Outcry about splitting migrant families grows
Republicans press Trump to stop separating children Hogan pulls Guard unit back from U.S. border
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans mobilized Tuesday to end the administration’s policy of separating children from their migrant parents — and the mounting political backlash — as President Donald Trump publicly held firm, warning that those illegally crossing the border “infest our Country.”
Yet cracks appeared in the White House’s hard line as outrage against the policy built amid continued media coverage of bedraggled children penned in austere government detention centers.
An administration official suggested that the president might sign a narrow bill to address the issue, despite his public demands that any measure include $25 billion for his promised border wall and new limits on legal immigration. “The president wants a comprehensive fix,” the official stressed, adding, “but he is willing to strongly consider legislation that would address the separation issue.”
Late in the day Trump met at the Capitol with Rodricks says Trump policy is bad economics. NEWS PG 3
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan recalled a small unit of Maryland National Guard soldiers helping to patrol the southern U.S. border on Tuesday amid a national outcry about separating migrant children from their families.
Hogan joined a bipartisan wave of governors across the country revoking resources along the Mexican border in protest of an immigration policy widely condemned by both sides of the aisle.
In Maryland a chorus of Democrats running for governor and other state leaders — from U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings to Catholic Archbishop William E. Lori — demanded President Donald J. Trump and Congress end a “zero tolerance” policy that has separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents in recent weeks.
Hogan announced in a tweet that he would rescind all resources until Trump’s administration reversed the policy.
“Immigration enforcement efforts should focus on criminals, not separating innocent children from their families,” the governor tweeted. He said that early Tuesday he ordered the four Maryland National Guard crew members and their helicopter
“Immigration enforcement efforts should focus on criminals, not separating innocent children from their families.”
House Republicans about their proposals for a comprehensive immigration bill. After rambling remarks, including familiar recollections about his 2016 victory, he spoke little of the family-separation controversy or immigration policy generally, and left without giving party leaders the full en- dorsement they sought for their bill, according to accounts from those in the room.
Hours earlier, in a partisan speech to a friendly small business organization, Trump stuck to his demand that Congress address the crisis as part of a wide-ranging immigration bill that includes money for a border wall. He ignored calls, including from Republicans, that he could end his own 6-week-old policy simply with a word.
Faced with the president’s resistance to act, however, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters at the Capitol that Senate Republicans would devise “a plan that keeps families together.”
The plan seems likely to accomplish that by detaining families as a whole, not by allowing them to be free pending a deportation hearing, as was typically the case until last month.
McConnell’s deputy, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said the Senate could act “in a matter of days, hopefully this week.” More than a dozen Senate Republicans signed a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging that he suspend family separations until a legislative fix can be signed into law.
“I don’t think anyone has the patience to let him hold children hostage for a wall,” one senior Republican aide in the Senate said. “He can get that funding the oldfashioned way, through a budget request.”
It remained unclear, however, that House Republicans would go along. And Senate Democrats, believing they have the upper hand politically, are resisting giving Republicans help to fix the issue.
“Legislation is not the way to go here, when it’s so easy for the president to sign it,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer told reporters.
More Republicans echoed that sentiment, even as they searched for legislative fixes. “The White House could change it in five minutes, and they should. It’s a mistake. It’s a change in policy by this administration,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a senior Republican from Tennessee.
Senators in both parties have proposed limited legislation to end the family separations, which have put more than 2,000 children in detention centers since the Trump administration announced its “zero tolerance” policy six weeks ago, as many parents now face criminal as well as civil prosecution. Because children can’t be jailed with their parents, they are detained separately.
All Senate Democrats have endorsed a bill by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, while Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican facing re-election in Texas, where the crisis is playing out, has proposed a separate measure. The proposals, in different ways, would prevent the Department of Homeland Security from separating children from their parents at the border.
Trump, in his earlier remarks to the National Federation of Independent Business, reiterated that he doesn’t want families split, yet defended the policy as putting a stop to “thousands” of child smugglers crossing the border.
Trump, in his speech, assailed proposals — like Cruz’s — to provide more immigration judges to expedite the backlog of asylum cases at the border. His Justice Department recently announced it was sending 18 additional judges to the border region, however, and Cruz’s bill calls for hundreds more. “I don’t want judges. I want border security,” Trump said in an extraordinary attack on the long-standing immigration courts system. “We have to have a real border. Not judges. Thousands and thousands of judges they want to hire. Who are these people?”
The president riffed for nearly 20 minutes at the business luncheon on the topic of immigration, veering from scripted lines demonizing child smugglers and Democrats to an aside blaming Mexico for allowing smugglers and drug traffickers to reach the border. “Mexico, they do nothing for us,” Trump said. “Try staying in Mexico a couple days — see how long that lasts.”
The president asserted that the administration’s choice on family separations is a hard but necessary one: “We can either release all immigrant families and minors who show up at the border from Central America,” he said. “Or we can arrest the adults for the federal crime of illegal entries.” He added: “Those are the only two options: Totally open borders or criminal prosecution for lawbreaking.”
Trump attacked the news media for its reporting on the border crisis. Since late last week, the near-blanket television coverage and published reports from the border, with images of young children alone inside detention centers and an audio recording of wailing toddlers, has spawned one of the largest backlashes of the tumultuous Trump administration.
“They are fake,” he said of the news media, drawing applause. “They are helping these traffickers and these smugglers like nobody would believe. They know it.”
As he has throughout the controversy, Trump blamed Democrats, even though his administration formally announced the policy in May, after considering it since the early days of Trump’s presidency. The administration opted to shift to a zero tolerance approach with asylum seekers, believing that the separation of immigrant parents and children would serve as a deterrent to illegal immigration.