November 20, 2018
The guy in charge of keeping undocumented youth detained is writing an anti-abortion book
by Michael Barron
If you keep up with the infuriating news about the Trump administration’s statements and actions against immigrants and refugees, then you are probably familiar with the name Scott Lloyd? The Trump appointed director of the office of Refugee Resettlement is what is, to use one of The Donald’s favorite pejoratives, a disaster.

Photo via Administration for Children & Families
As summarized by Rolling Stone’s Tessa Stuart, under Lloyd’s stewardship of the O.R.R., “the number of children in custody has reached an all time high and the number of days those kids spend in government custody has nearly doubled. O.R.R. has blown though its budget and is borrowing money set aside for other programs to cover its ballooning costs. Lloyd is embroiled in an ACLU lawsuit, and reportedly being blamed, in part, for the government’s failure to keep track of children it separated from their parents at the border earlier this year.”
So of course a man who just loves seeing to the welfare of children is writing anti-abortion book.
As Dan Diamond from Politico writes, “Lloyd’s book would detail the need for anti-abortion policies, drawing on his own spiritual “awakening,” said one person familiar with the project.”
That awakening, brought to light by Hannah Levintova in Mother Jones, originated when he helped a former partner pay for an abortion. Divulging the experience for a law school assignment while at Catholic University, Lloyd likened abortion to the Holocaust and claimed that If a woman needs to defend so fiercely the ‘one thing they can call their own—their body,’ then they shouldn’t be so careless with it as to have sex when they are not ready to be pregnant.”
Sounds like a bestseller in the making, Scott.
At the time of this and likely his writing, undocumented youth are being detained in ever growing numbers and in ways only a Trump appointee like Lloyd would describe as humanitarian. So instead of buying Lloyd’s Fuck You Females: Taking Back Women’s So-Called Bodies, or whatever he chooses to title his manuscript. Trust us when we say, Lloyd really needs another spiritual awakening.
Michael Barron is an editor at Melville House.