Trump's Katrina

   With the callousness the Trump administration has shown to families trying to enter the US through its "zero policy" of separating children from their parents one is reminded how much callousness to people during Hurricane Katrina hurt the George W. Bush administration.  One of the lessons learned after Katrina was how many people would not evacuate New Orleans because they couldn't take their pets with them when they evacuated.  That reality probably led to some of those pet owners dying after the storm.  With that lesson learned FEMA established a protocol for pets that would be separately evacuated and then reconnected with their owners after the disaster.

      Since Katrina pet owners are given barcoded wristbands that are matched with bands on their pets.  A system is put in place to track where both the pet owner and their pet are located.  Moving the pet owner or the pet form one location to another gets scanned into the system.  This allowed pets to be sent to animal shelters over a wide area of the US without losing the ability to reconnect the pets with owners.
     Earlier this year HHS had to admit that they could not account for the location of 1475 children separated from their parents after they entered the United States and taken into custody by the Border Patrol.  The Administration took offense at these children being described as "lost" but they had to admit they could not give an address where these children were. 

   
     So the Trump Administration now tries to reconnect children with their parents by giving the parents a sheet telling them about a phone number they can use to reconnect with their children.  As their children are scattered across the United States in at least 15 states with many different agencies how well the tracking system will work is anyone's guess.   This is especially true for younger children who maybe too young to talk or know much family information.  Apparently not enough thought was given to how this system would work before the policy was implemented.  And this is after the policy was being discussed since February 2017. 
     Apparently our Government has a well planned protocol for reconnecting pets with their pet owners but is still working though a system for reconnecting children with their parents.  This disaster is not over with the change to not separating families at the border with Trump's Executive Order (which he had been saying he didn't have the authority to do).   The Executive Order did not say if or how the children already separated would be reconnected.   You can be sure that some of the parents will be deported before being reconnected to their children.  I wouldn't be surprised if immigration attorneys would ask judges not to deport before their children are reconnected.  Should be interesting legal times.

P.S.
     Trump has never been know for intelligent thought or speech.  I have heard high school dropouts who had more coherent thought patterns.  Yesterday his choice of words fit this pattern and tells a great deal about his parental feelings for children.  Here is the quote of his.

   "If you took zero tolerance away, everybody would come right down. They'd be getting their little belongings, unfortunately, and they would be heading up. You would be - you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobody's ever seen."

   I guess we shouldn't be surprised that a man who has 4 children with 3 wives (each of whom he cheated) would describe children as "little belongings."  Good God how did our Country get here!

P.S. 1
     Speaking of thought patterns of Trump ever notice he keeps using the phrase "nobody knew" when he really should be saying "I never knew."