Trump’s Immigration Ban Separated a Breastfeeding Child From Her Mother for Hours at the Airport

(Facebook/Danielle Dass)

President Trump’s ban on refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. has had far-reaching effects on people who pose no danger to the U.S., and many of those people are children.

According to Scary Mommy, Texas lawyer Andrew Strong was among the attorneys working long, desperate hours in Dallas-Ft. Worth airport trying to get detained visa holders, permanent residents, and even citizens released. He posted on Facebook that one of the people detained at DFW airport was actually an 11-month-old, breastfeeding baby girl named Jude who had been separated from her mother. The ordeal he describes is horrible, and it’s difficult to imagine this happening in the U.S.

According to Dallas News, the Texas lawyers who assembled at the airport “war room” on behalf of the detainees were as astounded as the rest of us probably are. They knew they were showing up to help protect people with valid visas and residence permits from deportation, but they were as stunned as anybody to find out that one of their clients was a baby, and a U.S. citizen, and that she was being detained away from her mother.

“She’s a U.S. citizen,” said attorney and former Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt. “A ******* U.S. citizen.”

According to Strong, baby Jude’s mother is a legal permanent resident, which means she has a green card. Jude herself was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. Jude’s father was in the terminal and couldn’t get in contact with them and was not allowed access to the baby. But if the baby was not with her mother or her father, who the hell was taking care of her? You can’t separate a baby that small from her parents or caregivers for that long. Did she have bottles? Diapers? Babies need things. You can’t just stick an 11-month-old in airport detention, and you can’t keep a breastfeeding child away from its mother. That poor little girl must have been very upset, and her parents must have been terrified.

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(Facebook/Andrew Strong via The Leaky Boob)

After several hours of work from the assembled lawyers, Strong announced that Jude and her mother had been released. All the lawyers went running out to see her.

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(Facebook/Andrew Strong via The Leaky Boob)

This is not supposed to happen in America. A breastfeeding baby cannot be taken away from her mother and father. That’s just wrong. As one breastfeeding proponent at The Leaky Boob breastfeeding support group wrote, if a store or a restaurant kept a woman from nursing her baby, there’d be nurse-ins and protests and the outrage would be palpable. The U.S. government is now doing things we wouldn’t accept from a department store.

Baby Jude and her mother were finally released, but this executive order is still going on, and there are more babies and small children coming in. If this ban stays in place, this is going to happen again. The lawyers deserve a round of applause, though, because they’re doing heroes’ work, unpaid and on the floors of airports. Law school applications are probably about to go way up this year.

H/T Scary Mommy

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