Trump team whines about being required to reunite separated families

The Trump administration is complaining about having to comply with a court order that demands the administration reunite the families it has ripped apart.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the court order requiring families to be reunified is “extreme” and “arbitrary.”

The order said the administration has to reunite children who have been separated from their parents within 30 days, or 14 days if the children are under 5.

Despite his whining, Azar did say that the administration will comply with the court’s deadline.

But the government has a lot of work to do in order to clean up its own mess. According to new data from HHS, nearly 3,000 children have been separated from their parents.

About 100 of those children are under the age of 5.

The new estimate is higher than Azar’s previous estimate of 2,047 children remaining. That’s because the court order included some children who were separated from their families at the border before Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy went into effect, as well as some who were separated before crossing the border.

It is unlikely that the families under the gun, thanks to the harsh “zero tolerance” policies ordered in place by Trump, would agree with Azar’s odd comments.

Azar also complained that the information the agency is receiving from the children isn’t detailed enough to help with reunification.

“It’s important to remember that information from children can at times be unreliable,” Azar said.

Indeed, most children would be unable to provide authorities concrete information on the whereabouts of their parents — particularly if they were forcibly removed from their families, and were in some cases detained in government compounds in a foreign land where they don’t speak the same language as their captors.

Children dealing with unnecessary emotional trauma can hardly be expected to provide reliable information to law enforcement. That’s why law enforcement has to work hard to do its job.

The Trump administration has created a mess and traumatized children and their families. Now, it’s whining and complaining about having to rectify its sins.

Azar is taking the company line that Trump himself has so often embraced: that the problems he created are somebody else’s fault.

Trump never thinks he is to blame — but as usual, the fault rests firmly on his shoulders.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.