Repairing the damage on the border
The policy that wasn’t a policy has been ended, with President Donald Trump on Wednesday signing an executive order stopping family separations on the southern border of the United States.
This, after several days of horrific publicity and floundering on the part of administration leaders, a posse unable to keep their stories straight. As Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen famously said via Twitter: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” That ridiculous statement, made as kids were being herded into camps, was just one of many lies told over the past few days on behalf of Trump.
That policy — not a law but a decision by Trump in an attempt to scare off immigrants — is now rescinded.
To deflect criticism, Trump tried to blame the act of separating children from their parents on laws and court rulings, and most of all, on Democrats. “I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law,” Trump said to reporters earlier this month.
Worse, the tactic also was a bargaining chip so Trump could bully Congress into funding construction of a border wall. He wants $25 billion for his unneeded wall. His obvious implication throughout the unnecessary crisis is, “Give me the money, and I’ll let the kids go.”
The American people, overwhelmingly and loudly, opposed the idea of separating families and then placing unaccompanied children into abandoned stores, tents or even behind wire mesh fences. Former first ladies, led by a blistering opinion piece by Laura Bush, opposed the family separation policy. Pope Francis spoke out, as did Protestant, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders.
America’s mayors are against the family separation policy, with Mayor Alan Webber joining other New Mexico leaders at the border, protesting in Tornillo, Texas, where a tent city was built to house children. To what should be her shame, Gov. Susana Martinez has supported this heartless policy. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic candidate for governor, spoke out vehemently against family separations, and her GOP opponent, Rep. Steve Pearce, did say that separating parents and children is seldom a good idea. The rest of the congressional delegation also opposes the policy. Attorney General Hector Balderas helped lead an effort by the nation’s AGs against the policy.
The question now, of course, is what next. Trump will not back down on his harsher immigration enforcement efforts — some of his language in recent days has been particularly vile. He accused Democrats of wanting immigrants to “infest” our country. The verb infest, of course, is more frequently used in reference to insects or rodents.
And meanwhile, federal agents will keep targeting people in the country without papers. Our neighbors will continue to vanish from our streets. Trump’s Justice Department will keep prosecuting people caught at the border as criminals, a departure from past practices and a policy that threatens to flood our federal court system. This situation must end. Congress must do its job. The nation needs reform in the system, the normalizing of the status of young people protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and, now, additional funds to house the people we have captured at the border in this latest ill-advised action.
After all, Trump’s executive order doesn’t spell out how the United States will bring families back together. More than 2,000 children were pulled from their parents in the carrying out of this “zero tolerance” policy on immigration. These families have been torn apart, and it is far from clear that they can be put back together again. While the new executive order calls for families to be held together, there’s a previous legal ruling that limits the length of those detentions. This order is headed for the courts, we believe. What will happen next, and whether the U.S. can put right what it broke, remains unclear.
What is clear is this: Even Trump, the man who refuses to admit mistakes, has to back down when the country rises up in opposition. His executive order is a victory for outrage and for citizens who refuse to let evil be done in their name. But this battle is hardly over. Now is the time for all good men and women to keep paying attention and to demand better of our nation’s leaders.