“I shook hands with a 13 year-old-boy whose mother told him to make eye contact and shake hands firmly. Even in the midst of horrific living conditions and imprisonment, children at the facility are still being taught to treat people with respect, while being treated less than human…”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43), Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following statement on the Trump administration’s failure to meet the court-ordered deadlines to reunite children with their parents. As of August 10, 500 children remain separated from their parents.
Surely, we, as African people, are not without historical reference and the lived reality of the separation of our children and their parents.
From October 2017 to May 2018, more than 2,700 children have been separated from their parents and the rate of those separations have risen alarmingly—in the past six weeks alone, at least 1,995 children have been taken from their parents and placed in shelter facilities that are already nearing capacity
Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) joined more than 100 of her colleagues in introducing the Keep Families Together Act of 2018 in response to the Trump administration’s insidious practice of family separation.