former Donald Trump campaign chief Korey Lewandowski said, wo wom Literally,
here's the clip I read today about a ten year

(26:21):
old girl with Down syndrome who was taken from her
mother and put in a cage. I read about a
they just they want want to a ten year old
with Down syndrome. Anything you worked out, but the bottom
line is when you cra absolutely can you imagine being
this much of a toll? I mean, when I saw this,

(26:41):
I was I just thought, I hate to say, oh,
such and such as a monster, because I think when
we demonize people who make bad laws and me say
they're monsters, it divorces us from the idea that they're
just like us. They're people who are responsible for really
bad policy, but it sort of like allows us to
remove ourselves from them. But when I saw this, I thought,
this guy is a monster. This guy is an whole

(27:02):
and a monster, and I hate him, Like I was
so enraged when I saw this clip, so enraged. And
he also refused to apologize for it. So another, this
guy sounds like a real gem. So already, quick break
because I'm getting a little a little heated. But I'm
gonna talk more about where we're at with this situation
and sort of what can be done about it. After
a quick break, and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So,

(27:32):
after much outcry, Trump signed an executive order, even though
he specifically said that he had no power to do
this earlier because he's a liar and an hole, he
did sign on an executive order that made some movement
on this policy. So basically, his order said that families
will be kept together while awaiting proceedings. To be clear,
it does not end his zero talents policy or include

(27:53):
any plan for how the children who were already separated
from their parents will be reunited. And so there was
a lot of you know, well done Trump, blah blah
blah that because it really didn't do that much at all.
And again, I have a hard time taking this seriously
because just days after he was sort of cajoled into
signing this order, he was joined by what he called

(28:15):
angel families, people who have lost loved ones at the
hands of undocumented immigrants, in an attempt to shift the
focus of his horrible policies. These families held poster sized
photos of their slain offspring that Trump decided was an
appropriate thing to actually autograph, which to me seems a
little bit tactless, but whatever. I guess I'm not president now.
Trump actually tried to make this really I think unfair

(28:36):
rhetorical point that we're all up in arms about kids
who are being separated from families temporarily quote unquote, when
we've got families who are separated permanently because of quote
the violence of undocumented immigrants. He said, these are American
citizens permanently separated from their loved ones, the word permanently
being the word that you have to think about. Permanently.

(28:57):
They're not separated for a day or two days, permanent separated.
Trump said, basically, you know, I know that it's very,
very tragic to lose a loved one, um, and I
think that people who have lost loved ones to violence
or the actions of undocumented immigrants should, you know, speak
up about that. I'm not saying they shouldn't, and I
feel for them, but using that to make the case

(29:21):
for his atrocious policies at our border is just it's
not fair. Because he's sort of going off with this
idea that undocumented immigrants are responsible for crime, which is
just a lie. There's no truth to it. According to
a report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank,
one point five three percent of Native born Americans are incarcerated.

(29:42):
Now compare that with the point eight five percent of
undocumented immigrants and the point or seven percent of legal immigrants.
The Martial Project and did an analysis of data from
two hundred metropolitan areas over the last few decades. They've
found that crime has actually fallen despite immigrant populations increasing,
and other studies of much agreed that immigration has really
no effect on crime. So Trump kind of saying that, oh,

(30:05):
the reason I'm doing this is because there's all of
these immigrants are coming into our country and covening crimes.
That's just actually not a correct statement, even if he
gets on a stage and says otherwise. Yeah. And on
Tuesday night, a judge ruled that families had to be
reunified in thirty days. A judge in California on Tuesday
ordered US border authorities to reunite separated families within the
thirty days, setting a hard deadline and a process that

(30:26):
has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might see
their parents. If children are younger than five, they must
be reunified within fourteen days of the order issued tuesday
by US District Judge Dana Sapra in San Diego. Sabra
and appointee of President George W. Bush, also issued a
nationwide injunction on future family separations unless the parent is

(30:49):
deemed unfit or doesn't want to be with a child.
It also requires the government to provide phone contact between
parents and their children within ten days. So I'm glad
we have a little bit of clarity on this situation,
which so far has been very unclear for these kids.
So I know this is a heartbreaking cluster of just awful, awful,
but what can be done? So here's some things that
you should know. One, if you're thinking this sounds like

(31:11):
a nightmare, something that you should know is there's a
growing chorus of folks on the left who are actually
talking seriously about abolishing ice. So you might be thinking
that sounds wild, we need ice. But actually, even though
ice seems like a very big part of our political
system now, it's really only been a thing since two
thousand three. It was created in response to nine eleven
under the Bush administration, which combined twenty two different federal

(31:33):
agencies into a new cabinet level department. Now, for decades,
the Immigration and Naturalization Service or I and S had
handled legal immigration and the enforcement of immigration laws, but
under the massive government restructuring in two thousand three, those
tasks were split among three new agencies. Now, we should
do a long follow up episode on the awful racist

(31:53):
failures of ICE as an organization, but Tina Vasquest has
a really good piece on rewire dot com called the
New Ice Age An Agency Unleashed that will link to
in the show notes, and she basically charts how horrible
ICE is and how we got to this situation, and
basically it just sounds like something needs to be done
about ICE. She's a really telling quote from a former

(32:13):
ICE official. The American public needs to begin wrapping its
head around the disproportionate political power that ICE wields. The
most extreme environment isn't extreme enough for them. Under Trump,
ICE can do more damage than we've ever seen. So
it really sounds like this is an agency that could
use some oversight, could use some restructuring, could use something
because it's not it's not working now. And actually you

(32:35):
have lawmakers on the left who are formally getting behind
this idea of abolishing ice. Congressman Mark Pecan out of
Wisconsin announced that he would introduce a bill to abolish
ICE and cracked down on the agency's blanket directive target
and around up individuals and families and New York givenntorial
candidate Cynthia Nixon called for ice to be abolished last week,
and a number of congressional candidates, including deb Holland, who

(32:57):
won her primary New Mexico earlier this month, of done
the same. This week. Three Democratic members of Congress have
joined them. So that's something to keep in mind. I
think we should do an entire episode on this concept
of abolishing ice, which I would love to do. But
you know, if that's something that you think, oh gee,
that sounds like a good idea, definitely do some more,
some more digging into this this growing chorus of folks
that are calling for us to be abolished. Another thing

(33:20):
that you can do is reach out to your lawmakers,
even if they've already heard from you, they need to
note that you will not stand for families being separated
at the borders. You can donate to the Refugee and
Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services are AI c
e S. It is a five oh one C three
nonprofit that promotes justice by providing free and low cost
legal services to underserved immigrants, children, families, and refugees and

(33:43):
Central and South Texas. R A i c e S
is the largest immigration nonprofit in Texas, with offices in Austin, Corpus, Dallas,
Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. And you may have
actually seen this viral donation campaign going around Facebook where
they actually raised a record breaking twenty million dollars for
the organ So that's great. And another thing you can

(34:03):
do is show up to a rally. There's going to
be huge rallies and protests all over the country tomorrow.
If you're listening to this on Friday tomorrow, j you
can go to Families Belong Together dot org to find
a rally near you. I'll be at the one in
d C. So if you come, be sure to tweet
at me say hello, I'll be there. I'll be very angry,
but I'll be there. Um. Yeah, I think if you're

(34:25):
if this is an issue that breaks your heart like
it breaks my heart show up for it. Absolutely, we
would love to hear from you. In the meantime. You
can email us at mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com. You can find us at mom Stuff Podcast,
on Twitter at or on Instagram at stuff I've Never
Told You Thinks. As always, who are producer Dylan Fagan
and Cathleen Quilliad And thanks to you for listening.