Trump’s decision to keep illegal-alien families intact still dissatisfies the Left
Yet again, Donald J. Trump’s foes will not take yes for an answer.
I was fortunate to spend the last week in lovely, dry, sunny England and Wales. But even from across the puddle, it was impossible to escape the shrieks from President Trump’s critics regarding his policy of separating illegal-alien children from their illegal-alien parents who face prosecution for violating 8 U.S. Code § 1325: “Improper entry by alien.” Before Trump ran for president, Obama divided children from their parents and housed them in wire cages. This didn’t trigger even crickets from congenitally hypocritical liberals. But when Trump did the same thing, the Left’s psychological projection was shrill enough to shatter storefront windows.
- “Do you feel like the bad guy in this, to some extent?” NBC anchor Lester Holt asked a Border Patrol agent on Monday.
- “This is as if George Wallace had won in 1968,” former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham told MSNBC. He called this “a return to the most disturbing elements of white supremacy, white male supremacy, to be precise, in the national character.”
- “I don’t want little children ripped from their parents’ arms,” Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough declared. “I don’t want them marched off to ‘showers.’”
- Border Angels founder Enrique Morones told MSNBC: “That hasn’t happened in this country since the time of slavery. It hasn’t happened in the world since the time of the Nazis.”
- Former CIA director Michael Hayden posted this Twitter message: “Other governments have separated mothers and children.” Beneath it, he added a photo of the entrance to Auschwitz.
- Thanks to my friends at The Spectator, Great Britain’s leading journal of conservative opinion, I watched from the House of Commons press gallery Wednesday as three Labour members of Parliament railed against Trump’s enforcement of federal law. “This has been a chilling week for those of us from right across the House who believe in the values of tolerance and diversity,” boomed former Labour leader Ed Miliband during prime minister’s questions. Teresa May replied, “We believe in the fundamental values of liberty, of democracy, and of respect for human rights. We will continue to work with others to ensure that it is those values that are preeminent in everything that we and they do.”
Never mind that (according to homeland-security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen) among some 12,000 minors who have been separated from adults at the border, “10,000 of those currently in custody were sent by their parents with strangers to undertake a completely dangerous and deadly travel alone.” So, 83 percent of the children “yanked from their parents’ arms” by the barbaric Trump and his brutal henchmen, in fact, split with their parents when their moms and dads dispatched them to the U.S. border. This inconvenient truth makes Trump, at most, 17 percent of the monster that he has been portrayed to be.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday discussed this situation at a meeting of the National Association of Sheriffs in New Orleans:
Importantly, some years ago, it was decided law enforcement might arrest some people who crossed the border illegally by themselves but anyone who brought a child with them would effectively be given immunity from prosecution.
Word got out about this loophole with predictable results. The number of aliens illegally crossing with children between our ports of entry went from 14,000 to 75,000 — that’s a five-fold increase — in just the last four years. This cannot continue.
The children at the heart of this controversy are not in the custody of ICE, a law-enforcement unit. Instead, they are cared for by doctors, teachers, and social workers with the Department of Health and Human Services, a welfare über-agency. HHS facilities offer medical attention, classroom education, soccer matches, and even field trips. Auschwitz featured no such amenities.
The Left’s spittle-flecked vitriol over this issue has included some new lowlights in liberal discourse. These come courtesy of prominent organizations and cultural leaders, rather than random crackpots.
- The cover of Time magazine’s July 2 issue shows President Trump staring down at Honduran illegal alien Yanela Sanchez, just shy of age 2. The bawling toddler is supposed to symbolize the smallest victims of Trump’s infinite, family-cleaving cruelty.
But Sanchez and her mother, Sandra, never were separated. They are being held together at a U.S. facility in Dilley, Texas.
Oops!
Getty Images photographer John Moore snapped the Sanchezes on June 12 near McAllen, Texas, soon after they had rafted across the Rio Grande. “Moore didn’t know what happened to the family, but based on the new federal policies, he speculated that she would be taken from her mother,” the Washington Post explained last night.
So, in their mad rush to smash Trump, two major news outlets have tossed cream pies into their own faces.
- Protesters with the Democratic Socialists of America hounded Secretary Nielsen from a Mexican restaurant where she was dining on Tuesday night. “End Texas concentration camps!” they screamed. “Fascist pig!” one demonstrator exclaimed.
- Peter Fonda, an Academy Award nominee in 1970 and 1988, used Twitter to launch an obscene, misogynistic, violent rant that eventually garnered Secret Service intervention.
