Ted Cruz defends Trump policy of ripping kids away from parents

There is no depth to which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won’t stoop to stay in Trump’s good graces, including defending the cruel policy of family separation that may have led one father to take his own life recently.

In a KERA radio interview that was taped last week, but aired Monday afternoon, Cruz offered a lengthy and lie-riddled defense of the Trump administration’s child separation policy that even included the slur “illegal aliens” as he blamed the Obama administration for Trump’s policy as well as the media, for covering the horrific stories of family separation.

“Recently, the press has been focusing a great deal on the issue you specifically asked, about about separating children from parents,” Cruz told interviewer Krys Boyd. “Well, I’ll tell you, there’s a reason why, under the Obama administration, that often didn’t happen because when they apprehended people here illegally, they just left them go, and when you let them go, you didn’t separate children from parents.”

Child separation “is the inevitable consequence of somebody being arrested for a crime,” Cruz said, and then blamed the media for covering it.

“This is an issue that I think the media has largely constructed, because what’s shifted is that the Trump administration is endeavoring, when people cross the border illegally, to arrest them, not to let them go,” Cruz added.

“So when you see reporters, when you see Democrats saying don’t separate kids from their parents, what they’re really saying is ‘Don’t arrest illegal aliens.'”

Cruz’s lies are many, but the most obvious one is that undocumented immigrants are only either arrested or “let go,” when it is the government’s choice whether to prosecute unauthorized immigrants, or to send them back to their home countries using the civil removal process.

It was the Trump administration that implemented the “zero tolerance” policy of ripping children away from parents at the border. White House chief of staff John Kelly said the policy is supposed to be a “tough deterrent” to asylum-seekers and others crossing the border. Trump has shamelessly tried to blame Democrats for his own racist policy.

Defending the inhumane practice of separating families is despicable on its own. But it is even more shocking coming from a person whose own father sought, and was granted, asylum in the United States.

For Cruz, however, other families don’t deserve the same kindness and opportunity that his own family had. And he thinks it’s perfectly OK for the Trump administration to be tearing families apart. He just thinks the media shouldn’t cover it.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.