The House Energy and Commerce Committee is holding an oversight hearing today on the horrors of the Trump administration’s devastating family separation policy, following an unbelievable display of hypocrisy from Trump during his State of the Union address.
As America’s Voice Deputy Director Pili Tobar put it:
If Trump actually believed that all children are made in the image of God, this administration would not have intentionally inflicted fear and long lasting trauma on children by enacting some of most cruel policies towards immigrant kids in the history of our country. Trump and his administration continue to lower the standards for the protection of children coming across our border, and they still haven’t answered for the hospitalization and even death of children in their custody.”
Last night, Rachel Maddow similarly took the administration to task, highlighting how Trump focused on the dignity of children’s lives, but omitted, “any mention of how this administration has been forcibly taking thousands of kids away from their parents on the southern border, and locking up the kids separately from their parents in a manner so disorganized that the exact number of children who have been taken away from their parents is still unknown.”
Maddow spotlights the significance and importance of this first hearing to confront the carelessness and cruelty of the policy, and the ongoing trauma inflicted on immigrant children still being ripped apart from their parents. Representative Diana Degette (D-CO), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, says they hope to find out, “when did this start, what is the policy, and, obviously most importantly, what are we going to do to get these kids reunited with their parents?”
Today’s hearing, and another hearing on Trump’s family separation policy in the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, are the first opportunities to get answers and hold the Trump administration accountable for the anguish caused to thousands of immigrant children and families and the stain it has put on our country.
