“We need to take away their children”

August 7, 2022 6:56 PM

A deeply reported story about the Trump Administration’s policy of separating immigrants illegally crossing the border from their children. SL Atlantic story delving into the drivers, mistakes, intentions, and lies comprising the Trump Administration’s policy of taking children from immigrants crossing the border, regardless of whether the parent legally requested asylum or crossed outside of a port or legal crossing location. The policy was planned and implemented by “Hawks” who needed to shut out the “squishies” and “bleeding hearts” in the bureaucracy so that the policy could be implemented without planning or concern for the impact on the victims or on other departments who would be blindsided with having to deal with the resulting separated parents and children.
posted by Warren Terra (35 comments total)

This was some phenomenal reporting from Caitlin Dickerson.
posted by Dashy at 7:56 PM on August 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

I came here to share the same article. I'm glad Dashy beat me. This is beyond the pale. Beyond inhumane. I don't have the words to express how evil this is.
posted by Cobalt at 8:20 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I will buy a print copy of this magazine just to send it to my Trumpy relative.
posted by panhopticon at 8:54 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

"The cruelty is the point."
posted by Slothrup at 9:03 PM on August 7, 2022 [20 favorites]

Your Trumpy relative may well read the article with a wistful nostalgia. Millions of Americans have a deep desire for exactly this kind of cruelty, famously expressed during the 2018-19 government shutdown over border wall funding: “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
posted by theory at 9:37 PM on August 7, 2022 [31 favorites]

The bit that enraged me the most was how the DHS diehards (and Miller) actively interfered with reuniting children with their parents.

May they never sleep a night through for the rest of their lives.
posted by suelac at 10:02 PM on August 7, 2022 [25 favorites]

This is one of the most horrific stories I have read in years, nay, decades. Truly the depths and expanse of the depravities of the Trump administration are both bottomless and boundless yet. Once again the trademark Trump party mix of cruelty, stupidity, and pure malice, not so much thinly veiled as throbbingly enveined. The more than willing dialed up the torture. While what people who knew better looked away. There should be an anti-Mt. Rushmore for those who who have done the most evil and destruction in American history -- people like Sen. Joseph McCarthy Jackson, Buchanan and their ilk. In a pig's ear. And Trump will get to be the biggest. Oh, he'll go down in history alright. People will talking about him long long after we all here right now are dead. How many.more of these tragedies of errors why I can't even oh the horror, the horror humanity are yet to come? And I'm only half way through... I have to take a break for a few minutes. This is so awful.
posted by y2karl at 10:23 PM on August 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Despite me being white as the driven snow, I'll never bring my kids to visit the US. I started writing something more here, but I'm just angry and incoherent.
posted by Harald74 at 2:03 AM on August 8, 2022 [11 favorites]

What was that Hannah Arendt quote about banality again?
posted by acb at 3:29 AM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

my Trumpy relative

I've devised a little test to see if someone is worth knowing.

Do you think children should be separated from their parents?

☑ No
◻ I am a piece of shit
posted by adept256 at 3:42 AM on August 8, 2022 [44 favorites]

I was orphaned when I was 11yo. It took me a long time to understand that it wasn't unfair. It was a heart attack, people die, no-one is to blame and it's not unfair. I had to become mature before I stopped asking, why me? Until then, I was pretty messed up, but ultimately I accepted it as just the way it is.

What if I were orphaned, and it was someone's fault? I would never accept it as just the way it is. I would never stop looking for justice. The people that did this? They should know, there's a generation of orphans, they won't always be as helpless as the day you orphaned them, and they're coming for you. I know this.
posted by adept256 at 3:57 AM on August 8, 2022 [71 favorites]

Mostly I think this was just gross, deliberate cruelty justified using racist/nationalist jargon. But there was a portion of it, just like there is a strong element to the anti-abortion movement, that is all about trying to re-open a flow of young, healthy babies and toddlers into the adoption system again like it used to be when abortion was illegal and there was huge social stigma against being an unwed mother, and when a "good" white family could more easily find a baby to adopt. I don't think it is the main driver of these movements but it is a piece of the puzzle.

I'm not religious, but at times like this I hope that the system of after-death punishments for sin turns out to be true, so that these people can spend their eternity suffering in hell as they deserve.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:38 AM on August 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

“They just were up against this wall, and they couldn’t see the red line anymore.”

