Thread by @reveal

1/ The Trump administration said it wanted to target human smugglers.

ICE took info from children, then used it to deport their families.

We investigated one operation that ended in more than 400 arrests. revealnews.org/article/they-u…

2/ The program was called the Human Smuggling Disruption Initiative. Its stated goal was to lessen the “constant humanitarian threat” of child smuggling.

Our review of the operation casts doubt on that official narrative.

3/ Over the course of three months, the agency made more than 400 arrests.

Yet our search of more than 1,400 smuggling-related cases filed in federal court in the seven months during and after the operation turned up only one case that was clearly connected to the program.

4/ The Trump administration went on to scale up the tactic in April 2018, sharing information on all parents and other sponsors collected by the Office of Refugee Resettlement with ICE, not just those officials suspected of smuggling.

5/ As a result, the agency that’s supposed to be aiding children in the immigration system has helped ICE deport their parents.

6/ By December, ICE said the agency had made 170 arrests based on the info sharing.

That new policy is the subject of a federal lawsuit filed in VA that says the Trump admin is using migrant children as bait to arrest their undocumented family members: splcenter.org/news/2019/01/2…

7/ ICE can no longer use the info sharing to arrest and deport parents and sponsors, at least through September, when the govt’s fiscal year ends.

Congressional Dems made that a key sticking point in the immigration compromise that ended the govt shutdown earlier this year.

8/ Yet the consequences of the program linger.

This is Wilson. In 2016, the Office of Refugee Resettlement asked him to come forward and give his child a home after she crossed the border.

“I simply thought about helping my daughter,” he said.

9/ A year later, ICE agents came to the address he’d given ORR, and arrested him.

Now he’s facing deportation.

10/ At an ICE holding cell, Wilson met other immigrants who had also recently sponsored children. He heard stories similar to his.

“They used the kids to get to parents like me,” he said.

11/ On a recent Saturday morning, Wilson sat on his living room couch, his hands clasped in his lap as he thought about what will happen to his family if he’s deported.

“How will they live?" he said. "Who will pay the rent, the bills? Who will take them to school?”

12/ @lauracmorel and @patrickmichels are unearthing new stories about families separated at the border all the time.

Get their weekly newsletter: revealnews.org/newsletter