Huq: Trump’s War on Children
Trump’s War on Children
As political maxims go, it seems beyond reproach: Don’t go after kids. Yet once again, the Trump administration is proving quite the entrepreneur when it comes to breaking political norms. In five distinct policy areas, the administration has doubled down on policies that impose disproportionate, sometimes fatal, burdens on children—especially black and brown ones.
To be sure, Trump does not justify these policies by their anti-kid effects. Children’s suffering is either predictable collateral damage or a bargaining chip in a larger cultural and political conflict. But this just makes the administration’s multi-front war on kids more baffling. It courts controversy and undermines the White House’s own rhetoric of righteous victimhood. So this question is worth asking: Why choose policies that so visibly harm children?
Let’s start with the most obvious and well-publicized front of the war on kids: the separation and detention of families at the US-Mexico border. Since 2001, the government has had family detention centers for those seized at the southern border. But since October 2017, about 2,000 children have been separated from migrant parents, as a result of the administration’s decision to criminally prosecute almost all adult migrants. That zero-tolerance posture assures separation because children cannot be held alongside parents or guardians in federal jail.
Read more at The Nation