The greatest scandal of this presidency — and of all U.S. presidencies, really — is Russia’s co-opting of President Donald Trump. But that should not diminish the importance or the horror of Trump’s greatest domestic outrage: the cruel, senseless separation of migrant parents from their children with no real plan swiftly to reunite them.

The American Civil Liberties Union in a written statement points out that the administration has already missed one deadline and is likely to miss another. (“On July 23, the Trump administration told the court that it had reunited or ‘appropriately discharged’ 1,187 of the 2,551 children ages 5 and older who were forcibly separated from their parents. The government has also reunited 58 out of 103 children who are under the age of 5 and whose reunions were required by the first deadline, July 10.”)

We now know hundreds of parents were deported without their kids, according to UPI:

“The status report to Southern California U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, in an update between plaintiffs and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the 463 cases are ‘under review,’ and in those cases the adult ‘is not in U.S.’

“The report was requested by Sabraw ahead of the Trump administration’s 30-day deadline to reunite separated families, which ends Thursday. The judge wanted clarity on how many of the more than 2,551 parents eligible for reunions are no longer in the United States.”

The administration has the nerve to claim that parents — under the duress of family separation — willingly gave up their children. UPI reports: “Attorneys and immigration advocates are questioning, though, whether the parents fully understood what they were asked, and are hoping a court hearing Tuesday will provide clarity. … Advocates argue that migrant parents have been pressured and, out of desperation, signed deportation forms to be released from custody once their sons and daughters were sent to government shelters.” The ACLU expressed “concerns about misinformation given to these parents about their rights to fight deportation without their children,” given the near-impossibility of tracking down parents in Central America.

The ACLU very reasonably rejects the assertion that parents acted voluntarily. “As of July 23, the government reported that 130 parents had waived their right for reunification, meaning that their child would stay in the U.S. while they are removed, either in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody or possibly being released to a sponsor,” it explained. “It is critical that we are able to reach these parents and independently verify that they made this important choice with full knowledge of their families’ legal rights. In court on Friday, the government was not able to say how many of the 136 parents were still in the country, and this is information we will continue to press for.”

Consider the trauma already inflicted on these children. Then add in the real possibility that some parents will never be found. The Trump administration will have willfully and inhumanely inflicted ongoing emotional trauma on innocent kids and created hundreds of orphans for the sake of “deterrence.”

While the administration has tried to claim a “victory” in decreasing illegal entry, its data — big surprise! — are misleading at best. As Harsha Panduranga, counsel in the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, pointed out, “Data from the past few years shows that southwestern apprehensions and detentions regularly decrease from May to June. In four out of the past five years, when there was no ‘zero-tolerance’ policy, and which were all years when Barack Obama was president, southwestern apprehensions and detentions also went down from May to June.”

Moreover, cases of family apprehensions “only decreased from 9,485 to 9,449, or 0.4 percent, from May to June. That’s hardly evidence that the administration’s practice of family separation caused any drops in attempted illegal border crossings. Indeed, as Adam Cox and Ryan Goodman have convincingly argued — and as cited recently by a federal court reaffirming an order limiting the detention of migrant children to 20 days — there is little proof that harsh immigration detention policies have had any deterrent effects.”

This disgraceful chapter in Trump administration’s ongoing narrative of xenophobia and cruelty won’t end until all children are reunited. And even then, the damage to them, their parents and the United States’ image in the world will not evaporate.

Jennifer Rubin | The Washington Post