The following is a timeline of instances of extremism in the Trump administration in June 2018.
President Trump has opened the White House doors to extremism, not only consulting with hate groups on policies that erode our country’s civil rights protections but enabling the infiltration of extremist ideas into the administration’s rhetoric and agenda.
Once relegated to the fringes, the radical right now has a toehold in the White House.
Groups and individuals referenced in the list below are not associated with hate groups and extremist ideology unless indicated by a hate group profile.
Jun 5
Attorney General Jeff Sessions defends zero tolerance policy by saying, “If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them.”
Anti-Immigrant
Hate Group
Jun 5
ICE Deputy Director Thomas Homan participates in National Press Club event hosted by anti-immigrant hate group Center for Immigration Studies.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 5
U.S. officials concede that hundreds of migrant children spent more than the legal maximum of 72 hours in custody at border stations.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 7
ICE temporarily sends 1,600 detainees to five federal prisons to await civil immigration hearings, the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 11
Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturns Obama-era precedent establishing domestic abuse or gang violence as grounds for asylum.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 12
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announces it is hiring lawyers to identify Americans suspected of cheating to get their citizenship and to then strip them of that citizenship.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 17
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denies family separation is happening at the border.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 18
U.S. Border Patrol allows reporters to visit a detention facility on the U.S.-Mexico border where children are kept in cages created by metal fencing.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 18
UN top human rights official Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein condemns separating immigrant children from their parents as “government-sanctioned child abuse.”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 18
Federal judge rejects Kansas state law — requiring voters to show identification — crafted by Kris Kobach, former head of Trump’s defunct “voter fraud commission.”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 19
Trump administration sets up at least three “tender age” shelters to detain babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 19
President Trump tweets that Democrats “don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country [sic]”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 19
Attorney General Jeff Sessions argues that detention facilities for migrant children are not like Nazi concentration camps, because Nazis “were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 19
Members of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ church file a formal complaint accusing him of “child abuse,” “immorality” and “racial discrimination” because of his zero tolerance policy.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 19
President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, reacts to news that a 10-year-old migrant girl with Down syndrome was separated from her parents by saying “womp womp.”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 20
President Trump signs executive order ostensibly ending family separations but preserving the zero tolerance policy that instigated them.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 20
DHS contracts care of migrant children separated from their parents to for-profit facility that doses them with antipsychotic drugs.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 21
HHS asks Pentagon to make room for 20,000 migrant children on military bases.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 21
First Lady Melania Trump visits detention center for migrant children wearing a jacket that says “I really don’t care, do u?”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 22
President Trump autographs photos of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants at White House event.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 24
President Trump tweets that people who cross the border without documentation should be deprived of due process rights.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 25
HHS Secretary Alex Azar tells Senate hearing that most children separated from their parents can’t be reunited with them until Congress passes new legislation.
Anti-Black
Jun 25
Fox News suspends Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, for telling a black strategist “You’re out of your cotton-picking mind” on air.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 26
Attorney General Jeff Sessions calls outrage over family separation a “radicalized” issue championed by the “lunatic fringe” living in “gated communities.”
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 26
Supreme Court upholds President Trump’s discriminatory Muslim ban.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 26
Federal judge orders federal government to reunite migrant children separated from their parents under Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy within 30 days.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 27
President Trump’s defunct “voter fraud commission” ordered to hand over documents by July 18.
Anti-Immigrant
Jun 29
DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions drafts a plan to disqualify anyone prosecuted for illegal entry from asylum, and to restrict asylum for victims of domestic and gang violence.