Despite the fact that Donald Trump and his administration backed down in what was a humiliating political defeat, the fight over the inhumane treatment of migrant families is far from over.
The president may have undone what he spent a week either defending or blaming the Democrats for, but his new policy shouldn’t be accepted either. It calls for children and their parents to be held in detention camps – indefinitely.
Luckily, Democrats are not sitting idly by while the president tries to pull a fast one on us. They are fighting back.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren blasted the Trump administration’s revision of their policy, saying in a tweet, “Separating kids is unacceptable – but indefinite imprisonment of families is still cruel and inhumane.”
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This isn’t over. Thousands of kids have been ripped from their parents with no plan to reunite them. And now @realdonaldtrump wants to create new detention camps for families. Separating kids is unacceptable – but indefinite imprisonment of families is still cruel & inhumane.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 20, 2018
Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz also chimed in, saying that only in this administration “does moving from the mass separation of babies from parents to indefinite detention of families seem like an improvement.”
Only under Trump does moving from the mass separation of babies from parents to indefinite detention of families seem like an improvement.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) June 20, 2018
One activist, Brittany Packnett, tweeted that this Trump administration immigration fiasco increasingly looks like it was intentional.
In other words, the White House implemented an initial policy that was so extreme and inhumane that when they revised it with something slightly less cruel but still abhorrent, people wouldn’t notice.
News flash: We notice.
Perhaps the plan all along was to do a thing so egregious that, when you stop doing it, you still get to do what you wanted to do all along.
Detain entire families. Indefinitely. In camps.
And call it humane.
— Brittany Packnett (@MsPackyetti) June 20, 2018
The fight isn’t over
Certainly, reuniting families was an important goal, and a bipartisan majority of Americans – whether it was angry voters or previous First Ladies – pushed Trump to back down on that front.
But the fight is far from over. The president may have reversed his own initial policy, but his new one is still extreme and reeks of cruelty. No version of this policy is acceptable.
Not to mention the fact that, as CNN reports, Trump’s executive order does nothing for the thousands of children who have already been separated from their parents.
For now, all members of Congress – Republicans and Democrats – should keep the heat on the president and tell him in one voice: Concentration camps have no place in the United States of America – whether it’s just children or whether it’s children and their parents.
In November, anybody who stands with this administration as they indefinitely hold these families in detention centers should be sent packing.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
