This story I wrote for today has gone largely unreported, but Bush’s Department of Homeland Security wants to change — for the worse — America’s policy toward those fleeing coercive population control and abortion programs. The irony is that Bush was so very brave at the beginning of his term, refusing to fund the UNPFA because of its complicity in this cruel and inhuman Chinese policy. This issue should be brought to his attention immediately, because more courage is required in the face of a security bureaucracy intent on deporting as many people as possible, whatever the circumstances.

DHS convinced the Second Circuit Court of Appeals this summer to overturn the long-standing interpretation of a 1996 law that had always been understood to offer asylum to both spouses who flee China because of forced abortions or coercive birth control. DHS wants to grant asylum only to the women. The older interpretation, which the law’s authors are trying to reinstate, makes more sense, considering that Chinese law punishes father and mother alike for “unauthorized breeding.”

But DHS wants to deport the husbands, separating them from their families and subjecting them to retribution from the planet’s most despotic government. Thanks to another court’s ruling, the matter is currently in the hands of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.