Border Blowup: GOP majority at risk?
President Trump’s policy of separating illegal immigrant children and parents entering the country from Mexico blew up on him and possibly jeopardized Republican hopes of holding their congressional majority in the midterm elections.
Pictures of children held in cages separated from their parents have inflamed emotions across the country and the world, exacerbated by 24-hour television reports and commentaries condemning the president’s actions. He held onto his policy too long, hoping to bring congressional Democrats to the table and work out immigration reform.
On the terrible border situation, Trump finally got the message – from his wife, Melania, and daughter, Ivanka, along with a growing number of fellow Republicans as well as Democrats who were up in arms about what was happening since the crisis began — and cracks even began to appear in Trump’s everloyal base. Nationwide a poll by Reuters/ Ipsos showed 57 percent opposed the zerotolerance policy of prosecuting illegal immigrants, only 28 percent supported it and 15 percent said they didn’t know.
The president signed an executive order Wednesday to stop the separation of children and parents held in border facilities. The order said the administration’s policy is “to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.” It directed government agencies to provide facilities for housing and care of the immigrants, and directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prioritize court cases involving detained families “to the extent practicable.”
“We are keeping families together,” Trump said before he signed the order. Earlier in a meeting with House Republican leaders and more than two dozen legislators, he said, “We have to be very strong on the border but at the same time we want to be very compassionate.” He emphasized that his zero tolerance policy would continue.
The scope of the illegal immigration crisis that so concerns Trump is illustrated by the sheer numbers of children in custody. By Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security reported that nearly 12,000 immigrant children were being held, the vast majority having crossed the border without parents or legal guardians. Included were 2,300 children who were separated from their parents in the past month.
Finding places to hold the children is a huge, growing and costly undertaking in addition to the effects on children and the toll on law enforcement. How costly? The answer from Steven Wagner, HHS acting assistant secretary, administration for children and families: “The Unaccompanied Alien Children Program is being abused; it was never intended to be a foster care system with more than 10,000 children in custody at an immediate cost to the federal taxpayer of over one billion dollars per year.”
So where do we go from here? Getting immigration reform through Congress looks like a non-starter, given opposition from Democrats, who are making political hay from this mess and the inability of the always-divided Republicans to unite behind a good bill. You can expect Trump to keep pushing his reforms while continuing his zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting illegal immigrants. The opposition will continue in the form of court challenges, protests and verbal attacks by Democrats, other leftists and the usual Hollywood suspects.
That was made clear by ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, who said the president’s executive order “would replace one crisis for another. Children don’t belong in jail at all, even with their parents, under any set of circumstances.”
The question is: how much damage has been done to Republicans? Is there time enough for emotions to subside and Republicans to recover before the midterm elections? The issue will certainly be kept alive by the detention of children and their parents facing prosecution for entering the country illegally under the zero-tolerance policy.
Trump at midweek was holding out hope of Congress actually passing an immigration bill. The administration threw its support behind an entirely reasonable GOP legislative plan to provide $25 billion for border security including the wall, a citizenship path for “Dreamers,” i.e., participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and writing a no-family separation policy into law. But there is no support from the Democrats who want to return to the “catch and release” policy of Barack Obama.
It will be up to the Trump administration to stem the tide of illegal immigrants if that’s possible under court orders past and future or new legislation along with the unrelenting attacks by the opposition. As for immigration reform being enacted with the necessary bipartisan support, the chances are slim to none.