An immigrant rights advocate tore into the Trump administration Thursday afternoon on CNN over a controversial practice of family separations, in which migrant kids are taken from their parents.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigration Rights Project, joined Brianna Keilar on “News Central” to discuss the administration’s resumption of family separations, but in a different way.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security has insisted that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not separate families, but a New York Times report found at least nine cases where parents and children were separated while they challenged deportation orders.
“The parents had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully chose to not comply,” DHS said, also denying there’s any new policy on family separations.
Gelernt, who has investigated the legality of these separations, told Keilar his organization’s sources say there could be dozens and possibly more than 100 cases of children who are separated based on this tactic.
“And let me just be clear — we should never be using children as pawns. But beyond that, what’s really horrendous about this is it’s being combined with other Trump administration policies, which the ACLU and our partners are challenging, which don’t give people the right to express fear if in their home country,” he said.
He said the Trump administration is giving migrants fear screenings and then saying, “‘We’re going to send you back to danger, and if you don’t get on that plane, we’re going to take your children away.’ Really is horrendous.”
The ACLU believes separations are happening nationwide, he said.
Gelernt threatened to take the Trump administration to court.
“If it turns out that the Trump administration is doing multiple types of separations outside of the settlement, then it may be we need to bring a second lawsuit — if they don’t fall within the settlement,” he said.
He called it “hardly surprising” that the Trump administration has resumed the policy, given the “horrendous harm” that the administration never acknowledged after making it their policy to take children away during his first term.
“And I just want the public to understand that this is not over. Many, many of these children who were separated back in 2017 are still not with their parents yet. I mean, years later. The trauma that they’re suffering every day,” he added.