6/19/18: The heat intensifies as protest against the policy of separating children from parents at the southern border grows.
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“The fact is the administration has the authority to fix this immediately without legislation.”
Sen. Susan Collins
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The president and his defenders keep insisting they hate having to do it. But what choice does Trump have? He’s only the president. The only powers he has under the Constitution are to enforce the laws as he sees fit and direct the executive branch to carry out whatever policies he’s pushing on any given day.
It’s sad, he grumbles, this terrible “Democratic law,” which no one can find on the books, which he is forced to carry out.
It’s not hard to rebut the president’s position and you can do it using the words of Republican lawmakers. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine tells reporters that separation of children is not necessary. Nor does it require congressional action to end the practice. “The fact is the administration has the authority to fix this immediately without legislation,” she says.
Collins scoffs when asked about Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s claim that the administration has no choice but to enforce the law exactly as written. “That is not the case,” Collins adds. “Otherwise, how could the two previous administrations have rejected this approach? That’s amazing that she said that.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham isn’t mincing words. “President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call,” he says. “I’ll go tell him: If you don’t like families being separated, you can tell DHS, ‘Stop doing it [emphasis added here and below].’”
BLOGGER’S
NOTE (6/6/2022): We forget that Sen. Graham once had a heart.
If you watch Fox News you hear all about what a great policy this is – which I think is proof that watching Fox News will make your heart shrivel like a raisin. Laura Ingraham tells viewers the holding facilities the children are being sent to are just like “summer camps” and “boarding school.”
One liberal pundit, in a rare moment of levity, calls this the moment Ingraham’s soul left her body.
Tucker Carlson says the kids in camps are better off with air
conditioning and comfy beds than they were in their impoverished, war-torn,
crime-ridden homelands. He, for one, can’t imagine why anyone would let these
people enter the U.S. for a chance at a better life.
As for Trump’s critics, Carlson rebuffs them, saying, “You think any of these people really care about family separation? ... No matter what they tell you, this is not about helping children. Their goal is to change your country forever – and they are succeeding, by the way.”
(I think what he wants to say, as one Republican lawmaker did earlier this month, is that too many brown
and black people are crossing our southern border and soon there won’t be
enough white people left to go around. But Fox News might balk at such
right-wing honesty if he did.)
Moments later, logic flies off the rails. The people who criticize Trump don’t care about the collapse of the American family, Carlson shouts. “They welcome that collapse, because strong families are an impediment to their political power.” The liberals, he fumes, don’t care about single parent families in this country or fixing the foster care system. They should focus on that, Carlson snarls.
This claim seems odd since liberals often argue for raising taxes to improve foster care and bolster children’s services. Then people like Carlson rant and rave about Big Government and killing billionaires with more taxes.
Carlson wraps up his defense of a shitty policy by claiming Trump’s critics are hypocrites. “They care far more about foreigners than about their own people.”
“Disgraceful and a shame to our country.”
So, I say, let’s look at who doesn’t like this policy. And it is policy. Not law. The First Lady, who managed to gain entry to the United States some years back, because the country was experiencing a crippling shortage of models, is opposed. Her spokeswoman issues a statement: “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.”
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| Five First Ladies oppose Trump administration policy. |
None of the four former First Ladies supports the president. Okay, Hillary, you figure is a given. Rosalynn Carter remembers Cambodians fleeing a murderous communist regime in the 70s. Those refugees included many individuals who helped U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. She’s blunt:
When I was first lady, I worked
to call attention to the plight of refugees fleeing Cambodia for Thailand. I
visited Thailand and witnessed firsthand the trauma of parents and children
separated by circumstance beyond their control. The practice and policy today
of removing children from their parents’ care at our border with Mexico is disgraceful and a shame to our country.
And you have to credit Mrs. Clinton, a little, for using the Bible to blast Attorney General Sessions’ claim that the Bible somehow justified his policy. She calls what’s happening along the border a “humanitarian crisis.”
“Those who selectively use the Bible to justify this cruelty are ignoring a central tenet of Christianity. Jesus said ‘Suffer the little children unto me.’ He did not say ‘let the children suffer.’”
Laura Bush compares the policy to the treatment of Japanese Americans who were locked up in 1942, despite having taken no part in the attacks on Pearl Harbor. “I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”
Mrs. Obama avoids any direct attack on President Trump, because unlike President Trump she has class. She re-tweets Laura Bush’s statement (above) with the comment, “Sometimes truth transcends party.”
As more and more people weigh in on events along the border, the Trump defenses totally crumble. CBS News – which must now be part of the giant “Fake News” conspiracy aligned against the president – has the gall to quote a bunch of Republicans who think this policy is an abomination.
“It’s not American.”
“The way it’s being handled right now isn’t acceptable,” says Senator Orrin Hatch. “It’s not American.”
Hatch is then joined by a dozen Republican senators in firing off a letter to Mr. Sessions. They believe the separations can be halted because they have read the U.S. Constitution: “We support the administration’s efforts to enforce our immigration laws, but we cannot support implementation of a policy that results in the categorical forced separation of minor children from their parents.”
The Salt Lake City Tribune – the leading newspaper in a deep red state, editorializes: “But what is clear is that the lack of compassion toward these kids at the Texas/Mexico border is central to President Donald Trump’s political strategy: playing to his base and getting funding for his promised border wall.”
“All of us who are seeing images of children being pulled away from moms and dads in tears were horrified,” Sen. Ted Cruz tells reporters. “This has to stop.” Cruz then proposes adding 375 new immigration judges to speed up the processing of immigrants filing for asylum.
BLOGGER’S
NOTE (6/6/2022): We forget that Sen. Cruz once had a heart.
President Paranoia shoots that proposal down a soon as he hears about the idea. Speaking to a gathering of small business owners, Trump says he doesn’t like the idea because some of the lawyers who would represent the immigrants would be “bad people.” Besides, all those judges might be corrupt. “They said, ‘Sir, we’d like to hire about five or six thousand more judges,’” Mr. Trump says in a rambling speech to the National Federation of Independent Business. “Five or six thousand? Now, can you imagine the graft that must take place? You’re all small-business owners, so I know you can’t imagine a thing like that would happen.”
As a liberal, I’m having trouble imagining how Trump takes 375 and turns it into 5,000-6,000.
Anyway – and with very rare exception, we are not quoting Democrats – the chorus of condemnation builds:
“I firmly detest the heartless and inhumane practice of separating children from their parents at the border,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, says in a statement. “This extreme measure must end. It is an ineffective deterrent against illegal immigration, and children should not have to face traumatic ordeals given the actions of their parents.”
In a Facebook post, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse defended administration efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. Still, separating families was “wrong” and “the choice before the American people does not have to be ‘wicked versus foolish.’ This is wrong. Americans do not take children hostage, period.”
Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart issued a statement
calling the separations “unconscionable.”
“It is totally unacceptable, for any reason, to purposely separate minor children from their parents,” he said. “Any and every other option should be implemented in order to not separate minors from their parents…We cannot allow for this to continue happening, and it must stop.”
Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also addressed the situation on the border. “As a father, I know firsthand that there is nothing more important than family, and I understand why kids need to be with their parents,” he wrote. “That’s why I have publicly come out against separating children from their parents at the border.”
The United Nations Office of Human Rights called the policy “a serious violation of the rights
of the child.”
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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION took care of that Wednesday by withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights
Council.
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