Samantha Bee has been one of the first and perhaps most visible critics of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Following a monologue on her show last month, she drew headlines and outrage for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” after the senior adviser (to her father) tweeted out a tone-deaf picture of her and her child amid the news that was then breaking about the government losing track of 1,500 migrant children.
On Wednesday night, hours after Trump signed an executive order to supposedly help eliminate a policy that his administration enforced but said could not be eliminated, Bee asserted that the executive order is not what it seems.
“The president has fixed it with the next worst thing,” she said. “No more baby internment camps, just regular internment camps. That’s what we call a win in 2018.”
Bee explained that the executive order challenges a piece of legislation called the Flores settlement that limits the government’s ability to keep children in immigration detention. Vox’s Dara Lind explained that the Flores settlement requires the federal government to place children with a close relative or family friend “without unnecessary delay,” rather than keeping them in custody; and to keep immigrant children who are in custody in the “least restrictive conditions” possible.
Bee points out that the executive order Trump signed to end family separation is setting the groundwork to detain families together indefinitely.
That might seem confusing considering the many different stories the Trump administration has told about its family separation policy; Bee went on to play a series of clips of various Trump administration officials and Border Patrol authorities contradicting each other.
“Democrats made the law, which was in the Bible, which is fair because these children are tricking the government into separating them from their parents, and also they are simultaneously separated and not separated, you know,” Bee said with sarcasm. “Just like Donald and Melania.”
She also didn’t let the opportunity to call back to her “feckless” comment slip by.
“Sorry, not cages — I meant ‘chain-link compassion walls,’” Bee said, making fun of authorities who voiced umbrage at descriptions of the facilities the migrant children were being held in. “Who knew that conservatives were sensitive about the c-word? I should make note of that.”
