Pete Hegseth Bristles at Biden’s Executive Order to Reunite Orphaned Children With Their Parents
President Joe Biden is set to sign an Executive Order on Tuesday that will set up a task force designed to reunite families separated at the US Southern Border during the Trump administration. Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth bristled at this idea Tuesday morning — in a manner that could reasonably suggest that he is a proponent of the US Border officials raising undocumented orphans on the federal dime.
According to a senior administration official quoted by The Washington Post, the Biden Task Force will “work across the U.S. government, with key stakeholders and representatives of impacted families, and with partners across the hemisphere to find parents and children separated by the Trump Administration.” It is not yet clear how this group will work to reunite children with their parents.
What is clear, however, is that, under the Trump administration, a reported 5,000 families were separated as part of a specific and draconian policy designed to discourage immigration. Former Chief of Staff John Kelly called the harsh practice of child separation a “tough deterrent” in an interview with NPR. Roughly 1,000 children are still currently orphaned as a result of this practice, according to The Washington Post:
Between July 2017 and June 2018, the Trump administration separated at least 5,500 children from their parents along the border in an attempt to deter migration. The American Civil Liberties Union says that at least 1,000 of those families are likely to remain separated — parents scattered mostly across Central America and children living with relatives in the United States.
An unnamed senior administration official revealed to WaPo the task force’s goal, saying “The first order of the task force will be to get a better handle on these numbers and start reuniting children with their parents.”
But the reunification of families and their children orphaned at the border is apparently not the feel-good policy everyone can get behind. Hegseth sees a more sinister agenda at play. “Let’s rename it, it’s illegal immigration day,” Hegseth mocked. “It’s a total reversal of everything the Trump administration stood for.”
“It’s a return to the bipartisan consensus before Donald Trump that was effectively okay with borders being open, a pathway to citizenship, massive illegal immigration, and catch and release programs that were never effective and always created a magnet for people to come to this country,” he added.
It is also the reunification of children who have lost their parents.
Watch above via Fox News.
