On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “At This Hour,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY) that if the Trump administration misses the deadline to reunite children who were separated from their families at the border with their families, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, HHS Secretary Alex Azar, and acting ICE Director Ronald Vitiello should be put in jail.
Nadler said, “[T]hey’re in effect kidnapping children. They made no arrangements or plans to return the kids to their parents. They had no real reason to do this. They said — some of them were honest enough to say that they were terrorizing children as a deterrent to people abroad not to come here to apply for political asylum. And when you have a court order, a court order is not a suggestion. It’s not aspirational. And people should be held in contempt of court if they do not obey the court order. They’re not doing very much to obey the court order.”
He added, “If I were the judge, I would call the secretary of Homeland Security, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and the head of ICE, and I would put them in front of me. And I’d say, you will go to jail until the kids are reunited, in civil contempt. Because it’s the only way, apparently, to get them to obey the law.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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