An outrageous lie! The Flores settlement established baseline conditions for how minors in facilities overseen by O.R.R. must be treated: govt must release minors to their families “wo unnecessary delay"; and that when it holds them it must be in “least restrictive setting" 1/
The reason for family separation? The Trump Administration's zero tolerance policy. When the government decides to criminally charge parents for illegal entry (even if they're seeking asylum), it automatically results in their separation from their kids. 2/
This is a new Trump Admin policy. Plain and simple. The crisis of family separation, of courts getting overwhelmed, of children filling up detention centers: these are all the direct results of the zero tolerance policy. 3/
Trump said the Democrats were responsible. That's a lie--and also self-evidently senseless. What Grassley is saying, and what Paul Ryan is saying, is something even more nefarious in ways. They are blaming the only meager protections kids have while they're in detention alone. 4/
Grassley, Ryan et al are trying to use this horrific Trump Administration policy of separating parents and kids at the border to push an agenda anti-immigration hawks have harbored for a while: strip protections away for kids seeking asylum at the border and 5/
end the chance unaccompanied kids have to seek asylum. And to be clear, I mean the "real" unaccompanied kids who are fleeing north alone to reunite with family. Not the poor kids who become "unaccompanied" when the government separates them from their parents at the border 6/end
