While discussing the horrendous conditions in some migrant detention facilities during Sunday's Fox News Sunday, Senior Adviser Kellyanne Conway lied to Chris Wallace's face when she claimed that Trump was never informed that children would be separated from their parents as a result of the zero tolerance policy they implemented in April 2018.
The topic turned to family separations during the interview after Conway filibustered about Sunday's raids by ICE and Chris Wallace asked directly, "OK, let me ask about -- what about the family separation -- "
Conway said, "So I'm against separating families, let me make that clear, she said, I think you can enforce the law without separating families."
And then Conway told maybe her biggest lie of the interview.
"And I know firsthand had my boss and our president been told ahead of last year's zero-tolerance policy by people who are no longer in the administration that the net effect of that would have separating children from their parents," she said.
Conway continued, "While the parent's claims are being adjudicated, the idea was to protect the child so the child..."
We know Donald Trump does not like to read briefings of any kind or have lengthy meetings about his policies, but this is really ridiculous even for Conway.
Conway is claiming that Jeff Sessions and others in Trump's administration did not go over the ramifications of implementing their highly controversial zero-tolerance policy when dealing with migrants?
In March of 2017, Reuters reported:
Women and children crossing together illegally into the United States could be separated by U.S. authorities under a proposal being considered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to three government officials.
"Part of the reason for the proposal is to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children, said the officials, who have been briefed on the proposal."
Since this happened exactly as this report explained, this was a precisely planned move on Trump's part and Conway's excuses are unreal and part of her "alternative facts" theories she uses to gaslight the American people.
Human Rights Watch reported this back in August of 2018:
The government specifically chose to prosecute parents traveling with children over adults traveling alone. This is in sharp contrast to the policy under previous administrations, under which parents traveling with children were rarely criminally prosecuted.
The administration also began separating families, including families who crossed the border legally, in October 2017, long before the “zero-tolerance” policy was announced in April 2018. Human Rights Watch has spoken with families who crossed the border in an unauthorized manner during the “zero tolerance” policy and were separated, but apparently not prosecuted. Family separation was therefore not an unintended consequence of the “zero-tolerance” policy but an effort to punish families.
The Trump administration had the resources to handle the overflow problem once they implemented the zero tolerance policy since they knew it would happen. It is a cruel and horrific plan to punish those families for their desire of a better life and the children suffered as a consequence.
