GOP senator wants to change the law to jail immigrant kids even longer

Despite global condemnation for his cruel family separation policy, Trump still thinks his administration isn’t being cruel enough to immigrants and asylum seekers — and one Republican senator is ready to help Trump reach his especially cruel goal of jailing immigrant children for longer than the law currently allows.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) plans to introduce legislation that would let the Trump administration detain children for up to 90 days, far more than the current limit of 20 days, the Washington Post reports.

Johnson wants to amend the 1997 Flores settlement, which allows children to remain in immigration detention for no more than 20 days.

Johnson told the Washington Post that allowing the Trump administration to detain kids for longer would make it easier for families with children to be deported, as they would be in U.S. custody rather than released on their own recognizance.

Allowing the Trump administration to keep kids in detention facilities is as cruel as it gets, but Johnson tried hard to make himself sound reasonable.

“I’m happy to compromise at 60,” Johnson told the Washington Post, referencing the number of days he thinks is reasonable to lock up babies and young children.

One of the reasons Johnson is OK with jailing kids for longer, apparently, is that he thinks the cages immigrants are kept in aren’t as bad as people have made them out to be.

“It doesn’t look that these people have been abused, or spent three nights in a tractor-trailer,” Johnson told the Washington Post.

Johnson’s remarks are especially callous given that multiple immigrant children have died in U.S. custody in recent months.

And when a group of Democratic lawmakers recently visited a tent city where migrants were being held, they witnessed shockingly unhealthy conditions.

“We were stepping over people to walk around in the tent,” Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA) told the Daily Beast. “I was really taken aback by the smell. I was in there for five minutes and I just became nauseous, I hate to say it.”

Sickest of all, the Washington Post reported that Johnson is tentatively naming the bill that would allow the government to jail kids the “Families Act.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.