“zero tolerance” was DESIGNED to punish undocumented immigrants and create “unaccompanied minors.” (UMs) Which palmed the kids off on another agency. While the procedures for UMs were designed to care for children and find homes for them, they were designed for older children where the families had to be located, not where the parents were ALREADY IN CUSTODY. So they made a horrible situation much more difficult by not keeping track of the parents and children. The fact that we have many cases where the parents have already been deported back home without their kids is the proof of the incompetence and lack of forethought of this administration.
Of course politically, it is remarkable that they thought that they could separate small children from their parents and just say “Oops, so sorry, not sorry.” Their expectation was that there was almost no limit to the cruelty that they could visit on brown people without making a significant number of people WITHIN the GOP say “Are we the baddies here?”
