The government’s program of forcibly removing thousands of children from their parents, including toddlers and babies, was the result of conscious decisions made by specific Trump administration officials. Tuesday’s hearing added new data points to that story, with a career civil servant testifying that his office, tasked with providing care for minors in the immigration system, raised concerns with administration officials in the year leading up to “zero tolerance” becoming an official policy, warning that the separation of children from their parents would put the children at risk of serious psychological harm and that the system was not built to handle such an initiative. Additionally, officials testified that there was little warning within their respective agencies that “zero tolerance” was actually being implemented until it was imminent, or already happening.
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