ACLU’s Gelernt on Trump Immigration Policy: ‘We Cannot Take Little Children Away from Their Parents’

‘And not only are the separations still continuing, but I think the trauma that we’ve inflicted on these children could potentially last for a lifetime’

RUSH EXCERPT:

GELERNT: “I think you’re putting your finger on it. We do a lot of immigration work at the aclu and people agree with us, people don’t agree with us, but we rarely saw that kind of outcry from both liberals and Democrats and Republicans and conservatives. I mean, there was an outpouring. That’s the first time that this administration has backed down on anything and they did it partly because of our court case, but I think in significant part because of the public outcry. I think what was different is that we were able to tell human stories. It wasn’t abstract policy arguments, it wasn’t a blur of aggregate statistics, it was these little children being torn away from their families, sitting in government facilities, one years old, two years old, three years old, asking where is my mommy. When people heard that they forgot about sort of what they think about macro immigration policy and they said, look, whatever we may agree or disagree with the aclu about, we do not want little children being taken away and I think one of the pivotal points was when Laura bush came out and wrote an op-ed in the “Washington Post” and said, look, we just have to agree on this. We cannot take little children away from their parents.”

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