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How Trump Came to Enforce a Practice of Separating Migrant Families By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear
NYT, June 16, 2018
WASHINGTON – Almost immediately after President Trump took office, his administration began weighing what for years had been regarded as the nuclear option in the effort to discourage immigrants from unlawfully entering the United States.
Children would be separated from their parents if the families had been apprehended entering the country illegally, John F. Kelly, then the homeland security secretary, said in March 2017, “in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network.”
For more than a decade, even as illegal immigration levels fell overall, seasonal spikes in unauthorized border crossings had bedeviled American presidents in both political parties, prompting them to cast about for increasingly aggressive ways to discourage migrants from making the trek.
Yet for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the idea of crying children torn from their parents’ arms was simply too inhumane – and too politically perilous – to embrace as policy, and Mr. Trump, though he had made an immigration crackdown one of the central issues of his campaign, succumbed to the same reality, publicly dropping the idea after Mr. Kelly’s comments touched off a swift backlash.
But advocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea. Last month, facing a sharp uptick in illegal border crossings, Mr. Trump ordered a new effort to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border unlawfully – with few exceptions for parents traveling with their minor children.
And now Mr. Trump faces the consequences. With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis. Even evangelical supporters like Franklin Graham said its policy was “disgraceful.”
Among those who have professed objections to the policy is the president himself, who despite his tough rhetoric on immigration and his clear directive to show no mercy in enforcing the law, has searched publicly for someone else to blame for dividing families. He has falsely claimed that Democrats are responsible for the practice. But the kind of pictures so feared by Mr. Trump’s predecessors could end up defining a major domestic policy issue of his term.
Inside the Trump administration, current and former officials say, there is considerable unease about the policy, which is regarded by some charged with carrying it out as unfeasible in practice and questionable morally. Kirstjen Nielsen, the current homeland security secretary, has clashed privately with Mr. Trump over the practice, sometimes inviting furious lectures from the president that have pushed her to the brink of resignation.
But Mr. Miller has expressed none of the president’s misgivings. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” he said during an interview in his West Wing office this past week. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”
The administration’s critics are not buying that explanation. “This is not a zero tolerance policy, this is a zero humanity policy, and we can’t let it go on,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon.
“Ripping children out of their parents’ arms to inflict harm on the child to influence the parents,” he added, “is unacceptable.”
Beyond those moral objections, Jeh C. Johnson, who as secretary of homeland security was the point man for the Obama administration’s own struggles with illegal immigration, argued that deterrence, in and of itself, is neither practical nor a long-term solution to the problem.
“I’ve seen this movie before, and I feel like what we are doing now, with the zero tolerance policy and separating parents and children for the purpose of deterrence, is banging our heads against the wall,” he said. “Whether it’s family detention, messaging about dangers of the journey, or messaging about separating families and zero tolerance, it’s always going to have at best a short-term reaction.”
And that view was based on hard experience.
When Central American migrants, including many unaccompanied children, began surging across the border in early 2014, Mr. Obama, the antithesis of his impulsive successor, had his own characteristic reaction: He formed a multiagency team at the White House to figure out what should be done. “This was the bane of my existence for three years,” Mr. Johnson said. “No matter what you did, somebody was going to be very angry at you.”
The officials met in the office of Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and convened a series of meetings in the Situation Room to go through their options. Migrants were increasingly exploiting existing immigration laws and court rulings, and using children as a way to get adults into the country, on the theory that families were being treated differently from single people.
“The agencies were surfacing every possible idea,” Cecilia Muñoz, Mr. Obama’s top domestic policy adviser, recalled, including whether to separate parents from their children. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea. The morality of it was clear – that’s not who we are.”
They did, however, decide to vastly expand the detention of immigrant families, opening new facilities along the border where women and young children were held for long periods while they awaited a chance to have their cases processed. Mr. Johnson wrote an open letter to appear in Spanish-language news outlets warning parents that their children would be deported if they entered the United States illegally. He traveled to Guatemala to deliver the message in person.
Opening a large family immigration detention facility in Dilley, Tex., he held a news conference to showcase what he called an “effective deterrent.” The steps led to just the kind of brutal images that Mr. Obama’s advisers feared: hundreds of young children, many dirty and some in tears, who were being held with their families in makeshift detention facilities.
Immigrant advocacy groups denounced the policy, berating senior administration officials – some of whom were reduced to rueful apologies for a policy they said they could not justify – and telling Mr. Obama to his face during a meeting at the White House in late 2014 that he was turning his back on the most vulnerable people seeking refuge in the United States.
“I was pissed, and still am,” said Ben Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “I thought that he had a shocking disregard for due process.”
