Operation Phobos

A 25-year-old mother and her 32-year-old boyfriend face charges after allegedly confining a 6-year-old boy to a pen and causing blunt force injuries to his abdomen, ultimately leading to his death.

President Donald Trump has been pushing to reinstate broader family separation policies and sought to close the US-Mexico border at El Paso, Texas, as his conflict with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reached a boiling point.

Children reported being fed largely inedible food—including rotten items—in crowded, freezing cold facilities. Despite many kids arriving in wet clothes, CBP gave them nothing beyond Mylar “blankets,” the report said.

One of the dehumanizing administration policies Miller advanced was the “zero-tolerance” policy, a policy which caused a surge in the number of children and parents being separated from one another when caught crossing into the U.S. via the U.S.-Mexico border.  

According to The Washington Post, despite public outrage over the policy, “Miller defended the separations and had encouraged the president to enact them – telling others in the West Wing they would prove to be a migration deterrent.” Due to the immense blowback of the policy, President Trump ended its practice but as of August 2019, but Miller continued to defend it. 

Despite President Trump’s executive order ending the policy, the administration has continued to utilize covert practices to continue separating families at the U.S. border, as SPLC recently reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is declining to provide witnesses for a House hearing next week on the administration’s treatment of migrant children at the border.