Michael Scherer & Josh Dawsey report for the Washington Post:
President Trump has calculated that he will gain political leverage in congressional negotiations by continuing to enforce a policy he claims to hate — separating immigrant parents from their young children at the southern border, according to White House officials.
On Friday, Trump suggested he would not change the policy unless Democrats agreed to his other immigration demands, which include funding a border wall, tightening the rules for border enforcement and curbing legal entry. He also is intent on pushing members of his party to vote for a compromise measure that would achieve those long-standing priorities.
Trump’s public acknowledgment that he was willing to let the policy continue as he pursued his political goals came as the president once again blamed Democrats for a policy enacted and touted by his own administration.
“The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda,” he tweeted. After listing his demands in any immigration bill, he added, “Go for it! WIN!”
The attempt to gain advantage from a practice the American Academy of Pediatrics describes as causing children “irreparable harm” sets up a high-stakes gambit for Trump, whose political career has long benefited from harsh rhetoric on immigration.
Democrats have latched onto the issue and vowed to fight in the court of public opinion, with leaders planning trips to the border to highlight the stories of separated families, already the focus of news media attention. Democratic candidates running for vulnerable Republican seats also have begun to make the harsh treatment of children a centerpiece of their campaigns.
The policy has cracked Trump’s usually united conservative base, with a wide array of religious leaders and groups denouncing it. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention issued statements critical of the practice.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, signed a letter calling the practice “horrible.” Pastor Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, a vocal supporter of the president’s who has brushed aside past Trump controversies, called it “terrible” and “disgraceful.”
Besides increasing the odds of a broader immigration bill, senior Trump strategists believe that the child separation policy will deter the flow of migrant families across the border. Nearly 2,000 immigrant children were separated from parents during six weeks in April and May, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The figure is the only one released by the goverment.
“The president has told folks that in lieu of the laws being fixed, he wants to use the enforcement mechanisms that we have,” a White House official said. “The thinking in the building is to force people to the table.”
Trump reinforced that notion Friday morning at the White House when he suggested Democrats alone had the power to alter the policy.
“I hate the children being taken away,” Trump said.
The president used a similar strategy last year as he sought to gain approval for his immigration demands by using the lure of protection for young immigrants brought to the United States as children. That effort, which ran counter to Trump’s earlier promise to sign a bipartisan bill protecting the young immigrants, foundered in Congress.
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The current policy resulted from a decision made in April by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute all migrants who cross the border, including those with young children. Those migrants had avoided detention during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Because of a 1997 court settlement that bars children from being imprisoned with parents, Justice Department officials now say they have no choice but to isolate the children.
Sessions and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have defended the policy as a sound, and biblical, decision to enforce the law.
“The previous administration wouldn’t prosecute illegal aliens who entered the country with children,” Sessions said Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind., citing biblical advice to follow laws. “It was de facto open borders.”
The biblical underpinnings have been challenged by religious leaders.
“There’s definitely a groundswell of opposition from virtually every corner of the Christian community,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. “People are able to understand immediately the drive of parents to protect their child and to understand the horror of splitting up vulnerable children from their parents.”
Yet several key Trump administration officials support the family separation policy, including Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior adviser Stephen Miller, a vocal supporter of stricter immigration laws.
Some senior officials think Democrats will be pressured by the policy to cut an immigration deal.
“If they aren’t going to cooperate, we are going to look to utilize the laws as hard as we can,” said a second White House official.
Others have argued that the main benefit of the policy is deterrence. Miller has said internally that the child separations will bring the numbers down at the border, a goal that Trump wants to achieve. Miller and Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, have argued that immigration legislation is unlikely to pass this summer, officials said.
“The side effect of zero tolerance is that fewer people will come up illegally, and fewer minors would be put in danger,” said a third senior administration official. “What is more dangerous to a minor, the 4,000-mile journey to America or the short-term detention of their parents?”
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Please read the complete article at the link.