Before long, the Obama administration would face legal challenges, and be forced to stop detaining families indefinitely. A federal judge in Washington ordered the administration in 2015 to stop detaining asylum-seeking Central American mothers and children in order to deter others from their region from coming into the United States.
Under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement, unaccompanied children could be held in immigration detention for only a short period of time; in 2016, a federal judge ruled that the settlement applied to families as well, effectively requiring that they be released within 20 days. Many were released – some with GPS ankle bracelets to track their movements – and asked to return for a court date sometime in the future.
It was Mr. Bush, who had firsthand experience with the border as governor of Texas and ran for president as a “compassionate conservative,” who initiated the “zero tolerance” approach for illegal immigration on which Mr. Trump’s policy is modeled.
In 2005, he launched Operation Streamline, a program along a stretch of the border in Texas that referred all unlawful entrants for criminal prosecution, imprisoning them and expediting assembly-line-style trials geared toward quickly deporting them. The initiative yielded results and was soon expanded to more border sectors. Back then, however, exceptions were generally made for adults who were traveling with minor children, as well as juveniles and people who were ill.
Mr. Obama’s administration employed the program at the height of the migration crisis as well, although it generally did not treat first-time border crossers as priorities for prosecution, and it detained families together in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody – administrative, rather than criminal, detention.
Discussions began almost immediately after Mr. Trump took office about vastly expanding Operation Streamline, with almost none of those limitations. Even after Mr. Kelly stopped talking publicly about family separation, the Department of Homeland Security quietly tested the approach last summer in certain areas in Texas.
Privately, Mr. Miller argued that bringing back “zero tolerance” would be a potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping migrants from flooding across the border.
The idea was to end a practice referred to by its detractors as “catch and release,” in which illegal immigrants apprehended at the border are released into the interior of the United States to await the processing of their cases. Mr. Miller argued that the policy provided a perverse incentive for migrants, essentially ensuring that if they could make it to the United States border and claim a “credible fear” of returning home, they would be given a chance to stay under asylum laws, at least temporarily.
A lengthy backlog of asylum claims made it likely that it would be years before they would have to appear before a judge to back up that plea – and many never returned to do so.
The situation was even more complicated when children were involved. A 2008 law meant to combat the trafficking of minors places strict requirements on how unaccompanied migrant children from Central America are to be treated. Minors from Mexico or Canada – countries contiguous with the United States – can be quickly sent back to their home countries unless it is deemed dangerous to do so. But those from other nations cannot be quickly returned; they must be transferred within 72 hours to the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, and placed in the least restrictive setting possible. And the Flores ruling meant that children and families could not be held for more than 20 days.
In October, after Mr. Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that gave legal status to undocumented immigrants raised in the United States, Mr. Miller insisted that any legislative package to codify those protections contain changes to close what he called the loopholes encouraging illegal immigrants to come.
And in April, after the border numbers reached their zenith, Mr. Miller was instrumental in Mr. Trump’s decision to ratchet up the zero tolerance policy. “A big name of the game is deterrence,” Mr. Kelly, now the chief of staff, told NPR in May. “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever – but the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”
Technically, there is no Trump administration policy stating that illegal border crossers must be separated from their children. But the “zero tolerance policy” results in unlawful immigrants being taken into federal criminal custody, at which point their children are considered unaccompanied alien minors and taken away. Unlike Mr. Obama’s administration, Mr. Trump’s is treating all people who have crossed the border without authorization as subject to criminal prosecution, even if they tell the officer apprehending them that they are seeking asylum based on fear of returning to their home country, and whether or not they have their children in tow.
“Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech on Thursday in Fort Wayne, Ind. “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government,” said Mr. Sessions, quoting Bible verse as he took exception to evangelical leaders who have called the practice abhorrent. “Because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.”
Genuinely seismic events on the US Supreme court in the last few days.
First this yesterday: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Even the Supreme Court is alarmed about Trump
by Ruth Marcus
Washington Post June 26 at 5:57 PM
Even Republican appointees on the Supreme Court – two of them, anyway: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy – are evidently appalled by President Trump and his behavior. Small comfort, perhaps, as they joined three other conservative justices to uphold Trump’s travel ban, but still a striking example of where this president has brought us.
The justices don’t say this directly, of course. But their scorn for the president and their alarm about his behavior emerges clearly from their language.
First, consider the chief justice’s majority opinion in Trump v. Hawaii , in which he took an unnecessary historical detour. “The President of the United States possesses an extraordinary power to speak to his fellow citizens and on their behalf. Our Presidents have frequently used that power to espouse the principles of religious freedom and tolerance on which this Nation was founded,” Roberts observed.
