Immigration Officials Have No Idea How To Fix Family Separation (HBO)
Posted
August 1, 2018
Views
17,272
Likes
363
Comments
242
Engagement
3.50%
August 1, 2018
17,272
363
242
3.50%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
6:01Now PlayingImmigration officials dodged a number of questions during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday focused on the family separation crisis at the border, but they all seemed to agree on one thing: The Trump Administration policy that resulted in the crisis was flawed.
One of the most telling moments of the three and a half hour hearing came when the five witnesses — representing the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Justice, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol — were asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) whether any thought the policy of separating children from their parents at the border had been a success. All remained silent.
The policy, enacted in May of this year, became a public relations and logistical nightmare for the Trump Administration as immigration officials scrambled to reunite migrant children with their parents in advance of a recent court-ordered deadline. Officials at Tuesday’s hearing were at times unable to provide updated or exact numbers for the children that have been reunited with their families, and unable to offer clear explanations on why some still remained in the U.S. government’s care.
Jonathan White, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, said he even cautioned administration officials separating children from their families would be both harmful to the child and logistically burdensome for HHS.
"There's no question that separation of children from their parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child," White said.
Another official, Matthew Albence, head of enforcement and removal operations for ICE, dismissed reports of unsanitary and unsafe conditions for children and migrant women at government facilities, describing the family residence centers as “more like a summer camp."
“These individuals have 24-hour access to food, water. They have educational opportunities. They have recreational opportunities both structured and unstructured,” he said.
But while all of the officials acknowledged there were issues with the family separation policy, and challenges in reuniting families, none could offer a specific explanation for what went wrong in the process of implementing the policy, or any clear solutions to fix the problem going forward.
Subscribe to VICE News here
Check out VICE News for more
Follow VICE News here:
More videos from the VICE network
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
