Fox News’ attempt to rewrite Trump’s family separations is pathetic
Written by Sergio Munoz & Chloe Simon
Published
As the new administration of President Joe Biden begins to roll back the draconian anti-immigration policies of the Trump era, Fox News is furiously trying to spin away the abuses of the former president’s family separation policy.
Contrary to the network's lies and misinformation, family separation -- the result of former President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to unauthorized border crossings -- was not only an unprecedented and intentional choice, but also a barbaric and xenophobic policy with no regard for the harms it caused to undocumented families. No amount of Fox News' gaslighting, which rehash Trump’s debunked excuses for a policy specifically chosen for the pain it would cause, can change those facts. As explained by Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney who successfully sued to stop the family separations:
“The fact is no other administration, Democrat or Republican, has ever systematically separated children,” Mr. Gelernt said. “The Trump administration’s actions to systematically separate children is unprecedented and what made that much more horrific is that there was no age limit. Even babies and toddlers were separated.”
Of the thousands of families affected, 611 children still have yet to be reunited with their parents. Below are examples of the talking points Fox News personalities are using in their attempt to whitewash the inhumanity of these family separations.
Fox News lies that family separation is required
On February 2, Fox News’ Pete Hegseth insisted that “there’s a huge misrepresentation of why children were separated from families at the border in the first place. It's like anyone who commits a crime is separated from their kids.”
Citation From the February 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): It’s all very unclear, Steve. This is -- let's rename it. It's illegal immigration day. This a total reversal of everything the Trump administration stood for. And might I say, it's a return to the bipartisan consensus before Donald Trump that was effectively OK with borders being open, a pathway to citizenship, massive illegal immigration, and catch-and-release programs that were never effective and always created a magnet for people to come to this country. So, of course there’s a huge misrepresentation of why children were separated from families at the border in the first place. It's like anyone who commits a crime is separated from their kids; when they do that, eventually you would like to see them reunited. But they made it out as if it was intentionally a draconian policy and now they’ve created an entire caricature around it. How much money they’ll spend on that -- it’ll be billions while they try to take down the border wall, guys. Get rid of the remain-in-Mexico policy, which opens the door again for catch and release and ultimately continues sanctuary city policies which all lead up to we are open for illegal immigration.
On February 3, The Five’s Jesse Watters argued not separating families was unacceptable and “a coyote’s dream.”
Citation From the February 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five
JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): It’s exactly what we’re talking about, and Biden triggered the crisis because he promised all the illegals free vaccines, health insurance, amnesty, and asylum -- and COVID relief checks. So what do you expect to happen? You’re going to have an adult male illegal come to the border with a 16-year-old girl, no identification; what is the Border Patrol agent supposed to do? What is he supposed to do? If you can't separate the family and he can't house them and detain them together, because that's against American law, what is he supposed to do, Juan? He has to then just detain the child and then catch and release the smuggler? This is a coyote’s dream. That’s why they bring the kids across the border in the first place, and that’s why the previous president cut a deal with Mexico: You remain in Mexico while you apply for asylum. Or how about this idea: You apply for asylum in Central America at an embassy where everyone else in the world applies for asylum at. But Joe Biden doesn't want to modernize the immigration system, he wants to overwhelm it so he can flip Texas blue and you will never see another Republican at the White House. And I don't want to ever hear again that the wall doesn't work, because that's the only thing that works, along with agents and along with the Mexico deal. I just looked at the release, Department of Homeland Security where the wall is, Yuma sector crossings down 87%, Rio Grande Valley crossings down 79%, and El Paso sector crossings down 81%. If walls don't work, Juan, then wheels don't work. We know the truth.
Fox News falsely blames former President Barack Obama
On February 2, Fox News’ Katie Pavlich tried to shift blame for family separations to the Obama administration.
Citation From the February 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom
KATIE PAVLICH (FOX CONTRIBUTOR): Joe Biden already has an L on the board when it comes to these executive orders on illegal immigration. He tried to stop all deportations for the first 100 days. Texas sued and was successful. Now we’re seeing that he wants to sign additional executive orders on this issue when it comes to asylum and reuniting families. But you have to keep in mind, this crisis with unaccompanied minors coming to the border and being separated from families happened in 2014 under the Obama administration. The notorious cages that were built to handle this influx of children who did not have adults with them or who were being smuggled and dropped off at the border, that is something that happened a long time ago under the previous administration when Joe Biden was vice president. Now he’s trying to solve the problem and keep in mind, these were put in place by the Trump administration not to be mean, not to be xenophobic, but to try to stop the crisis from continuing.
On February 9, The Faulkner Focus’ Harris Faulkner falsely equated Trump’s family separation policy to Obama’s emergency handling of unaccompanied minors.
