Establishment Media Silent After Judge Follows Through on Trump's Family Reunification Process
The Trump administration didn’t create the mess along the southern border, but it is actively working to fix it.
That’s the overall view of a U.S. district judge tasked with overseeing the reunification process of adult and minor aliens who were separated for various reasons while trying to enter the country illegally.
In a court hearing Friday, Judge Dana Sabraw commended the administration for its good-faith efforts to reunify nearly 2,000 children by the deadline — Thursday — previously imposed by the court.
According to CBS News, Sabraw said the Trump-run government deserves “great credit” for its actions in bringing those separated families back together.
The judge also acknowledged that for immigrants who are under the government’s purview, “that (reunification) process has been completed,” according to The Washington Times.
That praise was focused on adults and children who were previously in government custody.
At the same time, however, Sabraw said the administration will now have to work overtime to track down other families that were separated while illegally entering the country, but had not been in U.S. hands.
“He didn’t blame the government for failing to reunify them, since they aren’t in government custody, but he did say they are the government’s responsibility,” The Times reported.
“The government can only reunify families over which it has control. and it has control over the families, the parents and children in its custody,” Sabraw said.
In a twist that seems to deflate the liberal narrative about illegal immigrant families wishing to stay together at all costs, a surprising number of adult migrants have apparently declined having their kids taken out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
“It’s been longstanding ICE policy to allow parents to take their children with them. Many parents declined this opportunity,” said Matt Albence, who is in charge of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, according to The Hill.
“The parents had the ability to change their mind,” but many did not, explained Health and Human Services Department spokesperson Chris Meekins.
In other words, hundreds of adults chose to leave their kids in ICE custody rather than be reunified with them — a fact that flies in the face of leftist claims that the government housing centers were the site of terrible human rights abuses.
The parents apparently didn’t think so.
“We cannot force a parent to take a child … and we cannot force a child out of the country” without a court order, ICE’s Matt Albence said.
All of this adds up to one bottom line: While the media and protesters have acted as if the Trump administration is monstrous for its enforcement activities along the border, the situation is much more complex than the headlines imply.
It turns out the government is carrying out a difficult balancing act between enforcing the law and acting in a humane manner.
That’s hard to do when human traffickers, streams of unknown migrants, and even parents who don’t want to have their kids returned to them are all in the mix. But although it may not be perfect, the job is getting done.
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