In a vocal condemnation of President Donald Trump, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano said that the policy of separating children from their parents at the border is abusive. The administration is facing heated criticism from both sides of the aisle for claiming that separating children and parents is the law of the land, when in fact there is no law which dictates this practice must be followed. “I think the administration is motivated by the president’s skills at negotiating,” Napolitano told Dana Perino on Monday. “And I think he’s trying to use children to turn up the heat on the negotiators.” Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the policy his Attorney General Jeff Sessions implemented, claiming they have refused to come to the negotiating table to work on a broader immigration law. “In my opinion, it is child abuse to separate children from their parents unless it’s necessary to save a human life,” Napolitano continued, his voice rising. “That’s not the case here. There’s a federal statute that says you can’t separate them more than 72 hours. They know all of this.” “They’re picking and choosing which rules they want to follow rigidly and which rules they wish weren’t there,” he added. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/andrew-...children-as-negotiating-chip-its-child-abuse/
To be clear: the Obama administration’s use of ATEP was not intended to break-up families–that was an occasionally expected side effect–while Trump’s recently-confirmed policy is expressly directed toward that end in the name of “deterrence.” https://lawandcrime.com/immigration...separated-children-from-their-families-too-2/ Here's where something Obama did that's vaguely similar and on a much smaller scale is used to justify actions by Trump that are clearly worse. If Trump burned a city to the ground, conservatives would point out that Obama once had a barbecue.
Trump “remained resistant on Monday in the face of growing public outcry over his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border, repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals — not parents — were toting juveniles to the United States,” the New York Times reports. Said Trump: “They could be murderers and thieves and so much else. We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that’s the way it is.”