Ivanka Accused Of 'Gaslighting Americans' With Claim Trump Is Helping Victims Of Human Trafficking

Ivanka Trump has been accused of "gaslighting Americans" after she praised her father for his renewed commitment to fighting human trafficking.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump discussed his administration's efforts to fight human trafficking during an Oval Office meeting on the issue.
Joined by Ivanka, his daughter and adviser, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump vowed to make it a priority to dedicate U.S. resources to ending human trafficking, supporting survivors and holding traffickers accountable for their crimes.
"@POTUS pledged to be a voice for the voiceless [and] there is no more vulnerable a population than victims of human trafficking," Ivanka said in a tweet following the meeting.
The first daughter also said she was "honored" to join efforts "coordinate [and] accelerate efforts to end this evil scourge."
While the fight to end human trafficking may be an important one, many prominent Twitter users were quick to accuse Ivanka and the Trump administration of hypocrisy, given the government's hardline policies on immigration.
Reminding Ivanka of her father's "zero tolerance" family separation policy, which saw thousands of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, María Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of the Latino Political Organization, Voto Latino wrote: "Your father abducted thousands of children–some who his government is now putting up for adoption without parental consent. [Six] who have died that we know."
"Focus your trafficking efforts there: unify the thousands of children with their deported parents," Kumar said.

"This administration traffics babies away from their parents. Thousands of them. Ivanka Trump is a human trafficker," Justin Hendrix, executive director at NYC Media Lab said.
Historian and political commentator Ruth Ben-Ghiat also weighed in, accusing the first daughter and adviser of "gaslighting Americans day after day."
"Where are the 1000+ disappeared migrant girls and women?" she said, in an apparent reference to recent reports of hundreds of detained women who were moved out of an immigration detention facility, with officials failing to notify their attorneys of where they were moved to.
Meanwhile, writer Alexis Goldstein accused Trump of effectively implementing a "stimulus program" for human traffickers "by shutting down the border to asylum seekers who followed the rules."
For his part, Trump does not appear to see any connection between his immigration policies and his proclaimed efforts to end human trafficking.
In a statement released on Tuesday by the White House, the U.S. leader said his administration was "committed to leveraging every resource we have to confront this threat, to support the victims and survivors and to hold traffickers accountable for their heinous crimes."
The President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons released a report describing the Trump administration's progress so far in combating trafficking.
Citing the report, the White House said the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations team saw 1,588 criminals associated with human trafficking arrested and identified 325 victims in fiscal year 2018.
Meanwhile, it also said federal law enforcement has been able to more than double convictions of human traffickers and increase the number of defendants charged by 75 percent in districts covered by the U.S.'s Anti-Trafficking Coordination Team.

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