That's not Adoption, That's Kidnapping

[Igel]

19. People aren't actually reading past the headline.

The article's from October 2018.

The mother and daughter were separated in November 2015. Call them Araceli and Alexa, their first names. Araceli was sent back to El Salvador fairly quickly. The child was then labelled (to my thinking, incorrectly) an unaccompanied minor.

In 2016 custody of Alexa was awarded to an American family.

In December 2016 the situation was investigated, custody revoked, and the child ordered deported.

In January 2017 Trump was inaugurated.

In February 2017 Alexa was deported.

There's much not to like about how things were done in 2017 and 2018, but this isn't one of them. The only thing it does is say, "You know, under President Obama families were separated and, apparently his appointees engaged in kidnapping for the purposes of selling immigrant children into the sex trade." Now, I'm sure that people here don't *mean* to be saying that, but appending this particular style of commentary and claim to this particular example entails precisely that.

Because people aren't actually reading past the headline. It's not like it's War and Peace, in the original Russian and French and in old orthography. It's word count, Word tells me, is 3,723 exclusive of headline and credits.

Now, there are cases where this kind of thing could happen and I'd say, "Sure. Could be worse." There are still true unaccompanied minors, and minors who plausibly have no legit guardian with them as they cross. They should be declared unaccompanied. If they're young enough to give sufficient information to fairly quickly ID their parents, send them home. But often they won't, and in the past (by which I mean 2014 and 2015) the parents often sent them north to be with relatives who weren't their parents, friends who weren't their relatives, because "it's better there." Still, send them home if you can ID their parents. But some would not or could not give adequate information. Those you put in foster care and then adopt out. It's their choice as runaways (with nothing to be done about the perils of aiding and abetting runaways); and in the case of some kids, they just didn't can't give enough information.