On Tuesday, Mr. Trump is scheduled to go to Capitol Hill to address House Republicans, who are planning to vote on two immigration measures this week. In a Twitter post, Mr. Trump repeated his running blame of Democratic policies — “CHANGE THE LAWS!”

But no law actually requires that families be separated at the border.

There is a law against “improper entry” at the border, as well as a consent decree known as the Flores settlement that limits to 20 days the amount of time that migrant children may be held in immigration detention. A 2008 anti-trafficking statute — signed into law by a Republican president, George W. Bush — also requires that certain unaccompanied minors be transferred out of immigration detention in 72 hours.

None of those laws or precedents mean that children must be taken away from their parents.

Under President Barack Obama, the authorities initially responded to a similar surge in illegal border crossings by setting up family detention centers where children and their parents could be held together. But in response to a lawsuit against the Obama administration, a judge ruled that the Flores settlement also prohibited children from being detained with their parents.

Having no effective way to detain the parents with their children, Obama administration officials released the families pending the resolution of their asylum cases. Some were given ankle bracelets. Others were simply ordered to return for a court hearing. What they refused to do was to automatically split the children from their parents so that the adults could be detained.

Effectively, they made an exception for illegal immigrants who arrived with children — an exception that Trump administration officials followed until Mr. Sessions imposed a zero-tolerance policy this year.

Both the Flores settlement and the anti-trafficking law say that the authorities are permitted to separate children, but they are not required to do so. The Trump administration interpreted this as a requirement, or a “loophole,” that Congress must fix to stop the separations.

The energetic defense of the policy by Mr. Trump and members of his administration is at odds with the political reality on Capitol Hill, where Mr. Trump’s demands to change the laws face opposition from both Republicans and Democrats.

Members of both parties have responded with their own legislative proposals to deal with the separations.

I'm not sure what change you're referring to but I am thinking that a harsh consequence is good for discouraging the act.

I don't know to my mind the big news here is that Pelosi's favorability rating is 17% among Republicans. I would've assumed it was lower.

I think "skimming" would be too generous for what I just did of the last few posts but I thought most of the immigration re: children stuff in the media lately was shown to be either things that happened under obama or faked by democrats.

It’s too bad the Democrats are spineless and complicit, because it would be hilarious to see some firebrand remind everybody that following orders isn’t an effective legal defense.

This line of thinking just reminds me of the whole "the Holocaust never happened, but I'm sure glad that it did" retort.



https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-law-separate-families-passed-1997/

Wait he actually, unironically said that?

To Jon:

I'm not kidding when I say I don't follow the news so when you say "Fox is lying to you" I'm not seeing that. Now I do see snippets from other sources that specifically showed things I alluded to above however I take everything at face value. Now, Beck did make a huge deal about literal concentration camps well before trump was elected so I get that. If you have a reference for me to look at please post it.

Yeah.

Don't normalize irrational Republican viewpoints tbh fam.

I dunno. Do you think chopping their dicks off might stop them from coming over as well? Maybe we should try that too.

It's not as if pollsters are asking Republicans whether they hold Kim or Pelosi in higher regard. Republicans aren't being asked to make a comparison. It just so happens that more people said that dislike Nancy Pelosi than they did KJU. They aren't even necessarily the same people. For all you know, people who were polled and said they "favor" Kim are the same people who say they "favor" Pelosi. These numbers aren't very meaningful.

Maybe Republicans should stop being snowflakes who get offended that there are people who are a little bit different than them.

I have a better idea:

This is in bad taste.

This family separation policy is not the Holocaust. It's horrible and it's cruel. In fact, it's intentionally cruel. But let's try to keep some perspective.

https://twitter.com/briantashman/status/1008899577309814785

I'm convinced like 95% of Americans don't know anything about the Holocaust beyond "the Germans went nuts and tried to wipe out an ethnic group".

This is a lot of fun to watch. After decades of getting ripped off, cheated, and lied to by the gangsters in Beijing and their so-called "businessmen" cronies, Trump is taking it to them. No matter what promises they make to try to get him to stop, they won't keep them, so he should just keep going.

He just said he's going to put 10% tariffs on another $200 billion in imports from China. Good. He's playing poker with Xi and going to humiliate him. By the time 2020 rolls around, he'll have slapped tariffs on the entire $500 billion they sell - oops, sold - the US and the good people of China will be playing Mussolini football with Xi's head in Tiananmen.

The only solution to the trade war, which Beijing started four decades ago and has been waging since then, is to stop all technology transfers to China and stop buying from them. It will be painful and long, but that's better than a world where the communists have more power. The West will adjust and move on. Beijing can try its mercantilism on Russia and the Stans. Good luck with that.

Love him or hate him, Trump has this one right.

I think their logic goes: so long as people are willingly entering the country, there's nothing we can do to them (or their children??) that they didn't bring upon themselves.

Kind of funny how all the while US businesses are benefiting from the very illegal immigrants who the Republicans are so proud of stomping all over.

This thing with crisis actors is pretty frightening stuff. If things keep getting worse, where will we be in five years? or ten? When Bush was still president, I thought things would get worse in ways that I couldn't imagine. I didn't think they'd get this bad.

Okay, so I very briefly looked at the links provided and I'm not sure I get the problem. Isn't it rational for children to be separated from their criminal parents? I mean, surely they're not supposed to be sent to the same detention centers as adults. Admittedly, I could be missing something.

I'm not sure what change you're referring to but I am thinking that a harsh consequence is good for discouraging the act.

This family separation policy is not the Holocaust. It's horrible and it's cruel. But let's try to keep some perspective.