Trump's immigration policy: Up the cruelty, dodge the blame
Leading that pack are revelations by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for refugee resettlement, that the government has lost track of almost 1,500 immigrant children. It turns out that most of them were processed during a sudden surge in unaccompanied minors at the southwestern border in 2014 and placed with family members and other sponsors who already were residents the United States. Most of the children came from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and were fleeing drug cartels, gang violence and domestic abuse, according to government data.
But, as HHS officials testified before a Senate subcommittee in April, efforts to follow up on the status of those resettled children have been stymied by the reluctance of sponsoring families to return government phone calls. Not surprisingly, many of those families include other relatives living in the U.S. illegally who are very reluctant to talk to government officials, especially during Trump's presidency.
No wonder. This is the president who campaigned by describing Mexican immigrants as "rapists," murderers and drug dealers, adding as an afterthought that, "Some, I presume, are good people." During a recent roundtable, he accused migrant children crossing the border of being "not innocent."
He continues to conflate violent criminals with immigration, frequently invoking the MS-13 gang to justify harsh deportation policies. The real numbers are less alarming. For example, from October 2011 to June 2017, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials apprehended around 5,000 individuals they said had ties to gangs, acting chief Carla Provost testified in June 2017. Of those 5,000, 159 of them were unaccompanied minors, and just 56 were confirmed to have ties to MS-13.
Maybe Trump could learn from his legal counsel and spin doctor Rudy Giuliani. When he was New York's mayor, he used to boast in speeches about the contributions that immigrants living in the city illegally had made in generating commerce and bringing depressed neighborhoods back from the brink.
But, as long as his president thinks he can win more votes by bashing immigrants than helping them, we probably can expect more policies from his administration that he wants to run away from later.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
