Outrage is continuing to grow over the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants in custody after coming over the southern border. In coming days, they had planned to up their targeting even more, launching now postponed deportation raids in cities across the country. This weekend on CNN’s State of the Union, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) bluntly blasted the Trump team’s behavior, suggesting that “cruelty is part of their policy.”
Tapper asked Schiff if he was open to negotiations that the president has called for in the two-week period he’s for now delayed those raids for. Schiff explained:
‘We’ve always been open to negotiations. In fact, we have been negotiating and there is a bipartisan package in the Senate… but make no mistake — there is nothing that Congress is doing or not doing that compels the administration to have facilities where children don’t have blankets or toothbrushes or soap, and for the vice president or president to blame Congress for their own malfeasance is just completely beside the point and unethical and unacceptable. They could cure this problem today, but frankly they don’t want to because the cruelty is part of their policy. It’s part of what they think will deter the migrants from coming here. It’s part of what they think will motivate the Congress to build a wall, and to use these children this way is I think immoral.’
Watch:
Rep. Adam Schiff on President Trump’s delaying deportation raids: “They could cure this problem today, but they don’t want to because frankly the cruelty is part of their policy” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/MRD4k8kv6T
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 23, 2019
As Schiff indicates, just the other day a government lawyer stood before a three-judge panel and argued against demands for “safe and sanitary” conditions for migrant children including health supplies like soap, toothbrushes, and the like.
On other occasions, material has surfaced indicating that Trump administration officials have specifically planned policy moves like family separations to try and deter migrants from coming, and President Donald Trump himself has touted that on occasion. During an interview broadcast on Fox, he complained that a court had shut down his administration’s immigrant family separations and said he wanted them to return because without the supposed deterrent, immigration had spiked to more than ten times its previous level. While immigration rates have grown significantly, they have not hit a level ten times that above any recent point.
Trump and his associates have founded these policy moves on blatant lies. Just before Schiff appeared on CNN, Vice President Mike Pence was on the same show claiming — completely wrongly — that most migrants don’t show up for their court hearings. They’ve also routinely lied about the supposed security threat from those seeking asylum in the U.S. During a Rose Garden press conference announcing a national emergency declaration over the supposed border crisis, Trump claimed there’s a vast unreported network of immigrant crime with essentially nothing to base that on but racism.
These issues are sure to remain potent ones heading into the upcoming 2020 presidential election, as even years after he made his lies about immigrants a key part of his 2016 strategy, Trump’s still going down this same path.
Featured Image via screenshot
