Trump's sloppy family separations are 'Third World-style government dysfunction' says scathing Washington Post editorial
A Mexican immigration officer holds a child by his arm. Image via AFP.

The Washington Post issued a scathing new editorial that described the fallout from Donald Trump's child separations as the sort of extreme governmental ineptitude that you'd never expect to see in a First World democracy.


The editorial starts with a discussion of promises made by Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services, who said it would be easy to reunite families—only to see it later revealed that Azar had no idea how many children his department was supposed to be watching, let alone where they were.

Azar later said the court's deadline was “extreme."

"Yet as details emerged of the chaotic scramble undertaken by Trump administration officials to reunify families, it is apparent that what is really 'extreme' is the government’s bungling in the handling of separated families — a classic example of radical estrangement between the bureaucracy’s left and right hands," the Post wrote. "The result is Third World-style government dysfunction that combines the original sin of an unspeakably cruel policy with the follow-on ineptitude of uncoordinated agencies unable to foresee the predictable consequences of their decisions."

Read the full editorial here.