Those with even a little bit of knowledge about U.S. immigration policy know that illegal immigrants caught at the border with Mexico weren’t exactly treated overly kindly by the Obama administration. Quite the opposite is true, even: families were separated from each other, and people were held in cages. When Donald Trump became president, he inherited those policies from his predecessor.
Of course, the mainstream media have a hard time acknowledging those inconvenient facts. They’d rather pretend that this immigration policy has been created by President Trump, who can then be portrayed as a horrible racist who just doesn’t care about Hispanic children.
Well, it took him some time, but President Trump is finally fed up with those lies. On Twitter, he explains that those “cages for kids were built by the Obama administration in 2014. He had the policy of child separation. I ended it even as I realized that more families would then come to the border!”
The cages for kids were built by the Obama Administration in 2014. He had the policy of child separation. I ended it even as I realized that more families would then come to the Border! @CNN
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2019
Children and their parents may still be separated from each other nowadays, but only to protect the welfare of the children. Other than that, they are no longer separated.
As McClatchy reported in June of last year:
President Barack Obama separated parents from their children at the border.
Obama prosecuted mothers for coming to the United States illegally. He fast-tracked deportations. And yes, he housed unaccompanied children in tent cities.
But, a Democrat may say, “where is the proof? Where are the statistics to show that families were separated from each other?” Well:
No numbers on children separated from their parents under Obama is available because the Obama administration didn’t keep them, according to Trump DHS officials.
And that’s not all:
Obama took other controversial steps as well, including fighting to block efforts to require unaccompanied children to have legal representation and barring detained mothers with their children from being released on bond.
As for the cages, as Snopes explains:
That portion of Trump’s commentary is true. Images of children behind chain-link fencing were widely seen at a site in McAllen, Texas, that had been converted from a warehouse to an immigrant-detention facility in 2014. Social media users who defended Trump’s immigration policies also shared a 2014 image of Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson touring a facility in Nogales, Arizona, in 2014, in which the fencing could be seen surrounding migrants there, too. That image was taken during a spike in the number of unaccompanied children fleeing violence in Central American countries.
So there you have it. Obama put children (and other illegal immigrants) in cages and he separated families from each other. President Trump is absolutely correct. More power to him for setting the record straight.
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