So, the choice is ““What is more dangerous to a minor, the 4,000-mile journey to America or the short-term detention of their parents?” Not really!
The real choices are 1) a dangerous 4,000 mile journey to a place where you might be able to save your life and that of your loved ones; or 2) the much more dangerous option of remaining in a place where you will likely be beaten, raped, extorted, tortured, impressed against your will, or killed by gangs, who are not just “street criminals” (as falsely portrayed by Sessions and other restrictionists) but who exercise quasi-governmental authority with the knowing acquiescence of the recognized governments.
Realistically, folks are going to opt for #1. We could recognize them as refugees; screen them abroad to weed out gang members and criminals and to take the danger out of the 4,000 mile journey; work with the UNHCR and other countries to distribute the flow; open more paths to legal immigration for those who want to leave but might not fit easily within the refugee definition; and encourage those who still arrive at our borders without documents seeking protection to go to a port of entry where they will be treated respectfully, humanely, and be given a prompt but full opportunity to present their cases for protection with access to counsel in a system that satisfies all the requirements of Constitutional Due Process, with the additional understanding that if they lose they will have to return to their home country.
Alternatively, we could double down on our current failed policies of detention, deterrence, and lawless and immoral Governmental behavior; send the message that folks shouldn’t bother using our legal system because it’s a fraud that has intentionally been fixed against them; encourage the use of smugglers who will charge ever higher fees for developing new and more dangerous means of entry; and send the message that if folks rally want to survive, they should pay a smuggler to get them into the interior of our country where they have at least a fighting chance of blending in, hiding out from immigration enforcement, behaving themselves, and working hard until they are caught and removed, die, conditions improve and they leave voluntarily for their country of origin, or we finally give them some type of legal recognition.
My first alternative could likely be established and operated for a fraction of what we are now spending on failed immigration enforcement, useless and unnecessarily cruel detention, unnecessary criminal prosecutions, and a broken Immigration Court system.
Plus, at a time of low birth rate and low unemployment, it would give us a significant economic boost by bringing a highly motivated, hard-working, family oriented, and appreciative workforce into our society. It might also inspire other stable democratic nations to join us in an effort to save lives (which also happens to fit in well with religious values), resettle individuals, and, over time, address the horrible situation in the Northern Triangle that is creating this flow.
Alternative two, which is basically a variation on what we already are doing, will guarantee a continuing “black market flow”of migrants, some of whom will be apprehended and removed at significant financial and societal costs, while most will continue to live in an underground society, subject to exploitation by unscrupulous employers and law enforcement, underutilizing their skills, and not being given the opportunity to integrate fully into our society.
The thing we will not be able to do is to halt human migration solely by law enforcement actions taken at “our end” of the chain. That is, unless we wish to establish a “Stalinist type state” that is so grim and repressive that nobody wants to come any more.
Kids as human pawns. Child abuse as policy. Dreamers as hostages. Jesus told us to do it. It’s the Democrats fault. I really hate to let Jeff abuse children, but I have no choice. Refugee women fleeing gang controlled states reduced to human scum who should just accept their beatings and rape and get in the non-existent line for legal immigration that we want to eliminate. That is, if they actually live long enough to get in the non-existent line, which is unlikely. Biased judges cheering the chance to sign death warrants for the most vulnerable among us. Courts clogged with refugees being prosecuted for seeking refuge while being pressured by seizure of their children into giving up rights.
Once again, I’ve been proved right: We are actively diminishing ourselves as a nation every day; but, it isn’t stopping, and won’t in the long run stop, human migration. Sure, there is a natural ebb and flow that responds in some minor ways to our futile attempts to stop it. Sort of like throwing up man-made sand bars to stop beach erosion. Works for a few months or even years, but eventually the inevitable forces of nature win out. It sure seems to me that it would be smarter to work with the flow of the river and turn it to our advantage, rather than trying to make it reverse course — an exercise in futility that only serves to diminish the humanity of each of us.
PWS
06-16-18