Trump is talking in circles on immigration

Trump is talking in circles on immigration

by digby



He seems to be trying to say here that Obama was a bad man for doing child separations but it was a really effective policy that we need. So he ended it.

Or something:

Trump: Obama started children separation. I'm the one who stopped it. Also child separation is awesome. pic.twitter.com/H9le3TZMQh
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 9, 2019



The pictures of the kids in the cages from the Obama administration were a temporary measure during the surge of unaccompanied minors in 2014. They weren't separated families.  Not that it was a good thing and they worked to fix the problem right away. But Trump's comments are misleading as well as being daft and inconsistent.

This from last summer explains:
Though the photos are nearly identical to those from 2014, there is one key difference between them: the 2014 photos showed only children who arrived at the border unaccompanied. The 2018 photos also show families that have been separated from one another.
In this photo provided by US Customs and Border Protection, migrants sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas on June 17, 2018. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via Associated Press

That difference is significant — while unaccompanied children in 2014 knew what to expect when they arrived at the border and were taken to the holding facilities, the children who have been separated from their parents are often much younger, and had not expected to be taken away from their families.

It's true that they separated kids from parents who were caught with drugs, but that's a different situation because the parents were arrested for a real crime as opposed to applying for asylum in a legal fashion. The Obama administration kept the families together and were forced by the court to release them because they could not by law be kept longer than 20 days.

Of course, Trump is lying and it's so convoluted now that he's not making any sense. He's the one who initiated the child separation policy and the reason he fired Nielsen (among other things) is that she refused to re-start it because it's illegal. But he knows it's unpopular so he's blaming Obama and taking credit for stopping it even though he wants to do it again.

He's crispy.

.