Cross posted on the MRC's NewsBusters blog
On Thursday's New Day, CNN was again misleading its viewers on the issue of illegal immigrants being separated from their children by Border Patrol as host Alisyn Camerota hinted that the Trump administration was lying about ending its zero tolerance program that for about six weeks last year resulted in more children being separated from their parents while the parents were prosecuted for illegally entering the country.
As California Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass appeared as a guest, Camerota brought up recent congressional hearings on the subject and misleadingly stated that the administration has claimed child separations have "stopped."
She and Bass then discussed circumstances in which children are still being taken from parents or other family members, thus giving the impression that administration members are lying about family separation.
But, by contrast, last week's MSNBC coverage of the issue acknowledged that Kevin McAleenan, the acting director of Homeland Security, claimed that the policy on family separation is back to where it was during the Barack Obama administration -- when children were sometimes removed from parents under limited circumstances like parents having a criminal record.
Speaking with Bass, Camerota posed:
I want to talk to you about what's happening on the (House) Judiciary Committee … the work that you do that is equally important with what's happened with family separations at the border. So today you're trying to get answers because the administration says that family separations have stopped.
Bass quickly shot back:
They have not stopped. What the administration is saying is, is they have stopped because they have stopped in most cases taking kids away from their parents. But when is a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, a sibling not a family? So there are cases of grandparents who have come to the border with infants, with toddlers. They separate those children and then call them unaccompanied minors. … So they have just redefined family.
After the Democratic congresswoman then complained that a court or welfare case worker should be involved in taking children from parents who have a history of breaking the law, Camerota followed up: "And to your point, some of the people being called criminals, they have perhaps a DWI in their past. Since when in this country do you separate a child from that parent?"
Neither acknowledged that a parent swimming across the Rio Grande with a child or crossing the desert would constitute child endangerment and could justify removal of the child as a deterrent to others endangering their children.
Needless to say, it was not mentioned that child separation typically only effects those who crossed the border illegally and not legal immigrants.