John Legend and Oprah, Outraged by ‘Kids in Cages,’ Silent as Crisis Worsens

In 2018, the Trump Administration enacted one of its most controversial immigration policies – The Zero Tolerance Policy which effectively separated illegal immigrants from the children they brought with them across the border. This policy, decried as inhumane by the mainstream media and Hollywood alike separated children and parents into different detainment facilities. The policy was created under the supposition that some of these children were being brought across the border by human traffickers and drug cartels.

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In 2021, President Joe Biden reversed this policy and the separations ceased. Hollywood lavished praise on the newly elected President and then naturally spoke of it no more. However, as the border crisis remains a catastrophe, the beautiful people in Tinseltown have ignored the outcome of Joe Biden’s abject failures at the border. A recent report from Axios highlights that a third of unaccompanied minors cannot be reached since coming to America. We literally don’t even know where they are. Under the Trump policy, at least the government knew where these children were. The current situation finds Biden’s DHS scratching their heads as to where the children are and who is taking care of them.

The outcry in the past from celebrities regarding the Trump policy reached decibels that other controversies did not. The “kids in cages” narrative combined with “family separation” became a thorn in the side of the Trump administration for the remainder of his term and rightly so.

A quick search shows the plethora of Hollywood elite attacking the former President as well as former Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans. The usual suspects all had plenty of bitter criticism: Chrissy Tiegen, John Legend, Bette Midler, Cher, Ellen Degeneres, Rob Reiner, George Takei, Reese Witherspoon, Jimmy Kimmel, Alyssa Milano, Mia Farrow, Oprah Winfrey and many others.

These statements ranged from John Legend saying to Paul Ryan, “Seriously, fuck you. Reunite the families at the border and then we can to talk about Father’s Day” to Oprah Winfrey tweeting, “Babies torn from their parents. Can’t stand it!” Apparently, both have been too busy this summer choosing their wardrobes for Barack Obama’s birthday party to notice the calamity being created by their friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A quantifiable assessment comparing each President’s policy is necessary though. Who’s accounted for more missing children? Tragically, Joe Biden in his very short tenure takes this prize in a landslide. As Yahoo points out, “In other words, the Biden administration is holding more migrant children separated from their parents than did the Trump administration, which at one point intentionally separated migrant families.”

In 2018, a report was released by DHS that between October 2017 and the end of the year, of the 7,000 children that had entered the country illegally, 1,500 of them could not be located. Hashtags of #WhereAreTheChildren trended and the administration was rightly criticized for its failure. Alyssa Milano joined the chorus of 35,000 tweets and stated, “@realDonaldTrump, will you please stop separating children from their families? We are begging you as a nation to do the right thing. #WhereAreTheChildren”

According to an Axios story with the alarming headline “Government can’t reach one-in-three released migrant kids,” between January and June of 2021, roughly 65,000 unaccompanied minors entered the United States. 32,000 of these children were released by HHS. 15,000 follow-up calls were made to the migrants or their sponsors. Nearly 5,000 of those phone calls went unanswered or the children could not be located. This is a travesty with multiple systemic problems. First, DHS has failed to contact these migrants with expedience. The fact is 32,000 phone calls should have been made and less than half actually were. Of the calls made, one third of them resulted in a lost child.

Where’s the outcry?

None of these Hollywood elites have even whispered about the children coming in from Central America, who are being ripped away from their families, potentially trafficked and treated as an afterthought of the Biden administration. The administration created the situation that has resulted in a surge at our southern border. The problem was compounded by their decision to ignore the problem and obfuscate the reality. Hollywood, which was effective in pressuring Trump to end the unpopular separation policy, has fallen silent now that the situation is objectively worse. That makes their motives crystal clear. It was never about the childen. It was about dunking on Trump and winning points on Twitter.

Amid a botched Afghanistan withdrawal, sinking poll numbers, natural disasters, alarming inflation and a pandemic that continues to complicate these problems, it seems the Biden administration wants to ignore the initial crisis of its own creation. Unfortunately, the hypocritical actorvists of Hollywood are seemingly happy to turn a blind eye as well. This makes sense because the establishment media has happily ignored this crisis too. The narrative arc spoke of often in this column also works as an inverse: If the DNC does not give the talking point, the media ignores it and Hollywood does not receive the script.

These stars find plenty of time to decry Texas’ new abortion bill, push vaccines, stump for Gavin Newsom (if not pony up cash) and portray the January 6^th riot the worst catastrophe since the Civil War, but they fail to remain consistent in the causes they feign outrage about. The politics of it all is what their focus is, not the real problems this country and world face. As for the 5000 children the Biden Administration cannot locate? Hollywood just doesn’t care.