Thread by @itscaitlinhd

1/ I've spent the last 18 months investigating how our government reached the point of taking children away from their parents as a way to discourage migration to the United States. Here's my story about how and why it happened, and who's responsible.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

2/ Beyond the answers to those initial questions, I came away with a new understanding of the government processes and procedures that exist to prevent bad policies from being implemented--systems that in this case, were dismantled, disempowered or ignored.

3/It's easy to blame family separations on a few hawks and a chaotic administration, but they were co-signed by dozens of high ranking political appointees and bureaucrats. Some actively supported the idea, but many simply declined to push back, figuring that someone else would.

4/The implications cannot be overstated. At press time, the parents of 185 separated children still had not been found. Even those who have been reunified remain, in many cases, profoundly traumatized. Both parents and children are struggling with severe mental illness.

5/For years we've been told that separations were done humanely and without incident. That's not true. Neris González, a Salvadoran consular worker, recalls kids being physically pulled back and forth between their parents and agents; she worried some might get hurt.

6/She says the CBP processing center where she worked was virtually locked down while separations were underway. No one outside of government was allowed in to see what was going on.

7/González can still hear the children's ear-piercing screams. She recalls getting ready to leave the facility at the end of the day. The children hugged and clung to her, begging her not to leave them in the detention center alone.

8/When I asked government officials how this could have happened, many told me they had no idea how badly awry separations would go. But government records show the opposite-everything that went wrong was documented in advance warnings. Still, the administration forged ahead.

9/This piece is the continuation of a body of work by many reporters who helped to uncover family separations before they were publicly acknowledged, during the many months when government officials were misleading congress and the public about what they were doing.

11/There are too many to name, but among them @JuliaEAinsley @lomikriel @jacobsoboroff @gingerthomp1 @mariasacchetti @nickmiroff @dlind @jonathanblitzer @haleaziz and of course, @nixonron @mirjordan @shearm and @juliehdavis. The list goes on and on. Please add to it.

12/And the work is ongoing. @iamfannygarcia and @NaraMilanich are recording the oral histories of separated families to ensure that their stories are preserved. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

13/This story couldn't have happened w/out my brilliant colleagues, starting w/ the unparalleled @sstossel. @AndrewAoyama's research was indispensable, as was a copy and checking army, plus our photo, art and experimental storytelling departments. I'm so lucky to work with them.

Also (duh!) @ahylton26, @anniecorreal, @bylizrobbins, @mollymotoole, @mollyhf, @priscialva, @juliaprestonnow, @tedhesson, @BobMooreNews and more and more. (Hate these lists bc it's so hard to capture all). Not to mention @kannoyoungs and @camiloreports more recently. On and on.