Border Congresswoman Says Trump Is Still Separating Families, Despite His Lies

Even though the Trump administration claims to have reversed course on its no-tolerance family separation policy, one lawmaker says nothing has changed since outrage boiled over last year.

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In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Rep. Veronica Escobar, who replaced Beto O’Rourke in Texas’s 16th congressional district, said the atrocities on the southern border have gone on uninterrupted.

“These atrocities are shocking and horrifying and really should be a wake-up call for the country,” the congresswoman said. “Family separation is still happening in the United States of America.”

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Rep. Escobar:

These atrocities are shocking and horrifying and really should be a wake-up call for the country and you mentioned it during your summary of what was going on, but family separation is still happening in the United States of America. And the Trump administration in its efforts to criminalize asylum seekers and to erode the protections that asylum seekers have, looks for other ways to criminalize people and when they do criminalize adults with children frequently, they separate children them and that’s why in part family separations are still occurring.

Trump is trying to lie his way out of the humanitarian crisis he created

Days ago in an interview with Telemundo, Donald Trump had the nerve to suggest that it was Barack Obama who pioneered this family separation policy on the southern border.

“I brought the families together,” he said. “I’m the one that put them together.”

This despite the fact that fact-check after fact-check has pointed out that the zero-tolerance policy that led to thousands of children being ripped from their parents started under his administration.

Trump will no doubt continue spewing falsehoods about his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers on the southern border, but as more atrocities on the southern border come to light, the less effective his lies will be.

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Sean Colarossi

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.