Lib Judge Proves Dems Don't Care About Border Kids, Ruling Means Separations Can Resume
There has been quite an abundance indignant outrage from liberals with regard to President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy, which mandates that all adults who enter the country illegally be prosecuted for the crime.
An inevitable result of that strict enforcement is that illegal immigrant families apprehended at the border are temporarily separated by immigration officials while the parents are processed and the children are eventually transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, to be placed in foster care or with relatives already living in the United States.
Though Democrats and the liberal media were quick to decry that practice, they rarely admit that it stems directly from liberal court precedent set during the Clinton administration that became known as the Flores Agreement, a ruling that stipulated that illegal immigrant children couldn’t be held by immigration officials longer than 20 days, no matter how long it took for the children’s parents to be processed while in custody.
In light of the great outrage and immense pressure placed on the Trump administration, the president signed an executive order on June 20 that sought to end the separation of families at the border, and requested a federal judge modify the Flores Agreement to allow for children to be detained longer than 20 days if they were detained together with their families in a facility designed for family detentions.
One would think liberals would decry the prior court ruling and cheer Trump’s executive order bringing families back together — I mean, “think of The Children!!” — but their reflexive opposition to everything said or done by Trump has now proven that their stated compassion for the children was little more than an anti-Trump political ploy that used the separated kids at the border as pawns.
That is what clearly showed through in an article from left-leaning Vox, which celebrated the fact that a liberal jurist in California, Judge Dolly Gee, had on Monday smacked down the request from the Trump administration to modify the Flores Agreement and allow illegal immigrant families to be detained together for longer than 20 days.
In other words, a media outlet that has berated the Trump administration over the past several weeks and months for practice of separating children from their parents is now cheering a liberal federal judge whose ruling means that same practice will have to be continued.
Indeed, if the Trump administration is to follow the laws as they are written and subsequently interpreted by the courts — which Trump and his administration have repeatedly vowed to do — they will inevitably have to resume separating illegal immigrant children from their parents when detained at the border.
However, it is noteworthy to point out that, according to Vox, a different liberal judge in a separate case in San Diego had ordered a halt to the family separations and demanded that some 3,000 families be reunited … a process that could now be placed in doubt by the other judge’s contrary ruling against Trump’s plan to reunite families in family detention.
Of course, liberals cheered both rulings that went against the Trump administration, seemingly ignoring the obvious contradiction and how their cheers exposed how they really don’t care what happens to the children, so long as Trump is denied a “win.”
In all likelihood, Gee possibly thought she was doing a favor for liberals by smacking down the government’s request to modify the Flores Agreement, as doing so would allow illegal immigrant children to be detained indefinitely — a few weeks to a few months for processing and prosecution — together with their illegal immigrant parents.
But the move to block the potential indefinite detention of illegal immigrant families appeared to place the situation back at square one, with the children again at risk of being separated from their parents after 20 days, if not immediately following apprehension, depending on the detention facilities in the area they were detained in.
It is possible the judge thought that the Trump administration would be resigned to simply release into the country — with an oft-ignored promise to appear in court later — any illegal immigrants who arrived with children in tow.
However, the Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that the prior policy of “catch and release” at the border is no longer an acceptable option, and all adults who enter the country illegally will be detained and charged for their crimes.
Even the Vox article admits that possibility:
“But Monday night’s ruling also makes it clear that the administration has the power to start separating some migrant families again,” it states.
“The judges in both court cases — as well as the ACLU, which is the lead plaintiff in the family reunification lawsuit — agree with a core principle of the government’s argument on immigration policy: that it can’t be forced to release anyone who comes into the US without papers just because they bring their child with them.”
And that makes for an agonizing situation for everyone concerned. As Vox put it:
“But Monday night’s ruling clarifies that the two rulings don’t work together: that parents can be forced to choose between waiving her right to keeping her children with her, and waiving the child’s right to be released from detention …
“In other words: The government can force a choice between separation and indefinite detention.”
The government hasn’t put any illegal immigrants in that position yet, but it could. Is that what liberals are celebrating? (Maybe another chance to make the Trump administration look like ogres.)
To be sure, nobody wants to see families separated from each other at the border, whether they entered illegally or not, and Trump has urged illegal immigrants to consider the simple solution of not entering illegally if they don’t want to end up temporarily separated from their families.
The Trump administration sought a compromise solution from the courts that would allow the administration to continue to follow the law with its “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy while keeping families together, but the liberal court squashed that effort and liberals couldn’t be happier … even as it means children could once again be separated from their families at the border, proving the whole issue has been nothing more than a cudgel to use against Trump the entire time.
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