His examples were both familiar and sobering: George Washington, in 1790, reassuring the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., that “happily the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Dwight D.Eisenhower, at the opening of the Islamic Center of Washington in 1957, pledging to a Muslim audience that “America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church.” And, of course, George W. Bush, days after the Sept. 11 attacks, returning to “the same Islamic Center to implore his fellow Americans – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – to remember during their time of grief that ‘the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam,’ and that America is ‘a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth.’ ”
Past presidents, Roberts advised “have – from the Nation’s earliest days – performed unevenly in living up to those inspiring words.” Those challenging the travel ban, pointing to the litany of statements from candidate and then president Trump that evinced clear hostility to Muslims, “argue that this president’s words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition,” Roberts said. “But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular president, but also the authority of the presidency itself.”
This is an important point with implications beyond the court itself – even if you disagree, as I do, with the majority’s conclusion. The precedents we set in the age of Trump will outlast his tenure; we should be careful not to let our concern, our fury, our revulsion skew our judgment and drag us into behavior or conclusions we will come to regret. This is, in a different context, part of the raging debate over how far to depart from ordinary standards of civility when it comes to Trump administration appointees such as press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Is the situation so extreme as to warrant barring her and others from public dining spaces? If so, where does this all stop?
Kennedy’s anguish over Trump was, if anything, even more evident than Roberts’s. He wrote an odd, four-paragraph concurring opinion that reads like something between a guilt-ridden defense against being blamed for the consequences of Trump’s actions and a personal plea to the president to pay some attention to the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect and defend. “The oath that all officials take to adhere to the Constitution is not confined to those spheres in which the judiciary can correct or even comment upon what those officials say or do,” Kennedy wrote. “Indeed, the very fact that an official may have broad discretion, discretion free from judicial scrutiny, makes it all the more imperative for him or her to adhere to the Constitution and to its meaning and its promise.”
Such as, for example, freedom of religion. “It is an urgent necessity that officials adhere to these constitutional guarantees and mandates in all their actions, even in the sphere of foreign affairs,” Kennedy added. “An anxious world must know that our Government remains committed always to the liberties the Constitution seeks to preserve and protect, so that freedom extends outward, and lasts.”
Of course Kennedy – yes, the same justice so willing to seize on the words of Colorado officials to find religious animus in the case of a baker who balked at creating a cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding – could easily have intervened to police Trump’s far more offensive statements. He could, in other words, have calmed that anxious world. But the fact remains, and even these justices know: The world is anxious, and Trump is why.
. . .and then this today: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Supreme Court will now fall to chaos by Joshua Matz
Washington Post, June 27 at 2:50 PM
The Supreme Court teaches us about liberty, dignity and democracy. It safeguards those principles and helps make the Constitution real in our lives. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has devoted his judicial service to that vision. But by retiring in this perilous moment, he has unleashed forces that will test the court like never before.
These are dark days in America. Tribalism, kleptocracy and intolerance stalk the land. The White House is besieged with credible accusations of criminality and corruption. Many have lost faith in their institutions of government. Democracy itself seems besieged.
Yet even in this cynical age, the court has maintained formidable public support. Kennedy is an essential part of that story.
For decades, as one of the court’s more influential members, he has worked to keep it on a (relatively) even keel. Whereas too many Americans demonize those with different views, he places civility, good faith and open discourse at the heart of his worldview. As bitter partisanship consumes Congress, he stands firm in his devotion to judicial independence.
Most importantly, Kennedy remained singularly open to a wide range of views on controversial issues. He recognized that the Constitution encompasses many values – some of them in tension with others – and that we must learn from experience. “The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times,” he once wrote. These are words he lives by.
Wrongly derided by critics as a lack of principles, this open-mindedness is one of Kennedy’s great virtues. More than most judges, he felt the force of competing constitutional values and institutional pressures. His judgecraft thus contained a distinct note of statesmanship. If his views evolved and admitted ambiguity, so be it: Rigid adherence to an all-encompassing orthodoxy is not the true test of a great jurist.
This character trait has benefited the court and the nation. With Kennedy as a frequent swing voter, Americans of all persuasions knew their voices and values would receive serious consideration by a key decision-maker – one who was not strongly inclined for or against them from the very outset. The outcome of many cases has been a mystery until the very end.
This can be maddening, no doubt. So can the fact that a single man wields so much power. But it is surely a good thing that on most issues, large swaths of the nation have not simply given up on the court as a forum in which their vision of the Constitution has a shot.
This will be a significant and overlooked part of Kennedy’s legacy. Plenty of his decisions have been unpopular with some or even most Americans. Together, though, they have charted a path that largely maintained the court’s public legitimacy.
Of course, that isn’t to say that everything Kennedy has done is perfect. Like many lawyers (and former law clerks), I strongly disagree with some of his most important decisions.
