Don't Believe Immigration Children Controversy Message

Turns out Shaun King was wrong. . .
The pic was taken in 2014
during the Obama administration

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

I oppose amnesty.  If a family commits an illegal action, such as breaking into an amusement park, and they are discovered, would the police arrest and expel from the park only the parents and allow the children to remain in the park?  Would the whole family be put into the same jail cell, or would the children be placed under the guardianship of a family services agency until due process has been fully navigated?

Democrats know that while they oppose the family unit (as revealed by their stances that have targeted traditional family values), Americans have a soft part in their heart for families, and children.  So, the Democrats, for no reason other than political expediency, have pulled out a full all-string orchestra to play a sad tune.  The reality is, the whole "children separated from their family" controversy is nothing more than an attempt by the Democrats to stir your emotions on an issue they have been losing on badly, and the issue that launched Donald J. Trump into the presidency.

President Trump is no pushover, and he is using a strategy that is essentially forcing the Democrats to double-down on what beats them.  He is herding them into screaming for an even more extreme position than the Ryan Amnesty plan calls for.  In short, Trump has positioned the Democrats into admitting they are in support of open borders.  Senator Feinstein out of California, for example, has all of the Democrat Senators as co-sponsors on a bill that would push illegal aliens upon 80% of the States.  This bill, alone, could cost the Democrats a few seats in the U.S. Senate in November.

Horror stories, pinning mistreatment of illegal alien children on the Trump administration, are being hysterically painted on the liberal left's journalistic canvas.  The problem is, it is all a bunch of lies, and a desperate attempt to use their losing illegal alien position as a weapon against the current administration.

The Democrats would rather have a campaign issue, than a solution.  They are trying to pin down Trump not because they care about the children, but because they are desperate for votes in an upcoming election that is beginning to look very bad for the Democrat Party.  They are not the party of solutions.  They are the party of problems.  They need crises, and they never let a crisis go to waste.  If there were no problems, what would they run on in the election?

The Democrats weren't willing to seek a solution for immigration when they had a majority in both Houses of Congress while President Obama was in office, so, why would they seek a solution now?

There was never a solution offered by the Democrats then, and there is no solution being offered now, because they would rather use the immigration issue as a political weapon.

The liberal media went nuts when the Associated Press reported that over the six weeks from April 19 through May 31, federal officials separated about 2,000 children from their families at the U.S.-Mexican border.  The Trump administration shot back that the procedure separating kids from their families exists because of the Democrats in Congress.  The reality is, the policy is encased in a law that was put into place under the Clinton administration, then slammed into what it is now by the Democrats in Congress during the Bush administration, and by the courts under the Obama administration.

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s. 

The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child. 

In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law. 

Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents. 

For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.

My thing has always been that if you don't want to be separated from your children, don't break the law in the first place.

Jeff Sessions agrees.

“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” Sessions said. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”

The reality is, there are only a few choices when it comes to our legal response to illegal aliens breaking federal law by breaking into the United States.  We can release the whole family into the United States (open borders), send the whole family back to where they came from (of which the Democrats claim is cruel), or we must give them due process, treat the case as a legal case that is associated with a crime committed, and in the process the family may be separated during processing and the procedure for various reasons (of which the Democrats are complaining about).  Therefore, from the liberal left's point of view, the only solution is open borders.

Never mind that many of these people are not children or innocent little families, but are gang members, criminals, and worse.

The solution is to stop illegal entry into the country in the first place, and ensure that the immigration procedures and vetting process are used as established by law.  Build the wall, tighten security, increase personnel available to handle incoming legal immigration cases, and in turn discourage the breaking of federal law by entering the country illegally.  This will stem the flow, and discourage frivolous asylum cases.  Isn't that what we want?  Stop the abuse of the system, and let's tend to legitimate refugees who truly need help, and are willing to go through the process in place.

As for the idea that children are being separated from parents and then detained in concentration camps, the idea is false.  An image of children in a cage has circulated through the Democrat ranks, but the reality is that the image was snapped in 2014, during the Obama administration.

The Daily Signal reports:

The Department of Homeland Security rejected the comparison, noting that most children caught crossing the border illegally are not detained by federal officials. 

“We have high standards,” Nielsen said during the White House press briefing Monday. “We give them meals and we give them education and we give them medical care. There are videos, there are TVs. I visited the detention centers myself.” 

In the last fiscal year, 90 percent of apprehended children were released to a sponsor who was either a parent or close relative, according to the department. 

Homeland security officials also say they work with HHS to improve and ease communication between detained parents and their children in HHS care. 

Sponsors may be “a parent, adult sibling, relative, or appropriate home that meets criteria for the safety of the child and continuation of any immigration proceedings,” according to DHS. Also, a parent who is prosecuted and later released can be a sponsor and ask HHS to restore custody of the child. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dedicated a facility to operate primarily as a family reunification and removal center. ICE staff who interact with parents will receive training in trauma-informed care, and the agency will assign staff trained in mental health care to detained parents who have been separated from children, according to DHS.

Some of what is being reported is straight out fake news, but the liberal media thrives on sensational stories, even if they are false. CNN, for example, reported last week that an illegal immigrant from Honduras claimed her nursing daughter was pulled away from her before she was handcuffed. CNN cited a lawyer from a liberal legal group called the Texas Civil Rights Project.

In a conference call with reporters last week, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said this was not the case. 

“We do not separate breastfeeding children from their parents. That does not exist. That is not a policy. That is not something that DHS does,” an official told reporters Friday. “We believe that that is false.”

The immigration reform law calling for mandatory E-Verify died.  Now the less desirable bills are moving through Congress.  I am guessing none of them will pass.

The true stories are never told, however.  While the Democrats work on bringing tears to your eyes because criminals may be separated from their children (and remember, many of these children came unaccompanied), what about the MS-13 members posing as children?  What about people like the ranchers along the border who lives with shadows moving across their property, some of those shadows causing damage to their property, or death to their livestock?

The Democrats want entry for all.  Even the animals of MS-13.

While President Trump is doing what he can to stop the separations the Democrats claim the separation of children from their parents by immigration authorities is an endemic problem.  In response, protesters are out in force with violent demands.  While federal officials are working to uphold immigration law, California is not the only location doing what it can to put in jeopardy public safety by blocking federal immigration efforts.  In Atlanta the mayor signed an order blocking the city jail from being used to accept new illegal alien detainees.  Greyhound is being criticized because they "let" the Border Patrol search one of their buses.

Rush Limbaugh says that the opposition to President Trump on this issue is going to wind up getting people killed.  In fact, Limbaugh specifically fingered the media and their fake news on the issue, that that is will be the media who is 'going to get somebody killed'. 

Through it all, Trump has a handle on all of it.  In the end, I believe he is using their game, and their issue, to expose the Democrats for who they really are. The reality is, they don't care about the children, nor do they care about your safety. All they care about is votes, and power.  Trump is using all of this to expose the liberal left for who they really are on this issue. . . supporters of an open, undefended border, and they support such policies specifically for political power, and no other reason.

I think the Republicans should write a bill that is so conservative that not a single Democrat would even consider supporting it.  Let them vote against it.  Let them tell us who they are.  And then, use that information to fuel a Republican insurgency at the voting booth in November.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary