Trump Administration’s excuse for failure to reunite families torn apart at the border: We’re just erring on the side of the child!

In previous posts, such as this one, I’ve discussed how the Trump Administration’s excuses for tearing apart families use the same kinds of fear tactics as those used by child protective services agencies.  Trump would cite extremely rare horror stories about people killed by illegal immigrants in the same way advocates of a take-the-child-and-run approach to American child welfare cite extremely rare horror stories of children killed by their parents.

But, I noted, the Trump Administration still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it.  As I wrote at the time:

If you really want people to support tearing apart families you have to be sure to call it “erring on the side of safety.”

Well, the Trump Administration is unspeakably cruel, but never let it be said they’re not quick studies.

On Wednesday, I was a guest on Margaret Prescod’s Pacifica Radio program Sojourner Truth.  She played a clip from an interview I’d overlooked when it first aired on July 10. It’s  this clip from a CNN interview with Department of Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar

The interview concerns why the federal government has been so slow to reunite the families, as it’s been ordered to do by a federal court.  In the clip, Azar shows he’s mastered child welfare establishment rhetoric almost word-for-word.  Says Azar:

We could put children back with individuals who are murderers, kidnappers, rapists or not their parents. But we've worked with the court to ensure that we do our duty, which is to protect child welfare and ensure that they are, in fact, that. … I don't think a kidnapper, or a child abuser, or a child trafficker ought to be able to take a kid out of country or be reunited in ICE facilities. … And if we hadn't done this work these children would have been reunited in exceedingly dangerous situations.

See? They’re just erring on the side of the child!  They’re putting child safety ahead of family reunification!  Who could be against that?

And then came the part that could have been lifted straight out of a press release from almost any child protective services agency in America:

I'm proud of the work that we do. I believe we are saving kids' lives here, by the work we are doing before.

So you see, if you don’t want families separated needlessly, and if you insist that such families should be reunified, clearly you don’t care if children die.

The only difference is this: When the topic is the children separated at the border, we know it’s BS.  The day America realizes that it’s also BS when U.S. child protective services agencies say the same thing is the day U.S. child welfare really starts to change.

Foster care in LA: Stories the Los Angeles Times doesn’t want you to hear (presumably)*

            This morning, Margaret Prescod devoted her entire morning program on KPFK FM in Los Angeles to the stories of families whose children were needlessly taken by child welfare agencies.

            You can  hear the program online here.

            The program begins with excerpts from a documentary produced by DHS-Give Us Back Our Children, an excellent grassroots group in Philadelphia – the only one of America’s largest metropolitan areas that takes children at a rate even higher than Los Angeles.

            Then come the stories of three families, one from Santa Cruz, and two from Los Angeles.

            Perhaps most moving was the story of May Hampton.  A young woman in Hampton’s extended family, whom Hampton had raised and for whom she was legal guardian, was killed.  The woman was living in Hampton’s home and, together, they had been raising the woman’s four children.  DCFS let Hampton keep three of the children but took one, a seven-year-old girl who apparently was present when her mother was killed.

            So now this child must endure not only the trauma of her mother’s death, but also the separation from everyone else she knows and loves – they even were barred from the mother’s funeral.  During visits the child begs to come home.

            But the system still isn’t done hurting this child.  Says Hampton:

We went to court this Monday, and the child’s lawyer came to me and she said: When your children talk to [their sister] they are not to tell her that they miss her, that they would like to see her.  I don’t want them to tell her anything like that. … I’m just warning you.

            If that sounds strange or hard to believe, it shouldn’t.  Those kinds of small acts of mind-boggling cruelty are quite common in child welfare systems.

            Of course Garrett Therolf, the embattled reporter for the beleaguered Los Angeles Times, could have written about this or the other stories heard on KPFK today.  He simply chose not to.   Or he could have attended the community forum on December 11 where these families and others spoke.  He didn’t do that either. 

            And he is not alone.  Listening to Ms. Hampton I was struck by the failure as well of L.A.’s other public radio stations, where Warren Olney at KCRW and Patt Morrison at KPCC prefer to round up the usual suspects, like Therolf, – even after Daniel Heimpel, writing in The Huffington Post,  raised profound questions about the accuracy of his reporting - for dry comments from “experts” without letting listeners hear from people like May Hampton.

            So please listen to her story (it starts about 11 minutes into the program) and see if you think she, and so many others like her, deserve to be heard on those other public radio stations, and in the Los Angeles Times.

*-Pursuant to the journalistic standard set by Times Assistant Managing Editor David Lauter, who has created an exception to the Times’ code of ethics for presumptions, I am free to presume things about the Los Angeles Times.