Former first lady, Laura Bush, like her husband and her in-laws, remained silent while the Barack Obama attempted to follow through on his promise to fundamentally transform America. When innocent law enforcement officers were being killed at the hands of the Obama sanctioned hate group, Black Lives Matter, the Bush’s were silent. When America discovered that Barack Obama stood by Hillary’s side as she lied about the deaths in front of the caskets of four brave Americans who were killed in Benghazi, the Bush’s were silent. The Bush’s weren’t just silent during that dark era in America’s history, they actually embraced Hillary Clinton and her impeached, accused rapist husband, the former President Bill Clinton, treating him like an adopted son. The Bush’s later admitted to voting for Hillary in the presidential election after Donald Trump trounced “Little Jeb!” in the 2016  primaries.

Now, that we have a President who is actually following through on the promises to fix America’s broken immigration policies, the Bush’s have miraculously found their voices, and Laura is speaking out about an issue most Americans want to see fixed…now!

The chart below, from Numbers USA, shows how midterm voters across the board want to see reduced numbers of immigrants coming into America:

Laura penned an op-ed that appeared today, in the anti-Trump Washington Post, where she talked about how President Trump’s zero-tolerance,  policy on illegal immigrants is “cruel and immoral”.

Here’s a portion of her op-ed:

On Sunday, a day we as a nation set aside to honor fathers and the bonds of family, I was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents. In the six weeks between April 19 and May 31, the Department of Homeland Security has sent nearly 2,000 children to mass detention centers or foster care. More than 100 of these children are younger than 4 years old. The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders.

I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.

Paula Wood tweeted a reminder to Laura Bush that the law President Trump is obeying has been in place since 2002. She also tells Laura that there ar no fences, cages or tent cities. Wood claims her son works in “this field so I know.”  She also attaches a link to the DHS Security Act of 2002 that she cites in her tweet.

https://twitter.com/txsweettar225/status/1008548496000118784

Was Laura out of the country when her husband, former President George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security was criticized in a 2005 report by the House Appropriations Committee for separating illegal alien children from their parents?

“even as young as nursing infants, are being separated from their parents and placed in shelters.” 

The New Yorker reported The detention of immigrants is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in this country, and, with the support of the Bush Administration, it is becoming a lucrative business. At the end of 2006, some fourteen thousand people were in government custody for immigration-law violations, in a patchwork of detention arrangements, including space rented out by hundreds of local and state jails, and seven freestanding facilities run by private contractors. This number was up by seventy-nine percent from the previous year, an increase that can be attributed, in large part, to the actions of Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. In 2005, Chertoff announced the end of “catch-and-release”—the long-standing practice of allowing immigrants caught without legal documents to remain free inside the country while they waited for an appearance in court. Since these illegal immigrants weren’t monitored in any way, the rate of no-shows was predictably high, and the practice inflamed anti-immigrant sentiment.

When immigration detention started its precipitate climb following 9/11, private prison companies eagerly offered their empty beds, and the industry was revitalized.

One complication was that hundreds of children were among the immigrant detainees. Typically, kids had been sent to shelters, which allowed them to attend school, while parents were held at closed facilities. Nobody thought that it was good policy to separate parents from children—not immigration officials, not immigrant advocates, not Congress. In 2005, a report by the House Appropriations Committee expressed concern about “reports that children apprehended by D.H.S.”—the Department of Homeland Security—“even as young as nursing infants, are being separated from their parents and placed in shelters.” The committee also declared that children should not be placed in government custody unless their welfare was in question, and added that the Department of Homeland Security should “release families or use alternatives to detention” whenever possible. The report recommended a new alternative to detention known as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program—which allows people awaiting disposition of their immigration cases to be released into the community, provided that they are closely tracked by means such as electronic monitoring bracelets, curfews, and regular contact with a caseworker.

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