And while Kennedy typically favors a cautious, stepwise approach, at times he quickly and unexpectedly reshaped the law. Uncertainty about how far and fast he would go – let alone in what direction – could elevate the national blood pressure around sensitive issues.
While Kennedy is indeed fair minded, on many issues he ultimately inclined rightward. Landmark rulings on LGBT rights, abortion, capital punishment and racial equality will define his legacy; but so will influential opinions about campaign finance, Miranda rights, religious freedom, commercial speech and federalism. Though the left has not been shut out, it has mostly played defense.
Still, especially in contrast to the turbulence of the 1930s and 1960s, there can be little doubt that Kennedy’s tenure helped sustain a fair measure of stability. He and the court have served as a bulwark for the rule of law in a world often set against it.
As a result, his retirement will spark chaos. Keen to reshape American life on a startling scope and scale, conservatives will race to confirm a reliable vote. Things will get ugly – very ugly. Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance. So do many other famous precedents.
Accordingly, the court’s very legitimacy is now up for grabs. Signs suggest that President Trump aims to move the court so far to the right that half the nation will inevitably deem it an avowed enemy.
The confirmation battle ahead will place the court under crushing pressure. And if the result is a muscular, immodest conservative majority, the center will not hold.
The future now rests with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has shown sustained concern for the court’s legitimacy, but whose votes place him far to Kennedy’s right. Will his court truly remain open to all Americans? Or will it speak for only one viewpoint?
As Kennedy recognized, the court teaches us all about democracy. It can define how we live. We can only hope that Kennedy’s insight carries on as the court steps toward a newly uncertain future.
One of the Fascist Democrats' leaders calling for harassment against people they disagree with:
People like Sarah Sanders Huckabee should be OK, just requiring Secret Service protection now. But thanks in advance needs to be given to Maxine Waters for pushing the Center our way a little more, in 2018 and hopefully 2020.
Story Highlights * Down from personal-best 45% the prior week * Still slightly above term-to-date average of 39% * All party groups' approval lower
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's job approval rating fell back slightly last week, to 41%, after he tied a personal best of 45% the prior week.
In the wake of the latest Leftist outrage over illegal immigration, Trumps' popularity with Hispanics has skyrocketed over the past month, according to the latest Harvard/Harris poll.
Pretty remarkable, considering the way the MSM has bought and regurgitated all the deceitful, hysteria-filled propaganda from the most extremist segment of the Left.
On the other hand, not too surprising. America is a nation of immigrants. LEGAL immigrants–who are rightfully upset that they waited and did things lawfully, and are now being made a mockery by Democrats, who want open borders for votes.
In the wake of the latest Leftist outrage over illegal immigration, Trumps' popularity with Hispanics has skyrocketed over the past month, according to the latest Harvard/Harris poll.
Pretty remarkable, considering the way the MSM has bought and regurgitated all the deceitful, hysteria-filled propaganda from the most extremist segment of the Left.
On the other hand, not too surprising. America is a nation of immigrants. LEGAL immigrants–who are rightfully upset that they waited and did things lawfully, and are now being made a mockery by Democrats, who want open borders for votes.
"In the wake of the latest Leftist outrage over illegal immigration"
Let that sink in, boys and girls.
The Left is outraged at Trump over his actions to stop illegal immigration. After starting a thread about exactly that, are you suddenly claiming otherwise, now?
The Left is outraged at Trump over his actions to stop illegal immigration. After starting a thread about exactly that, are you suddenly claiming otherwise, now?
[Post edited 28 Jun 2018 20:17]
OK, I see, I read 'outrage' as a noun as opposed to a verb.
Thought you were referring to Mad Max or whatever it is Trump calls her.
Fair enough, I could have phrased that more clearly.
He knew what you meant. Don’t trouble yourself.
As far as ‘the left’ goes it would collapse into outrage if Trump personally bought every illegal a stick of candy floss each. Whatever he does is wrong. Ray Charles would have no trouble seeing that.
An idea isn't responsible for those who believe in it.
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Happy Fathers Day: on 20:44 - Jun 28 with 1375 views
As far as ‘the left’ goes it would collapse into outrage if Trump personally bought every illegal a stick of candy floss each. Whatever he does is wrong. Ray Charles would have no trouble seeing that.
You're a mindreader, as well as a self-absorbed boorish vvanker then?
In the wake of the latest Leftist outrage over illegal immigration, Trumps' popularity with Hispanics has skyrocketed over the past month, according to the latest Harvard/Harris poll.
Pretty remarkable, considering the way the MSM has bought and regurgitated all the deceitful, hysteria-filled propaganda from the most extremist segment of the Left.
On the other hand, not too surprising. America is a nation of immigrants. LEGAL immigrants–who are rightfully upset that they waited and did things lawfully, and are now being made a mockery by Democrats, who want open borders for votes.
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