Up against the wall? Sure, I volunteer to lead the firing squad. After a properly constituted tribunal finds them guilty, of course
posted by atrazine at 6:42 AM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I look forward to the people responsible facing any consequences at all.
posted by Gadarene at 6:49 AM on August 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

...there was a portion of it, just like there is a strong element to the anti-abortion movement, that is all about trying to re-open a flow of young, healthy babies and toddlers into the adoption system...

There is money to be made in the adoption industry (which is closely connected to the pro-life movement). More babies, more money.
posted by LindsayIrene at 7:13 AM on August 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

It took me an hour and a half to read this article but it felt like an obligation to witness the atrocity our government committed. It reminds me of the German narratives I've read about Nazi policies and how they were implemented in the bureaucracy. With one important difference: Germans are almost entirely united in acknowledging the great evil of Nazism. As Dickerson's article notes, many Americans today look at the child separation policy and Zero Tolerance as good things. They will be campaign positions for Trump in 2024, effective ones that appeal to the racism of so many Americans.

As phenomenal as the reporting is the article suffers from a structural problem; none of the truly evil architects like Miller, Hamilton, or Trump are on the record. So instead the article focuses on the stories of the "good guys", the hapless bureaucrats who didn't like the policy or resisted it in some ineffectual way or just didn't understand that their office was being used to commit a crime against humanity. Kirstjen Nielsen is front and center in this category, one of the few people in political power who was willing to be on the record.

But the child separation was not just an accident of bureaucratic incompetence. It was a deliberate atrocity, a cruelty against children enacted on purpose. I'm glad to hear some of the cogs in the machine regret the outcome but what I really want is direct accountability for the leadership. And the individuals, the prison guards who physically tore children away from their parents. One particularly chilling quote from the article: "the [Border Patrol and ICE] unions were freaking out because they wanted it to happen.” The rank and file who implemented the policy should be prosecuted for their role in a crime against humanity, too.

Instead we have the Biden DOJ still defending the policy in court and "insisting in a recent hearing that a family-separation policy never really existed". 700 families are still sundered. We are a long way away from reconciliation or atonement. We may never get there.
posted by Nelson at 7:50 AM on August 8, 2022 [15 favorites]

A memory from 2018: Trump warns against admitting unaccompanied migrant children

“I called them animals the other day, and I was met with rebuke,” he said. “They said, ‘They’re people.’ They’re not people. These are animals, and we have to be very, very tough.”

“[Children] exploited the loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors.” Trump added: “They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.”

And another

And her 1-year-old son was only being given formula while they were there. But he needed solid food, and he started to get sick. And so she asked an officer for solid food for the baby. And you can hear in the tape. She says that the officer responded, this isn't a seven-star hotel. What do you want - dead kids or skinny kids?

posted by Nelson at 8:25 AM on August 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

“They’re not people. These are animals”

I get scared every time I hear this rhetoric. Dehumanizing a group is the first step to committing atrocities.

I’ve even heard it among my peers about the right and I won’t tolerate it; I know where it leads. It means extending compassion and remembering the humanity of those that are incapable of doing the same to others, possibly me. But it is the ONLY way to preserve my humanity and it’s a choice that has to be made consciously. Every time we as humans (All of us, including Trump and his evil followers) deny someone as being human, we take a step closer to killing other humans.

I think Trump knows this. I think people like Tucker Carlson know this. Hitler knew this. It’s what makes modern right so damn dangerous; it’s poison and the only way to fight it is to resist it at every turn and hold those who espouse these values accountable for their abhorrent rhetoric.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:40 AM on August 8, 2022 [16 favorites]

Here's hoping someday all the Trump-era immigration policies get repealed (and all the agencies involved picked over so there's no more of this "It's illegal, but the people policing that are also in favor of unaccountable agencies with a wide mandate & open-ended use of force" business).

Ideally before he has the possibility of getting back into office to further entrench them.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:19 AM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

So about the idea of undoing the most harmful laws (from the article)

People who know Miller say he believes that Zero Tolerance saved lives, and that immigration enforcement was Trump’s most popular accomplishment among his base. Miller has told them that the administration laid the groundwork necessary for a future president to implement harsh enforcement even more quickly and with greater reach than under Trump.

posted by Nelson at 9:21 AM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I am not one to use the term evil lightly. Misguided, wrong, bad, stupid, ineffectual, and a whole lot more words like them are the mainstays of my lexicon.