“Kristjen [sic] Nielsen is a lying gash that should be put in a cage and poked at by passersby,” Fonda bellowed on Tuesday. “The gash should be pilloried in Lafayette Square naked and whipped by passersby while being filmed for posterity.”
Fonda then turned his uncontrolled anger at the White House press secretary: “SS (Sarah Sanders) is a lying gash, too. And ‘gash’ is much worse than [c**t]. Maybe we should take her children away and deport her to Arkansas, and giving [sic] her children to Stephen Goebbels Miller for safe keeping.” White House domestic-policy aide Stephen Miller is Jewish, which makes Fonda’s Goebbels crack uniquely repulsive.
Fonda then trained his all-caps fury on Barron Trump, the president’s 12-year-old son.
WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL WILL [sic] STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT [A**HOLE] SHE IS MARRIED TO. 90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. [F**K].
After the First Lady justifiably alerted the Secret Service, Fonda apologized. The washed-up thespian’s new film opens today. This may reveal his real reason for shoehorning himself into the news — and deplorably so.
- Canadian TV writer Pat Dussault wrote on Twitter: “Don’t worry, we’re coming for Chloe, too.” This threat was aimed at Chloe Trump, the president’s granddaughter, age 4. Once caught, Dussault apologized.
- An Occupy Wall Street graphic instructed illegal-alien parents how to respond if an ICE officer attempts to separate them from their children: “Grab the ICE agent from behind and push your knife into his chest with an upward thrust, breaking through his sternum. . . . Reach into his chest and pull out his still beating heart. . . . Hold his bloody heart out for all other agents to see, and tell them that the same awaits them if they [f**k] with your child again.” (This sludge later was deleted from Twitter.)
- Sam Lavigne, a researcher at NYU’s art school, posted online the names, addresses, and photos of some 1,600 ICE agents. This puts a bullseye on the forehead of each of these brave, diligent public servants. Lavigne deserves to be held personally liable for any injuries or deaths that his despicable behavior precipitates. (And this from someone on the Left, which otherwise cherishes the right to privacy.)
So, amid this backdrop of loud, often vulgar, and potentially violence-inducing “resistance,” America’s supposedly fascist president did something altogether anti-fascist: He caved to public opinion. Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to end family separation, which is exactly what his critics demanded.
But not even this retreat pleased the Left. As soon as Trump did what his detractors wanted, they sledgehammered him for it.
As soon as Trump did what his detractors wanted, they sledgehammered him for it.
“This Executive Order doesn’t fit the crisis,” sniffed Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) via Twitter. “Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe.”
“Ending family separation would be a welcome & Humane step but the solution cannot be the immoral and unlawful detention of children,” Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) complained. “Indefinitely imprisoning children & families is still inhumane & ineffective law enforcement.”
“It’s extremely troubling that the president’s executive order would require immigrant families with children to be detained indefinitely,” moaned Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) “The order appears to be the next step in the Trump administration’s larger agenda to eliminate basic protections for asylum seekers.”
“The president crammed our nation’s highest ideals and values into a shredder,” the Leadership Council on Civil Rights groused. “He does not get credit for taping them back together.”
Once again, this proves that there is nothing, short of chugging hemlock, that President Trump can do to please these people, whose hatred for him is bottomless. And if Trump did down hemlock, they would critique the cup in his cold fingers.
If liberals truly give a micro-damn about keeping illegal-alien families whole, rather than using them to bludgeon Trump, they should support three policies:
First, fund and erect Trump’s “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall.” The U.S.–Mexican “border” is a 24/7 crime scene, steeped in bedlam. If parents know that they will encounter 30 feet of vertical concrete, they will avoid this dangerous journey, which will keep them with their children.
“We do not want to separate parents from their children,” Attorney General Sessions said Monday. “If we build the wall, if we pass legislation to end the lawlessness, we won’t face these terrible choices.”
Second, asylum seekers must stop breaking and entering into America as if it were an unlit house. Families who apply for asylum at official border crossings — such as Hidalgo, Texas — are considered legal applicants, kept together, and handled through a lawful process.
Third, Democrats and Republicans alike should support a global public-relations campaign to tell the rest of this planet: “Just as you expect people to knock on your front door rather than come in through the bathroom window, America no longer will tolerate human invasions along our southern border. If you want to come to the USA, visit the closest U.S. embassy and complete a visa application. When we are ready for you, we will let you know.”
That is the correct way to enter this country. This method obeys the law and keeps families together. And this sure as hell is not too much for Americans to ask.