Speaking Tuesday on The Rachel Maddow Show, the 47-year-old TV host condemned Trump as images of immigrant children were displayed throughout the news segment.
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However, the unveiled photos – taken in 2014 by an Associated Press photographer – are unrelated to the Trump administration and have previously been misused.
Maddow said in the September 15 episode: “In terms of permanent damage done to humans, in terms of the severity of the damage deliberately done to humans, the Trump administration, no matter what else they do, they will never ever get out from the shadow of the fact that they really did.
“As a policy and a deliberate practice, they really did take little kids away from their moms and dads.
“It will not be true that we all lived in a time when the White House ordered the forcible systematic removal of children from their parents at the border.
“They outfitted the kids with Mylar blankets and a lump of padding that was supposed to qualify as a mattress, and they told them to sleep on the floor behind a chain-linked fence.”
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In one of photos, children are seen wrapped in what appears to be an aluminum foil-type blanket on mattresses sprawled out across the floor of a caged-shelter in Arizona.
The caged-like compound was created during the Obama administration to house detained migrants who unlawfully crossed over the US-Mexico border.
According to The Associated Press, the photos were previously “presented by liberal activists as if they showed the effects of Trump’s immigration policy now.”
“The Obama administration separated migrant children from families under certain limited circumstances, like when the child’s safety appeared at risk or when the parent had a serious criminal history,” AP explained.
In once instance, back in May 2018, Obama’s speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted the misleading photos.
He wrote to Twitter: “This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.”
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The backlash prompted Trump to say: “Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages.
“They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires.”
In June 2018, President Trump signed an executive order to prevent migrant children being split up from their families at the United States border with Mexico.