Trump Is Siphoning Cancer Research Funds into His Immigration Detention Centers

The Trump administration’s disdain for immigrants is reaching new levels this week. According to Yahoo News, the White House is swiping $266 million from other government funds and dumping them into the Unaccompanied Alien Children program.

Programs that suffer from this sweeping reallocation include Head Start, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, mental and maternal health, women’s shelters, substance abuse programs and even the National Cancer Institute. The White House is so obsessed with keeping people outside of its borders that it’s taking away resources vital to its own citizens. It’s a blind, ignorant rage.

Even though the President has said family separation at the border would stop, the government is still fighting against immigrants coming in, and the number of immigrants and refugees seeking safety has largely remained the same. The problem lies in the fact that Trump is both detaining children for longer periods of time and discharging them at less than half the normal rate. In May of 2017, about 2,000 children were in U.S. custody. Now, Yahoo News reports about 12,800 kids currently living in tent cities. A shelter in Tornillo, Texas, originally intended for emergency use only, recently expanded from 400 beds to 3,800.

During the actual immigration surges of 2014 and 2016, when there might’ve at least been a reasonable answer for these budget reallocations, the UAC aimed to discharge three percent of children per day. Mark Greenberg, former HHS Administration for Children and Families Official told Yahoo News that number has plummeted to less than one percent. Trump is detaining more children than ever before and is employing strategies to detain children until they’re old enough to be tried as adults.

Trump and his goons have no clue where this program is going. Should this trend continue, the budget cuts and tent cities will only grow exponentially. Given these recent budget cuts, it’s clear the White House is in no way prepared for that outcome. Trump isn’t interested in releasing detained immigrants and he’s certainly not concerned with their wellbeing, either. These purgatorial holding pens are the direct result of that apathy, that hatred. Even our profit-obsessed president is willing to shell out the $750 a day per child, so long as they aren’t allowed into the country.