'Abusive and frightening': Trump official earned bad reputation for treatment of children

Kathleen Culliton
October 28, 2024 3:44PM ET

FILE PHOTO: Migrants are detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents after crossing into the United States from Mexico, in Sunland Park, New Mexico, U.S. August 2, 2024. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/File Photo

A Trump administration official garnered a dark reputation among government workers as one of the world's most dangerous child abusers for the work he did for the former president, according to a new report.

Scott Lloyd, former director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, received this criticism for his role in Trump policy that pulled more than 5,000 children from their families — 1,400 of whom remain separated, according to Politico's new report on Errol Morris' documentary "Separated."

“Separation was the purpose, prosecution was the mechanism," ORR deputy director Jonathan White says in the film. White described Lloyd as “the most prolific child abuser in modern American history.”

These details emerge from a documentary that, despite positive reviews and a topic of extreme relevance amid the 2024 presidential election, enjoyed only limited release after distributor MSNBC decided to delay airing until to avoid offending Trump, Politico reported.

The documentary details what Politico describes as "one of the most appalling initiatives of the Trump administration — splitting migrant children from their parents."

Trump was ultimately forced to back away from the policy that lasted from April to June of 2018.

But as the former president mounts his third presidential on a extreme anti-immigration platform, critics fear a second administration could see Trump blow past old barriers of political decorum.

“Trump seems to me to be a fascist,” Morris told Politico. “I don’t really believe in analogies in general, but as an American Jew whose family emigrated from Eastern Europe to this country, it’s hard not to see elements of fascism.”

Morris told Politico he was shaken by his interview with Lloyd, who received significant blame for his handling of the Trump administration's attempts to reunite separated families.

“I thought, ‘This is an utter failure,’” Morris told me. “The guy wouldn’t say anything.”

But according to Politico, "the awkward silences and evasions speak just as loudly as anything Lloyd could possibly have said in his defense."


Morris said the disturbing nature of the policies Lloyd failed to defend were what first drew him to the topic.

“They were not the same old, same old,” Morris said. "They were different in kind. They were new. They were draconian. They were abusive and frightening.”