IN BOMBSHELL NBC NEWS STORY, MERKLEY REVEALS SECRET TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLAN TO CREATE BORDER CRISIS

Leaked memo shows deliberate plans to create a border crisis—including family separation and increased detention of children—as early as December 2017

Thursday, January 17, 2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a bombshell NBC News report, Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley today revealed a previously secret document that shows the Trump Administration deliberately plotting to create a crisis at the southern border. The memo, dated December 2017, details deliberate plans to implement a family separation policy as a deterrent to would-be asylum seekers and lays out strategies to increase detention of migrant children.

The full NBC report can be read here. The memo is available here.   

“President Trump has shut down the government over a crisis we now know he deliberately created,” said Merkley. “This document shows Trump Administration staffers plotting to create a humanitarian crisis at the border—criminalizing the search for asylum, tearing children from their parents’ arms, and expanding the lock-up of both parents and children. This memo shows that the administration was treating children as political pawns, not vulnerable human beings. That’s reprehensible. We must end this Trump war on migrant children.”