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Under Trump, more than 145,000 US kids have been separated from their parents, a study shows

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of some of the government’s cruelest policies, doesn’t care what you think about him. He doesn’t care if you call him “Pee-wee German” or “Weird Stephen” or “Voldemort”, or any of the other nicknames he has inspired; his self-esteem is excellent.

“I have a very, very secure, intact ego,” Miller told Fox News’s Jesse Watters this week after being asked how he felt about his wife, Katie Miller, potentially landing a big distribution deal with Paramount for her terrible Maga podcast. “I’ve never had a larger fan following,” Miller continued. “[A]ny man who works for President Trump is a man that is very, very strong and self-assured in his role.”

Well, yes, I suppose you’ve got to be a very, very strong man to separate babies from their parents – which is what Miller will forever be famous for. Back in Trump 1.0, Miller played a key role in implementing a “zero tolerance” border policy that systematically removed more than 5,000 immigrant children, some just a few months old, from their parents at the US-Mexico border. A Human Rights Watch report released in December 2024 found that as many as 1,360 children had never been reunited with their parents.

Swayed by all the outrage, Trump eventually signed an executive order ending the family separation policy in 2018. But the practice continues, albeit in a different form. A report released on Monday from the Brookings Institution estimates that more than 145,000 US citizen children have had at least one parent detained since the start of Trump’s second administration, amid a mass deportation campaign heavily influenced by Miller.

To be clear: there are no official figures about how many children have been affected by Trump’s mass deportations. But Brookings, which is a highly reputable nonpartisan thinktank, conducted a statistical analysis that looked at the demographic characteristics of the roughly 60,000 people currently in detention, and the 400,000 people who have been put into Ice detention from an interior arrest since the start of Trump’s second term. The report estimates that out of the more than 145,000 children believed to be affected, more than 22,000 experienced the detention of all their co-resident parents. More than 53,000 citizen children with a detained parent were estimated to be under the age of six.

Trump is not the first president to detain or deport the parents of US citizen minors. However, he’s doing it at a much faster rate, and in a much crueler way, than his predecessor. A data analysis by ProPublica published in March found “ICE arrests of parents doubled in the first seven months of Trump’s second term compared with the Biden administration”. It also found mothers were being more aggressively targeted: “Trump is deporting about four times as many moms of US citizen children per day as Biden did.” A Guardian investigation from May uncovered similar statistics.

Another change from Biden administration norms are the guidelines on how immigration officers should exercise their discretion when it comes to families. “A document once known as the Parental Interests Directive has been given a new name under Trump – the Detained Parents Directive,” writes ProPublica. “And its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was ‘humane,’ has been stripped of the word.”

Again: Trump is not the first president to separate US citizen children from their immigrant parents. But no other administration has been so callous about the welfare of the children affected. “The bottom line is that there is no systematic approach to protecting the children of those detained by ICE,” the Brookings report states. There is “no government entity … responsible for their wellbeing”. There also isn’t adequate record-keeping, meaning we have little idea what is happening to all these children.

What we do know, of course, is that many of these children are going to be immensely traumatized. Kelly Kribs, an attorney at the Young Center, told the Guardian in May that the separation crisis unfolding now is even more insidious than the family separation policy from Trump 1.0. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma that we saw unfold back in 2018,” said Kribs. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

One suspects that the Millers, who have three kids of their own, are not particularly perturbed by these 145,000 traumatized children. Stephen met his wife, Katie, when they both worked for Trump during his first term, and she is just as hawkish on immigration as he is. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself – to try to make me more compassionate – but it didn’t work,” Katie boasted to Jacob Soboroff in 2018, according to his book, Separated. She added that colleagues told her she’d think about family separation differently when she had her own kids: “But I don’t think so.” Perhaps she’ll share some more of her charming views with us on The Katie Miller Podcast.

Gaza flotilla activists allege sexual assault in Israeli detention

“We were stripped, thrown to the ground, kicked,” Luca Poggi, an Italian economist who was among those detained from the flotilla, told Reuters. “Many of us were Tasered, some were sexually assaulted, and some were denied access to a lawyer.” Israel has denied these particular sexual assault allegations. Meanwhile, the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been proudly showing off a video where the Israeli military is shown abusing the international activists who were trying to reach Gaza with aid.

The Taliban appears to be legitimizing child marriage

According to the AP, a new divorce decree “says that the silence of a girl reaching puberty can be interpreted as consent to marriage”. While the Taliban insists Afghanistan has banned the forced marriage of girls, experts and activists disagree. “After issuing hundreds of anti-women decrees, the Taliban are now attempting to institutionalise child marriage within the formal legal structure,” one activist told the Guardian.

The rise and fall of the only (known) female yakuza

Mako Nishimura has certainly had a more eventful life – and clubbed more male gangsters – than most. This Guardian long read by Sean Williams is well worth your time.

‘Lower-value human capital’ is a delightful new phrase CEOs are using

The chief executive of Standard Chartered, a very high-value man, has now apologized for describing the almost 8,000 staff members who are going to lose their jobs as “lower-value human capital”.

Tennessee school board member who called teen ‘hot’ is charged with assault

Back in April, Keith Ervin put his arm around a female student seated next to him during a public board meeting that was being filmed and said: “God – you’re hot. Did you know that? Damn.” His fellow board members eventually censured him but he refused to step down. Now he’s been served with a criminal summons.

Why did Trump invest millions in a conveyor-belt sushi chain?

It’s very fishy, but one theory floating around is that either Trump or his son, Don Jr, who runs the president’s trust, mixed up the sushi brand Kura Sushi with Tokyo firm Fujikura, a wire maker that has been making a ton of money from the AI datacenter boom. Either Trump really loves his salmon rolls or we are governed by idiots.

The week in pawtriarchy

Australian farmer Rhys Smoker was making a nice salad to go with his steak dinner when he found a live frog in his sealed bag of supermarket lettuce. His roommates called the little fella Greg and released him in a nearby pond. Lettuce be glad that Smoker didn’t get a frog in his throat.