President Joe Biden is set to sign an Executive Order on Tuesday that will establish a task force aimed at reuniting families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration. This is certainly good news but Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth is not on board with this, Mediaite [1] reports. And he criticized the move in a way that suggests he supports the idea of U.S. border officials raising undocumented children at the federal government’s expense.
The goal of Biden’s task force is to “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,” one senior administration official told The Washington Post. [2] How the task force plans to reunite families isn’t clear yet.
Under the Trump administration, at least 5,000 families were separated as part of a particularly draconian policy intended to discourage immigration. In an interview with NPR, [3] former Chief of Staff John Kelly described the practice as a “tough deterrent.” In the current situation, roughly 1,000 children remain separated from their parents, the Post reports:
“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 immigration. The American Civil Liberties Union says that at least 1000 of these families are likely to remain separated — parents scattered mostly across Central America and children living with relatives in the United States.”
Another unnamed senior administration official told the Post that the task force’s goal is to “get a better handle on these numbers and to start reuniting children with their parents.”
This is a goal that most decent human beings would ascribe to, but leave it to Hegseth to attach sinister connotations here.
“Let’s rename it, it’s illegal immigration day,” Hegseth said, obviously mocking the efforts. “It’s a total reversal of everything the Trump administration stood for.”
Gee, he says that like it’s a bad thing.
“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 (does Hegseth think these people are fish or something?) that were never effective and always created a magnet for people to come to this country.”
So Hegseth is all up in it because the administration is trying to reunite children with their parents? How utterly disgusting. This is a new low, even for Fox & Friends. Disgusting.
Watch the video below. Hegseth’s nonsense begins at 12:01.