During an interview with The View Wednesday, Dr. Jill Biden was asked about child separations at the U.S.-Mexico border.
.@DrBiden: "There would be no separation of families at the border" if @JoeBiden was president. pic.twitter.com/aYEaZqKT3O
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 21, 2020
Joe Biden is also claiming this is a policy "perpetuated by" the Trump administration.
Child separation was your policy starting in 2014 https://t.co/0L4Av7q03c
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) October 21, 2020
The context about why separations are necessary, to verify children aren't being trafficked or abused by non-biological adults, was not provided. Further, child separation was an Obama administration policy that was started in 2014 and continued by the Trump administration.
Barack’s ICE chief: Cages were Obama’s ideahttps://t.co/ybkguugP1Q
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 21, 2020
During the DNC convention in August, former First Lady Michelle Obama was fact checked by the Associated Press for her claims and lack of context on the issue.
Trump used facilities that were built during the Obama-Biden administration to house children at the border. They are chain-link enclosures inside border facilities where migrants were temporarily housed, separated by sex and age.
At the height of the controversy over Trump’s zero-tolerance policy at the border, photos that circulated online of children in the enclosures generated great anger. But those photos — by The Associated Press — were taken in 2014 and depicted some of the thousands of unaccompanied children held by President Barack Obama.
When that fact came to light, some Democrats and activists who had tweeted the photos deleted their tweets. But prominent Democrats have continued to cite cages for children as a distinctive cruelty of Trump.
The Obama administration separated migrant children from families under certain limited circumstances, like when the child’s safety appeared at risk or when the parent had a serious criminal history.
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