But Trump's executive order doesn't apply to the children already taken, the ones we've been seeing in the heart-wrenching photos,
...and who we've heard crying inconsolably for their parents on a recording smuggled from a detention center. |
Nothing will change for them because the order Donald Trump signed today applies only to migrant families crossing the border in the future, and not to those who've already been separated.
According to an article published earlier today by the New York Times:
The president’s order does nothing to address the plight of the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s “zero tolerance” policy. Federal officials said those children will not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.
“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Wolfe said the decision about the children was made by the White House, but he added, “I can tell you definitively that is going to be policy.” (1)
"We're gonna have a lot of happy people," Trump smugly boasted this afternoon as he signed his practically useless piece of paper, his two consiglieres at his side.
Not the over 2,300 children still separated from their parents, not the babies in pens still crying for their mothers,
And surely not the parents who've already been deported with their young children left behind in American detention centers.
I ask again, who are all these happy people?
(1) nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-immigration-children-executive-order.html
(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/politics/trump-immigration-separation-border.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/immigration-deported-parents.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-order-address-separations-no-clear-answers-happens-children-shelters-now-214127748.html