However, the sheer depraved indifference on display here leaves me very comfortable calling the policy, its architects, and those who knowingly abetted its implementation evil. The trauma inflicted on these kids will haunt them for life, making the world a worse place for years and probably generations to come as the dysfunction brought on by their experience is passed from generation to generation.

It sounds like there are people trying to help the victims recover, but it doesn't seem that all are getting the help they need.
posted by wierdo at 9:35 AM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can we abolish ICE yet?

The USA has given the klu klux klan a national security imperative and armed them to the teeth.

And we expect them to just....sit around? Just when is the supreme court going to direct them to take Trans and LGBT kids away?
posted by eustatic at 9:36 AM on August 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

Can we abolish ICE yet?

A full-court press by the Democrats was just baaaaarely able to squeak by a pretty milquetoast bill, full of no-brainers like Medicare drug price negotiation, but couldn't manage to get insulin price caps, the carried-interest loophole fix, or dental/vision/hearing coverage for old people.

One of the weapons the Republicans tried to use to damage the bill was to try and force votes on immigration policy by Democrats, purely so they'd have the votes on record to use as campaign fodder. Because they know that anti-immigrant sentiment runs very high in much of the country and the electorate.

Being pro-immigration, or even just pro-not-harming-immigrants, in 2022 is a political liability in many key swing states that determine the composition and control of Congress.

There's a significant swath of the US electorate that probably wants land mines on the US-Mexico border. That would probably be happy if we could make the whole thing look like the Western Front in 1916. They view brown people in general, and non-English-speaking brown people in particular, as a creeping, invasive threat to their culture and place in it.

So, no. I don't think we can abolish ICE yet. Too many Americans are A-OK with their performance, at least in theory if not in practice.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:51 AM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

“They’re not people. These are animals”

I get scared every time I hear this rhetoric. Dehumanizing a group is the first step to committing atrocities

This is kind of the basis of my politics these days. I catch myself being like, "That's it, I hereby revoke your fucking humanity," and I have to remind myself, no. No, you cannot revoke someone's humanity. The worst, most inexcusable examples of humanity are still human, with all the rights we've decided humans should have, or none of us can be.

I have to remind myself really firmly reading this, though.
posted by BlueNorther at 11:36 AM on August 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

I started reading this last night, and couldn't set it aside. on the most basic level, this article is vital because it tracks down and identifies who did what, when. We all know about Stephen Miller. But as the story notes, it's Kevin McAleenan who slips under the radar despite being the main player at DHS. And I'd never even heard of this SOB Matt Albence, who actively tried to keep family reunifications from happening:

Within days of the start of Zero Tolerance, Matt Albence, one of Tom Homan’s deputies at ICE, expressed concern that if the parents’ prosecutions happened too swiftly, their children would still be waiting to be picked up by HHS in Border Patrol stations, making family reunification possible. He saw this as a bad thing... “We can’t have this,” he wrote to colleagues, underscoring in a second note that reunification “obviously undermines the entire effort” behind Zero Tolerance and would make DHS “look completely ridiculous.” ...

Albence also suggested that the Border Patrol deliver separated children to HHS “at an accelerated pace,” instead of waiting for federal contractors to pick them up, to minimize the chance that they would be returned to their parents. “Confirm that the expectation is that we are NOT to reunite the families and release” them, Albence wrote. (Albence declined to comment for this article.)

posted by martin q blank at 11:44 AM on August 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

[haven't yet read article]
My daughter is an immigration attorney. She is fluent in Spanish and has done some work at detention centers in south Texas. I can assure you that the experiences of the immigrants are indeed as bad as what you've heard.
posted by neuron at 11:46 AM on August 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

This is an important article and important investigative work. I am reading this thread, but I am not reading the article. Because I can’t change the outcome and I already knew those fuckers were capable of virtually anything the minute they started separating children from parents. That is not to dismiss that important article nor this thread. I just have to stick to the thread for mental health reasons. It’s just not safe for me to read it. I salute those of you who can handle it.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:35 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Started to add this before, rambled, deleted, started over. Will try to bullet-point it.

-- As a reporter who did a couple of year-long projects, what's impressive here is that Dickerson didn't just go with the standard investigative report structure. Her goal was to get the whole damn thing, even though it wasn't linear and clean. It wasn't about zeroing on one person or one failing. It was about explaining how something like this has multiple parents, in multiple places, sometimes coordinated, sometimes completely unaware of each other.

