The State Department's Facebook Q&A About Family Travel Was a Disaster for Some Reason

The Trump administration is in the middle of a firestorm of criticism and outcry over the separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, but apparently that is not going to stop the State Department from carrying on and doing some fun social media engagement. Today, the department announced on Twitter that it would be having a Facebook Live event as if nothing is going on. Astonishingly and bloodcurdlingly, the topic of the event was about tips for traveling as a family. It appears the Trump administration has an endless supply of salt to smudge into the enormous wounds it inflicts.

This is either the worst possible timing in the world or a truly heinous attempt to hijack the current, very dire conversations about families and traveling. Anyway, the event backfired enormously, with Facebook users swarming the Q & A with quite the array of comments.

The vast majority of the comments mocked the mockery of the Facebook event, ranging from extremely dark zingers to outright lambasting.

Some got a bit more visually creative with their jokes.

Some picked up on the ridiculous insistence from conservatives and Border Patrol officials that the cages that were used to detain children were not cages… even though they’re cages.

A lot of people pointed out parallels between this situation and Nazi Germany.

Others referenced the horrifying patterns of sexual abuse of detainees by government officers.

A few were more pointed in calling out the racism that underlies this whole situation.

And some were a bit more direct with how they felt.

As of the time of this posting, Carl and Kim from Passport Services, who were supposed to provide answers, had not responded to any of the questions. I have contacted the State Department for a comment about how they’re feeling right now and will update if I hear back.

Update, 4:11 p.m.: A State Department official told Splinter that the department’s #FamilyTravelHacks program is “a seasonal summer outreach campaign” to help parents who are U.S. citizens obtain passports for their families to travel abroad, implying that the campaign’s timing with the implementation of the family separation policy at the border was coincidental. The official did not address the stream of anti-Trump dunks currently dominating the event. Nor was there any mention of the whereabouts of Carl and Kim.