Citation From the February 9, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus
HARRIS FAULKNER (CO-HOST): You used the word draconian, and I just want to remind you that it was former President Obama who put children in cages when so -- I mean, like the tens of thousands of them were coming across the border illegally, unaccompanied minors. And we are having a problem with that again now. And there has been talk about, well, what do we do with these unaccompanied minors. And if it looks anything like what Obama did, you get slapped with that label of draconian. So we'll be watching for that.
Fox News argues the adults weren’t really the parents
On February 2, Fox News’ Katie Pavlich shamelessly claimed “a lot of these kids that came with quote ‘parents’ weren’t parents at all and they were paid by smugglers to bring them to the border.”
Citation From the February 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five
KATIE PAVLICH (FOX CONTRIBUTOR): Well, it just means that the Border Patrol is overrun, both with unaccompanied minors, with family units, and with national security implications, right? All of these things. It's not a simple process. But Greg is absolutely correct about this panel that they’re putting together to do this family reunification. They’re going to find out that a lot of these kids that came with quote “parents” weren’t parents at all and they were paid by smugglers to bring them to the border. Not a single person is getting to the Mexican border with the United States without paying a coyote or a smuggler. And the Biden administration is setting themselves up to have a massive crisis in President Biden’s first year. And you’re already seeing officials in the Biden administration trying to kind of walk this back. Jen Psaki did it today, saying, don't come here yet; we have to rework the system. You have officials in DHS saying the same thing. Because people are listening to the talk in the narrative of this now open border policy, and smugglers are saying pay us the money, we'll take you to the border, and you're going to be able to stay.
And also, on the other side, they’re creating another public health crisis for themselves. I mean, this idea that you can't fly into the United States on an international flight without getting a COVID test, but yet we are just going to have this narrative that we are repealing all of these pieces of memos and executive orders from a previous administration that were put into place for very purposeful reasons creates a number of crises in Biden's first year. And so I think they are going to regret this. And there will be consequences for these kids. And they are going to find out that this was -- the fancy media narrative is separated families. You’ve stripped the kids away from their parents’ arms, their mother's arms. Well, the fact is they were used as shields to get adults, many of them criminals, into the United States. That's what they were used for.
On February 2, Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade dismissed family reunification because “turns out they were never together.”
Citation From the February 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): The other thing to bring up, too, these kids come across, those aren't their parents a lot of times. After former Attorney General Sessions came up with this great idea to separate families, they tried to put them back together. It turns out they were never together. These were people who brought them across because the kids got to stay under the latest policies and the person with them disappeared because he got paid to bring them across and pretend they were their kids. And how do we know that? Because they went to swab their mouths with the DNA swab. They quickly confessed rather than go to jail.
Fox News insists it’s actually the parents’ fault
On February 3, Fox’s Kennedy blamed the parents: “My question is, as a parent, where are those parents? Go back and get your kids.”
Citation From the February 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' Outnumbered
KENNEDY (FOX BUSINESS HOST): All of politics is a bunch of claptrap, because Congress doesn’t want to do anything. But they want to find the cameras and speak and blather as much as they can. If Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell would, you know, remove their bullhorns for a moment and maybe go caucus with some other Democrats, they could figure out a way legislatively to tackle and clarify immigration. And they don't have the backbones to do that. And now each party just relies on their president, if their person happens to be the one in power, hoping they write as many executive actions as possible. Because that has become the new legislation. And t's not a good sign. And it's awful for immigration because it just creates so much more confusion. And iIt creates really dangerous environments south of and north of our border. Because then you have this stampede to try and get in because people don't really know what's going on but they hear a rumor that the barn door has been flung wide open. And so now, pandemic be damned. Andou hear about kids who have been separated from their parents at the border, and this is cross-administrational. This is not just the Trump administration; it is the Obama administration, the Trump administration, now the Biden administration. And my question is, as a parent, where are those parents? Go back and get your kids. You know, it's not just a matter of not wanting to be held accountable in immigration court. Go back and get your children.
In fact, family separation was an unprecedented Trump creation
On January 14, The New York Times reported that the “zero tolerance” policy was invented to placate Trump’s tantrums about undocumented immigration.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to avoid responsibility for his administration’s family separation policy by falsely blaming Democrats and former President Barack Obama.
The inspector general report does not issue a formal finding that the responsibility for the zero-tolerance policy rests with Mr. Trump. It concludes that top Justice Department officials were a “driving force” behind the decision to put in place policies that led to separating families.
But the report and the other documents directly implicate the Trump White House.
On October 23, 2020, the Times explained how “zero tolerance” was a “deliberate act of family separation” without precedent.
The Obama administration separated children from adults at the border only in cases when there was a doubt about the familial relationship between a child and an accompanying adult or if the adult had a serious criminal record.
Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy was a deliberate act of family separation, meant to deter migrants from trying to enter the United States. It directed prosecutors to file criminal charges against everyone who crossed the border without authorization, including parents, who were then separated from their children when they were taken into custody.
That policy was ended amid international outcry, but its repercussions remain.
Family separation was never required; it was a “zero tolerance” shift
On June 19, 2018, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker debunked the Trump administration’s lie that it was legally obligated to separate children from their parents, determining that “they’re being separated because the Trump administration, under its zero-tolerance policy, is choosing to prosecute border-crossing adults for any offenses.”
The doublespeak coming from Trump and top administration officials on this issue is breathtaking, not only because of the sheer audacity of these claims but also because they keep being repeated without evidence. Immigrant families are being separated at the border not because of Democrats and not because some law forces this result, as Trump insists. They’re being separated because the Trump administration, under its zero-tolerance policy, is choosing to prosecute border-crossing adults for any offenses.
This includes illegal-entry misdemeanors, which are being prosecuted at a rate not seen in previous administrations. Because the act of crossing itself is now being treated as an offense worthy of prosecution, any family that enters the United States illegally is likely to end up separated. Nielsen may choose not to call this a “family separation policy,” but that’s precisely the effect it has.
Sessions, who otherwise owns up to what’s happening, has suggested that the Flores settlement and a court ruling are forcing his hand. They’re not. At heart, this is an issue of prosecutorial discretion: his discretion.
The Trump administration owns this family-separation policy, and its spin deserves Four Pinocchios.
In January of 2021, the Trump administration’s own inspector general for the Department of Justice concluded that “zero tolerance” caused family separation, an unprecedented reversal of the historical policy to “avoid the separation of the family.”
The decision to criminally prosecute adults illegally entering the country as part of a family unit (family unit adults) represented a change in U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ, Department) and DHS practice. Historically, when DHS apprehended adults with children crossing the border, in most cases DHS would not refer the adult to DOJ for criminal prosecution. One reason for not referring the family unit adult to DOJ for criminal prosecution had been to avoid the separation of the family during the pendency of the adult’s prosecution. Rather than separate the family unit by referring the adult to DOJ for criminal prosecution, DHS would typically detain and administratively remove from the United States the adult and children together or provide the family with a Notice to Appear before an Immigration Judge and release them on their own recognizance into the United States until their immigration hearing date. The practice of releasing the adult and children into the United States until his or her immigration hearing date is referred to by some as “catch and release.” The issuance of the zero tolerance policy by Sessions on April 6, 2018, coincided with a presidential memorandum, issued on the same day, that directed the Attorney General, DHS Secretary, and other cabinet officials to report on steps taken by their agencies to end catch and release.
We were told that, since at least 1992, immigration officials, with the concurrence of the USAOs on the Southwest border, largely avoided separating families by not prosecuting family unit adults. Although some family separations occurred prior to the zero tolerance policy, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), in November 2016 only 0.3 percent of migrant children in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) custody were known to be separated from their parents.
Family separation will go down in history as one of Trump’s most despicable and xenophobic acts
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, argues the Biden administration has “a moral imperative to eliminate the historic stain on this country.”
The Biden administration is inheriting tremendous challenges. But addressing family separation should be a no-brainer. In 2018, when the country learned that babies and toddlers were being ripped from their parents’ arms, the public revulsion spanned the ideological spectrum. The sentiment was uniform: our government should not take babies from their parents and use them as political pawns.
Ultimately, it is a moral imperative to eliminate the historic stain on this country. I have been doing this work at the ACLU for nearly 30 years and have never seen a more inhumane practice or one that received such widespread, swift, and unequivocal condemnation. I still worry, though, that all the talk of aggregate statistics and abstract policy prescriptions will blur the human dimension, and the fact that the trauma caused to each of these children by family separation is its own tragic story.
Vox conducted a survey of research on race in its attempt to contextualize Trump’s family separation policy and concluded that “the dehumanization of people of other races makes it easier to carry out atrocities.”
In just five weeks, US officials separated more than 2,300 children from their parents at the US-Mexico border. While the Trump administration has been deliberately obtuse about its intents, the “zero tolerance” approach appears to be part of a strategy to scare people from illegally crossing the border -- by, essentially, using the possibility of parents losing their kids as a threat.
It’s easy to wonder how any of this is possible. How can someone care so little about children and families that they’re willing to use kids -- and separation from their parents -- as pawns in immigration policy? And how can the people implementing that policy on the ground hear sobbing children and joke about what’s going on?
One inescapable answer is race. These are, after all, immigrants of color coming from Latin America. Many of the people implementing these immigration policies, from Trump and his Cabinet down to border agents, are predominantly white. And based on the research, that makes them much less likely to view brown kids and their parents with a sense of humanity.