How the Trump Administration Got Comfortable Separating Immigrant Kids from Their Parents

Jonathan Blitzer has an informative article in the New Yorker about how the Trump administration slowly moved toward embracing a policy of separating immigrant families as a way of deterring immigrants from unlawfully entering the United States.  Blitzer mentions that Dara Lind at Vox has shown how the Department of Homeland Security’s own data undermines the argument that this policy will act as a deterrent. Anna Oltman in the Washington Post also considers the deterrent impact of the family separation policy.

Initially, separating families was believed to be “a radical idea, one that past Administrations had considered and then dismissed as too extreme and too complicated.”  In the end, the Trump administration embraced the concept and it is now official policy.

KJ