Despite Trump backing down, his supporters remain steadfast.
DULUTH, Minn. — Big Lake resident Pam Tolve believes President Donald Trump was just doing his job when he decided to separate children from parents who crossed the border illegally.
Billy Inman of Woodstock, Ga., said he felt sorry for the children but that their parents were responsible.
Die-hard Trump supporters remained steadfast, even as heart-rending photos of children held in pens and audio of terrified children crying out for their parents stoked outrage among Democrats and Republicans alike. They believed Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen when they falsely claimed that they had no choice but to enforce an existing law.
After Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to end forced separations — acknowledging he could act without Congress after all — they shrugged. The end, they suggested, justified the means, and the separations were the fault of Congress and those crossing the border illegally.
“It’s been blown out of proportion by the Democrats and the left,” said Tolve, who attended a Trump rally Wednesday in Duluth.
She and Inman, like many Trump supporters, blamed the separations on the migrants rather than the president.
“The mamas and daddies are responsible for that,” said Inman, 55, a truck driver. “I feel sorry for the kids but why can’t we protect our borders the way other countries protect theirs?”
Enforcement of immigration laws happens at the president’s discretion.
Under the Obama administration, families that crossed illegally usually were referred for civil deportation proceedings, not requiring separation.
In April, Trump’s administration adopted a “zerotolerance” policy, choosing to prosecute such crossings as crimes, meaning that any minors accompanying that person were taken away.
Trump and Nielsen misled the public by denying that separating families was a result of Trump’s policy — and many believed them.
“The main thing Trump is saying is he wants to obey the law, and the law has been passed years ago,” said Mary Broecker, a Republican voter from LaGrange, Ky.
Now that he reversed course, “it sounds like he’s kind of giving in a little bit if he’s going to take the families and find a place to house them,” Broecker said, adding it would “give them a room and a bathroom and a sink and everything, which is probably better than what they have had.”
Still, the president’s reversal on separating children won’t solve anything, says Terry Welch, of Broken Arrow, Okla.
“I see that as placating people,” he said.