"[Family] separation stands in for every other episode of cruelty, and transcends them all. 'We’ve been declared in some respects a state sponsor of child abuse by friends overseas,' John R. Allen, a retired four-star Marine Corps general... told me." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/
"The immediate charge to the commission would be to do everything possible to find the hundreds of displaced children and unite them with their families—which even before the election Biden promised to do." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/
"The further task would be to document, step-by-step, the process by which the president and his officials were able to put this policy of sanctioned kidnapping into place. Separating children from their parents doesn’t simply occur by executive fiat." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/
"There are bureaucratic and legal hurdles that action of this kind must surmount—and Trump’s desire surmounted all of them with ease. That demanded complicity by scores... from White House aides to [DOJ] lawyers to the functionaries at the border." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/
"From its immersion in tragedy, the commission could perhaps launch a larger discussion on immigration and immigration policy. But the main focus must be on the process of forcible separation." @JamesFallows https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/how-biden-should-investigate-trump/617260/