-- Also impressive is Dickerson focusing on the idea of the Hawks vs. the Careerists. Before I went into journalism, I got a master's in government and nearly went that route. Several of my teachers were former Asst. Deputy Undersecretary types. They would tell us just what the "good guys" in the story told her: The career people who have the expertise in the field and know the policy process can blunt, deflect or kill the hawks' extremist ideas. But in this case, the hawks succeeded. They overwhelmed the levees.

-- I'm awed by the reporting it took to authoritatively write these sentences and then prove it, over and over, in the story: "Many of these officials now insist that there had been no way to foresee all that would go wrong. But this is not true. The policy’s worst outcomes were all anticipated, and repeated internal and external warnings were ignored."
posted by martin q blank at 1:18 PM on August 8, 2022 [13 favorites]

Kidnapping is still something the FBI is called in to solve, no? Jail time for the enablers.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:59 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Everyone is talking about this but I worked for an immigration attorney in the 90s (before ICE, when it was still the INS) and based on what I saw and what I know about ICE and CBP already, it will break my heart to read it. I'm glad someone did the work to prove it's as bad as, and worse, than many of us feared. But I can't make myself read it.

In the 90s there was a huge debate among immigration attorneys about whether the old INS should be broken into two agencies for benefits [now CIS] and enforcement [ICE]. The theory was that the enforcement mentality was corrupting the benefits people so that benefits weren't allotted and maybe if they hived off enforcement, benefits people would do their jobs better and with, bluntly, less of a stick up their collective ass. That was before 9/11 and we now see how optimistic we all were in the 90s.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:40 PM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

I read this in parts yesterday after it was posted here. Astonishing, heartbreaking stuff. I agree, her reporting on the Hawks and the Careerists is phenomenal, as is the clarity and subtlety with which she reports how people came to do what they did and how they justified it. Watching a fascist system being realised, memo by memo.
posted by tavegyl at 9:43 PM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Fuck, this was a difficult read. I am seething with anger and disbelief; I lost track of the number of times I said FUCK YOU out loud. I wish terrible and unspeakable things to happen to each and every one of those excuses for a human being.
posted by widdershins at 9:29 AM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

The thing that really sticks out to me is the number of times Dickerson reports that people who's jobs included care of many immigrants knew nothing about immigration law or the conditions on the border. How sometimes she would have to tell them, while interviewing them for the story, that family separation was not something DHS had done before. Or the number of people who gave completely different accounts of how the policy would be implemented.

Also that story about asking for the handcount: "who still thinks we need more time?" and only Kirstjen Nielsen's hand goes up - followed by "who thinks we should just push ahead because we're done talking about this?" and every hand goes up. They sure did pick a woman to run the department thinking they could pressure her into being the public face and then scapegoat of this horrendous operation.
posted by subdee at 5:55 PM on August 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

This article certainly does seem to put a lot of energy into rehabilitating Kirstjen Nielsen, who had hitherto been pretty widely viewed as the primary instigator behind the policy and who seems, on a closer look, to have resisted implementing it for as long as possible. I find it hard to have sympathy for anyone who goes along with this idea without loudly and unequivocally opposing it, but she probably deserves a reclassification from "archvillain" to "evil in the most banal way".

Good to be shining a light of condemnation on the actual architects though. There is nothing Steven Miller or Kevin McAleenan can ever do to offset the evil they perpetuated.
posted by jackbishop at 6:12 AM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]

This article certainly does seem to put a lot of energy into rehabilitating Kirstjen Nielsen, who had hitherto been pretty widely viewed as the primary instigator behind the policy and who seems, on a closer look, to have resisted implementing it for as long as possible. I find it hard to have sympathy for anyone who goes along with this idea without loudly and unequivocally opposing it, but she probably deserves a reclassification from "archvillain" to "evil in the most banal way".

I don't know, I thought the piece was pretty clear about the banality of evil in the careerists, and that at the end of the day Nielsen was more interested in her position than her responsibility. I would go further to say that the whole piece argues that evil or good intent doesn't matter when the consequence of your actions/ inactions/ inability to act on your own lack of capability is so dire. I thought it it was, if anything, a more damning indictment of Nielsen than a narrative of evil intent.
posted by tavegyl at 9:34 PM on August 10, 2022 [2 favorites]