Under the guise of reducing homelessness, President Donald Trump’s recent executive order removes protections against involuntary institutionalization. This threatens to undo decades of progress toward creating inclusive lives for people with disabilities.
Trump claimed the purpose of the policy was to ensure public safety. “You can’t have these people walking around,” he stated in September. “So dangerous, so dangerous.”
For the past 15 years, I have worked alongside adults with developmental disabilities to combat systemic and individual barriers to inclusion. In his second term, Trump has set out to dismantle the systems and supports on which people rely.
Trump’s executive order, together with his cuts to the social safety net, signal a sudden and rapid move back to the way things were almost 100 years ago, when many people with disabilities were confined in horrific conditions and deprived of basic needs and autonomy.
I live just a few miles from California’s former Camarillo State Mental Hospital, which operated from 1936 to 1997. The facility serves as a sore reminder of the mistreatment suffered by thousands of adults with disabilities by institutions that claimed to shelter them from the outside world.