Thread by @InnuendoStudios

Before you argue with conservatives claiming Obama began the practice of family separation that Trump is enacting, read this. The argument is a gross distortion of history. vox.com/2018/6/21/1748…

The conservative argument that we "didn't care when Obama did it" is already a racist ploy that ignores differences of scale, so we often accept the premise because, by they're own arguments, they're still wrong.

But then we accept and often repeat an untruth.

Short version: Obama did not separate families for the crime of crossing the border. Crossing the border is a misdemeanor, rarely prosecuted or meaningfully penalized in Obama's day.

Families were only separated if the parents committed a felony, e.g. carrying drugs. This was exceedingly rare.

It's unclear how often it happened, but it's also unclear whether the practice was already in place when Obama took office.

Obama did also construct facilities for holding unaccompanied minors, but these facilities were for minors who were *actually* unaccompanied, i.e. mostly teens who crossed the border without parents.

By law, they were to be kept for a max of 3 days, though some stayed longer when a surge in asylum seekers overloaded the system. At which point the courts came in an made it illegal to detain them for more than 2 weeks.

This is distinct from Trump's system, where minors are only "unaccompanied" because *they've been taken away from their parents* and are kept for weeks or months on end. Trump was also detaining much, much younger children.

This is not a defense of Obama's policies, but a rejection of false equivalence.

I'm not saying this expecting it will change a conservative's mind, and you should expect that either.

I'm saying it so you don't start unwittingly repeating lies.