Demand that Donald Trump Pay to Reunite Immigrant Families

In early May, 2018, the Trump administration announced their "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration. They then extended that policy to those seeking asylum in the U.S. This policy separated thousands of children from their parents. The policy was "ended" by an Executive Order signed on June 20, 2018. Judge Dana Sabraw of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered the government to reunite these families within 30 days on June 27, 2018.

The government is almost certainly going to miss that deadline as they never had a plan in place on how to reunite these parents with their children. Their record keeping was so lax that in many cases, they have no idea which parents and children are related. The only way to solve this issue is with DNA tests for thousands of people, most of whom are scared children being housed in group homes, foster care, jails, a "tent city" on a military base in Texas, or "shelters" in old warehouses or closed-down superstores. Many who have visited these shelters have compared them to internment camps complete with pro-Trump propaganda on the walls.

As of mid-July, the vast majority of those children had still not been reunited with their parents. The administration had been forcing parents to pay the costs of reunification. The vast majority of families that were separated are from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Most of these people traveled over 1, 000 miles with only what they could carry with them in order to escape massive violence and potential death in their home countries. They have little to no resources. They are the least likely people involved in this situation to be able to pay hundreds, or thousands, of dollars for DNA tests or for airfare to get their children back from wherever the government shipped them.

On Friday July 13, 2018, Judge Sabraw ordered the government to pay the costs related to reunifying these families. These costs will most likely add up to millions of dollars.

Donald Trump has made a big show out of donating his presidential salary back to the government every three months. So far, he has donated to the National Park Service, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is time that he be required to donate his salary back to the government agencies that will be using taxpayer money to reunite these families who were torn apart due to his terrible policy.

We, the citizens of the United States of America, demand that Donald Trump donate his presidential salary, from now until he leaves office, back to the United States government with the specific instruction that it be used to repay any costs associated with reuniting families who were separated by his administration's "zero tolerance" policy. We also demand that he continue to donate his presidential retirement salary, if he is entitled to it, with the same instruction until all costs resulting from this policy have been recovered. A vast majority of Americans were opposed to separating families. This was Trump's policy. He needs pay the costs resulting from this national disgrace, not the taxpayers.

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