But they — along with more than a dozen former government officials, health care professionals, migrant advocates and civil rights attorneys — worry the Trump administration is knowingly putting the children at risk to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortion by placing them in a state where it’s virtually banned.
“This is 100% and exclusively about abortion,” said Jonathan White, a longtime federal health official who ran ORR’s unaccompanied children program for part of President Trump’s first term. White, who recently retired from the government, said the administration tried and failed to restrict abortion access for unaccompanied minors in 2017. “Now they casually roll out what they brutally fought to accomplish last time and didn’t.”
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